Frank Chadwick

Frank Chadwick is an American multiple-award-winning game designer and "New York Times" Best Selling author. He has designed hundreds of games, his most notable being the RPGs "En Garde!", "" and "Twilight 2000", and the wargame series "Europa" and "The Third World War", as well as creating "Traveller" with Marc Miller.
Beginnings.
Frank Chadwick formed the ISU Game Club at Illinois State University with Rich Banner. The club focused on wargaming, but the students also started designing games for fun and convinced the university to fund a new program called SIMRAD ("SIMulation Research And Design"), which was intended to help instructors produce specifications for simulation games. They used their club funding to design war games. They also formed a small educational games organization in response to a project by the university to bring new ideas into the system. After failing to win this project, Chadwick and Banner, along with newcomers Marc Miller and Loren Wiseman, continued to work together, forming Game Designers' Workshop. When ISU stopped funding SIMRAD after 18 months, they founded Game Designers' Workshop on June 22, 1973 as a commercial outlet for their creativity, initially headquartering the company out of Chadwick's and Miller's apartment.
Game Designers' Workshop.
There is little doubt that, even in the rather busy pantheon of (wargame) industry heroes, Frank Chadwick is a Zeus amongst the Ajaxes. He is one of—if not THE—finest game designer working today. Since GDW's emergence in the mid-1970s, Chadwick has been GDW's main designer, producing a body of work remarkable for its breadth and width. ... ever resourceful, Frank C covered his simulated butt with the out-of-sight success of his "Desert Shield Fact Book". Its reported, six-figure sales will probably bank-roll the company for the next decade. And, as if that weren't enough, he has steered GDW (admittedly with the astute help of others) from a small-town, Third World company to its status as one of the major simulation and RPG publishers in the market today. Frank is also president of the industry professional association, the Game Manufacturers Association, so GDW's tentacles reach out to almost every cave in which hobbyists can hide in. If dice produced olive oil, there is no doubt that Frank Chadwick would be wargaming's Godfather.
Game Designers' Workshop existed from 1973 until 1996. There, he designed several well-known and award-winning games, including "En Garde!" (first swashbuckling role-playing games) in 1975, "Space: 1889" in 1989 (which was set in a steampunk milieu before the term was coined), and "Twilight 2000" in 1984. Chadwick and Miller designed "Traveller". Game Designers' Workshop also published the "Gulf War Fact Book", a book he wrote on the military capabilities of the United States and Iraq at the time of the Gulf War. The book was on "The New York Times" bestselling list, and led to appearances on various news programs by Chadwick. After Game Designers' Workshop shut down, the rights to "Space: 1889" went to Chadwick.
After Game Designers' Workshop.
Chadwick currently blogs on history and military issues at Greathistory.com.
Awards and recognition.
Chadwick was inducted into the Charles Roberts Awards Hall of Fame and Origins Hall of Fame in 1984. He won a Charles S. Roberts Award in 1980, 1981 and 1989, was nominated for an Origins Award in 2009.
Works.
Below are some of Chadwick's most notable works.