It has been a massive honour to have the opportunity to interview the legendary Steve Jackson for Roleplay Rescue.

Steve Jackson is the founder and President of Steve Jackson Games, a premier publisher of books, games, and magazines for the discerning gamer. Well-known games include OGRE, The Fantasy Trip, Car Wars, GURPS, and Munchkin. Steve’s first professional design work was for Metagaming, which published his Ogre, its sequel G.E.V., Melee, Wizard, and several other games. Our chat delves into the early days of his career with Metagaming, creating The Fantasy Trip, and the beginnings of GURPS.

How’d it happen?

Roleplay Rescue is my attempt to create a new community in which we discover how to take back our roleplaying hobby and make it fun for everyone. That’s why, in March 2019, I started the Patreon community and invited listeners of this podcast to support me.

Because my intention has always been to bring people together, the goals of the Patreon have always been focused around the number of Patrons, not the money. At the tail end of Season 5, I invited listeners to help us hit the 30 Patron Goal and offered, as a reward, that I would approach and invite a Tabletop Roleplaying Luminary onto the show for an interview. Even better than that, I offered to run a Patron-only poll to decide which Luminary to approach.

We smashed through the goal in about a week – a fantastic encouragement to me – and Steve Jackson was the first and loudest request from the Patrons.

Thank you to Steve for agreeing to come on the show. Thanks also have to go to Douglas Cole, from Gaming Ballistic, who was kind enough to make an introduction for me to my guest.

Thanks, of course, to all 32 of the patrons who made this possible. Game on!