Jim Bambra Explained
| Jim Bambra |
| Nationality: | British |
| Occupation: | Game designer |
Jim Bambra (born 1956)[1] is a British designer and reviewer of fantasy roleplaying games (RPG), and a former company director. He is particularly known for his contributions to Dungeons & Dragons, Fighting Fantasy, Warhammer, and which was based on the Star Wars films. Later he became head of design at MicroProse, then managing director of Pivotal Games, a publisher of video games including .
Career
Jim Bambra worked on game design and materials for various companies during the 1980s and early 1990s, including TSR (publisher of Dungeons & Dragons), Games Workshop (Warhammer),[2] and West End Games (Star Wars RPG).
In 1983, Bambra wrote "The Beginner’s Guide to Roleplaying Games" (with Paul Ruiz), published in Imagine magazine Issue 6 (Sept 1983),[3] explaining what an RPG is and accompanied by a comic strip, "The Adventures of Nic Novice". He was a reviewer and writer for Imagine magazine 1983-1985,[4] and reviewer for White Dwarf and Dragon magazines during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In 1989, Bambra co-wrote the Fighting Fantasy gamebook Dead of Night for Puffins, a Penguin inprint, with Stephen Hand.
During the 1990s he was Head of Design at MicroProse, where he worked on projects including Fields of Glory, Grand Prix, Special Forces, various X-COM products, and Gunship.[5]
In 1996 Bambra founded Pumpkin Studios, which achieved success with Warzone 2100, a computer game with a post-nuclear scenario. This company closed in 2000 after Eidos Interactive cancelled its then current project, Saboteur, a PlayStation video game.[6]
In 2003 he became managing director at Pivotal Games Ltd, a videogame development company based in Bath and owned by SCi Ltd. During his period at the firm it published the series of Conflict: videogames, the most successful of which was .[7] He remained as director until 2008, when SCi closed down the company.[8] Between 2005 and 2009 he was also a board member of The Independent Games Developers Association Ltd.[9]
Gamebooks and materials
Jim Bambra produced the following gamebooks and materials for roleplaying games, many in collaboration with other authors:
For Dungeons & Dragons
- All That Glitters... – Advanced D&D module, pub. TSR, 1984
- Dark Clouds Gather, Advanced D&D module, TSR, 1985
- Blade of Vengeance – D&D module, TSR, 1985
- Creature Catalogue (Dungeons & Dragons Accessory AC9), TSR, 1986
- Night's Dark Terror, 1986. A D&D module, one of the last products of TSR UK[10]
- The Golden Khan of Ethengar, D&D Gazetteer, TSR, 1989.
- The Sea People, D&D book, TSR, 1990
- The Complete Book of Dwarves (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons), 2nd Ed., Player's Handbook Rules Supplement, TSR, 1991.
Other
- Dark Side of the Moon (Star Frontiers Module SFAD6), TSR Hobbies, 1985
- Warhammer Campaign (The Enemy Within/Shadows Over Bögenhafen), Games Workshop, 1988
- Dead of Night (Fighting Fantasy Gamebook), Puffin Books, 1989
- Domain of Evil (Star Wars RPG) Paperback – West End Games, 1991. A supplement to Star Wars RPG.
- The GodNet: Virtual Reality in the Cyberpapacy (TORG: Roleplaying the Possibility Wars), Torg gamebook (with Bill Slavisek), West End Games, 1991
- (1993) is a DOS first person perspective RPG game developed by Magnetic Scrolls from an original idea by Jim Bambra, Stephen Hand, Matt Innes, John Oldman.
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Games Workshop Ltd. / Hogshead Publishing Ltd., 1995. This scenario was discussed by Dormans (2006) in a study of pen-and-paper roleplaying games, arguing that a moral stance was implicit in many such games, the scenario of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay in particular bearing an intentional analogue to the nuclear threat perceived at the time: "... the original setting is a powerful image of what England might have been like during the later stages of the Cold War era: a country living under the constant threat of full-scale war and having already experienced the devastating effects of nuclear disaster. To act and make strategic choices in a world thus infused with meaning can become an act of personal expression and experimentation."[11]
Testimonial
Echoes of the Jedi: Episode IV of Star Wars: Dawn of Defiance was dedicated to "Jim Bambra and all the unsung authors of the early Star Wars Expanded Universe".[12]
External links
Notes and References
- http://companycheck.co.uk/director/910644031 Jim Bambra: Director Summary
- https://graemedavis.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/the-enemy-within-again/ The Enemy Within, Again
- http://grognardia.blogspot.cz/ Imagine Magazine: Issue #6
- Web site: http://www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/s376.htm#A6208. https://web.archive.org/web/20141023203709/http://www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/s376.htm#A6208 . 2014-10-23 .
- https://web.archive.org/web/20060602130903/http://www.pivotalgames.com/index.php?content=about&cat=directors Pivotal Games website as at 2 June 2006
- Jack Schofield, Games watch, The Guardian, 23 March 2000
- Web site: Conflict: Desert Storm - About Sim Games . https://web.archive.org/web/20141102214550/http://compsimgames.about.com/od/combat/p/Conflict-Desert-Storm.htm . 2014-11-02.
- http://www.develop-online.net/news/pivotal-games-shuts-its-doors/0103133 Staff at Conflict series developer notified of closure today; small team of specialists will be kept by SCi
- https://web.archive.org/web/20070715171143/http://www.tiga.org/index.php?action=showBoardMembers TIGA website as at 15 July 2007
- http://grognardia.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/retrospective-nights-dark-terror.html Retrospective: Night’s Dark Terror
- Joris Dormans, On the Role of the Die: A brief ludologic study of pen-and-paper roleplaying games and their rules, Game Studies, volume 6 issue 1, December 2006.
- Abel G. Peña & JF Boivin, Echoes of the Jedi: Episode IV of Star Wars: Dawn of Defiance, p. 2, Lucasfilm Ltd., 2008
