TSR, Inc.
In the mid-1970s, Mentzer and a friend taught themselves how to play the new role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, and he became part of a group of eight to twelve players who played several times a week. In 1979, TSR, the company that published D&D, advertised for a designer and an editor. Although Mentzer was initially uninterested since he had no editorial or design experience, fellow player David Axler—who would go on to write an article for the December 1981 issue of Dragon magazine about how to determine the weather in the World of Greyhawk campaign setting—urged him to apply, and Mentzer finally relented. After a phone interview with TSR, Mentzer was hired for the editorial position—Tom Moldvay was hired as the new designer—and in January 1980, Mentzer moved to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
Soon after joining TSR, he was invited to participate in TSR's first "DM Invitational", a contest to choose D&D's best overall dungeon master. (Other contestants included Len Lakofka and Erol Otus.) At Gen Con 1980, Mentzer was announced as the winner, and was awarded a silver cup and a gold dragon chain of office. Mike Carr of TSR had been contemplating starting a TSR-sponsored D&D fan club. Shortly after Mentzer won the DM Invitational, Carr approached him about taking on that task. Mentzer agreed to form some sort of group, but rather than a simple "fan club", he was interested in promoting better quality roleplaying, especially during scored D&D events at conventions. Mentzer felt that the system as it stood rewarded those players that stayed quiet at the table, in effect punishing good roleplayers. He came up with a scoring system where the dungeon master and the players all voted on who had been the best roleplayer at the table. With this in place, Mentzer formed the RPGA, an organization that would promote quality roleplaying and allow fans of roleplaying games to meet and play games with each other. Mentzer wrote four RPGA tournament adventures taken from his home campaign setting of "Aquaria" (published by TSR as the first four of the R-series modules: R1 To the Aid of Falx, R2 The Investigation of Hydell, R3 The Egg of the Phoenix, and R4 Doc's Island). Mentzer envisioned them as becoming a part of Gary Gygax's World of Greyhawk setting, the first part of a new "Aqua-Oeridian" campaign set somewhere on Oerth outside of the Flanaess. (The connection between Aquaria and Greyhawk was never made, but these four modules were later revised by Mentzer and Paul Jacquays and re-published as the "super-module" I12 Egg of the Phoenix in 1989.)
In his review of Egg of the Phoenix, Ken Rolston called Mentzer "a clever and original designer", and that of all of the better-known adventure designers of the time he "comes closest to creating scenarios in which the protagonists behave as if the game's rule books were physics texts describing the laws governing the workings of the universe".
Mentzer became involved with the auction of hobby gaming materials at Gen Con in 1983, and has been involved with what is now called the world's largest game auction every year since then.
Mentzer was soon promoted to Creative Director at TSR, and one of the tasks he was given was to collate and revise the various rules sets for Basic D&D in such a way as to not borrow any rules, monsters or other material that had been developed specifically for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D). This resulted in the Basic (1983), Expert (1984), Companion (1984), Master (1985), and Immortals (1986) boxed sets of D&D rules (collectively known as BECMI). These were eventually translated into 11 languages, and millions were sold worldwide.
Other work by Mentzer included IM-1 The Immortal Storm (1986), I-11 Needle (1987), and an adventure module for TSR's Star Frontiers game based on Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. Because of his work with the Gen Con game auction, Mentzer had become interested in the game memorabilia market, resulting in The Game Buyers' Price Guide 1986, which summarized current market prices for hobby games. (Further annual editions were planned, but when Mentzer left TSR, this project was shelved.)
He also worked closely with Gary Gygax, and co-wrote the adventure module T1-4 The Temple of Elemental Evil (1985), and the accessory The Book of Marvelous Magic (1985).
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