| Birth Name: | Jon Pickens |
| Birth Date: | August 12, 1954 |
| Birth Place: | Mishawaka, Indiana, United States |
| Occupation: | Game designer, editor |
| Nationality: | American |
| Genre: | Role-playing games |
Jon Pickens is an American game designer and editor who has worked on numerous products for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game from TSR[1] and later Wizards of the Coast.
Jon Pickens was born in Mishawaka, Indiana on August 12, 1954.[2] In 1968, he was introduced to miniatures wargaming, and his parents bought him the Blitzkrieg wargame for Christmas that year. A couple of months later, Pickens responded to an ad in Popular Mechanics for a magazine titled Strategy & Tactics. He wrote in for a sample copy, and “spent the rest of the summer mowing lawns to get enough money to buy some wargames advertised in the magazine, and to get all the back issues.”[2] The publishers did not carry back issues, “So I wrote a letter to this collector, whose name was Gary Gygax, and arranged to buy the back issues from him. Gary invited me to attend a gaming convention in Madison. By a coincidence, my father had a speaking engagement in Delavan, which is near Lake Geneva, on the same weekend, so he took me up.”[2] Pickens and Gary Gygax drove up to Madison, and Gygax later invited him to the Gen Con convention; Pickens attended beginning with Gen Con 3 and for many years after that.[2]
Pickens attended Valparaiso University, and in 1976 he earned a B.A. degree in English and Economics. He continued to attend conventions while in college, and discovered TSR's new Chainmail miniatures game at the 1973 Gen Con; the following year, TSR debuted the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. After college, Pickens began writing occasional articles for Dragon magazine, and was active in the Alarums & Excursions publication.[2] [3] [4]
Pickens eventually applied for a job at TSR, taking both the designer and editor tests, and was hired as an editor. “They didn’t think much of the design work, probably because I wrote it in a few hours late at night, but the editing part was OK,” said Pickens.[2] Pickens later became the Acquisition Editor for TSR, Inc., reviewing modules for possible publication. He was also the Games Editor for Strategy & Tactics Magazine for several years while the magazine was published by TSR, and later the Managing Editor as well, commenting “In a way, this completes a circle in my life.”[2]
Jon Pickens has worked on many game products for the Dungeons & Dragons game since 1978, as an editor, designer, coordinator, and creative director. Some of his works as a game designer include the original Arms & Equipment Guide, and design contributions to the third edition Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Masters Guide. He has edited many Dungeons & Dragons books, including notably the Castle Greyhawk module, and the Rules Cyclopedia.
Pickens and David "Zeb" Cook oversaw the development of the book Night of the Seven Swords (1986).[5] Pickens was known for often being a "go-to research guy" at TSR.[6] For Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog (1992) he assisted J. Robert King's research by providing his own personal library.[7] In preparing the campaign setting book (1992), Pickens provided Jeff Grubb with three boxes of reference and research material.[8]
While Pickens left the gaming industry in the early 2000s, his nephew, Robert DeHoff, remains in that field and acts as a playtester and writer for Catalyst Game Labss BattleTech, Cosmic Patrol, and Leviathans game lines.