Jeff Grubb - Role-playing Games

Role-playing Games

A wargaming enthusiast since high school, Grubb began playing Avalon Hill wargames and later got interested in playing Panzerblitz, Blitzkrieg, and Frigate from Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI). He met Kate Novak in high school, and they were married in 1983. He first learned of roleplaying games as a freshman majoring in engineering at Purdue University, when he happened upon a game of Dungeons & Dragons being played by members of the campus wargaming club. Grubb says, "I walked up to a group of players to ask what they were doing. One turned to me, handed me three six-siders, and said, 'Roll these. We need a cleric.' It was all downhill from there." Within a year, he had attended his first Gen Con and was running his own campaign set in Toril, a world of his own creation.

Grubb graduated and worked as a civil engineer, and spent a year working on air pollution control devices until he was laid off. Between jobs, he oversaw the design of the AD&D Open at Gen Con. This led to him being hired in 1982 as a game designer with TSR, Inc. He was a design consultant on Gary Gygax's Monster Manual II for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. The manual was first published in 1983. He was then retained at TSR as the principal architect of the Marvel Super Heroes game system, first released in 1984. Grubb continued to work on role-playing games with TSR for many years, long enough to be regarded affectionately as an "old timer" by Scott Haring. During this time he helped formulate the Dragonlance campaign setting, under Tracy Hickman, and the Forgotten Realms setting with Ed Greenwood. He was a consultant on the first edition of Unearthed Arcana, and authored the first edition of the Manual of the Planes. He is the designer of the Spelljammer campaign setting. He also wrote the supplement for the Jakandor setting. In the late 1980s, Grubb wrote four fill-in issues of DC Comics' licensed Advanced Dungeons & Dragons comic book, and wrote all 25 issues of DC's Forgotten Realms series. Grubb left TSR in 1994, and went freelance.

Grubb moved to Wizards of the Coast after they purchased TSR, and continued to work on games, settings, and source books such as Tempest Feud for the Star Wars Roleplaying Game, d20 Modern and Urban Arcana.

Grubb has also authored The Memoirs of Auberon of Faerie for R. Talsorian Games and was one of the authors of the D20 Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game for Sword & Sorcery Studios. He has also been involved with Sovereign Press, founded by Margaret Weis and Don Perrin in 2001.