| Jeff Dee | |
| Birth Place: | United States |
| Field: | Fantasy art, illustration |
Jeff Dee is an American artist and game designer. He was the youngest artist in the history of pioneering role-playing game company TSR when he began his work at the age of eighteen. He also designed the Villains and Vigilantes superhero game. He was a co-host on The Atheist Experience and Non-Prophets atheism advocacy podcasts.[1]
In the late 1970s, while Dee was still a teenager, he and Jack Herman created Villains and Vigilantes, the first complete superhero role-playing game.[2] The game was published by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1979.[3] Dee and Herman persuaded Scott Bizar to produce a second edition, which was published in 1982.[3] Dee came up with the idea of creating a role-playing game based on cartoons when he, Greg Costikyan, and other designers were discussing which genres had no role-playing game systems yet; although they agreed that it would be impossible for such a game to be designed, a few years later Costikyan designed Toon as a full game with the assistance of Warren Spector.[3]
Dee was the youngest artist in TSR history when he began working for them at the age of eighteen.[4] In 1997, with his partner 'Manda, Dee founded UNIgames, a publisher of role-playing, board and computer games. Dee designed a new superhero role-playing game originally titled Advanced Villains and Vigilantes, which was ultimately published as Living Legends in 2005.[3] In 2009, he co-founded Nemesis Games, developers of an MMO named Gargantua.[5]
Dee has long been an advocate for the role-playing game industry.[6]
In addition to his artistic and game-related work, Dee is an outspoken atheist and transhumanist. He has been the host of a bi-weekly Internet podcast called The Non-Prophets and a former host of a live, weekly, public-access television program, The Atheist Experience.[7]