"Game Designers That Impacted the Hobby" Topic

Who are the game designers that shaped the miniature wargaming hobby?

I'd throw in names like Scott Bowden, Rick Priestly, Bob Coggins and S Craig Taylor, Phil Barker, Sam Mustafa and there are MANY others.

I would take a step further back in time: Jack Scruby, Brigadier Peter Young, Charles Grant, Tony Bath, and (at the very beginning of the "modern era") H.G. Wells. There are, of course, many, many others.

Larry Brom

I thought we had something like this a few months ago. Anyway, how about Frank Chadwick and Steve Jackson?

Adding more to the list from the early days

Featherstone
Gygax
Vietmeyer
Guilder
Seigfield

Can't forget Bruce Quarrie.

Another vote for Gary Gygax.

English grammar in not my strong suite but shouldn't the question read "who" instead of "that"?

Bob Jones, Brent Oman, Terry Gore, John Hill

This question does seem rather retro-spective. Those who shaped the hobby tend, by definition to be the founding fathers like Featherstone and his contemporaries. In many respects wargaming hasn't changed shape since then. However, there have been lots of game designers who have influenced the hobby since but who are possibly not so high profile. The type of games being played today are very different from those that were popular twenty years ago. Games tend to be smaller in terms of figure numbers, with rules that emphasise different things like the greater emphasis on command and control than previously. It seems a shame that we seem to look so far backwards when considering this question. With the exception of Priestly and Mustapha everyone else seems to be firmly lodged in a time capsule.

I seem to recall that the introduction of DBA by Phil Barker in 1990 as being quite influential.

Bob Jones, Dan Mersey, Larry Brom,

Arty Conliffe, for dragging rules production into the late 20th Century.

Phil Barker, long before DBA.
WRG rules made Ancients gaming what it is today, for better or worse.
Today Ancients Gaming is dominated by points based tournament rules, which is a legacy of WRG & DBX. My very first gaming armies were for WRG Tournament Play, and I had great fun. Little success.
The upside of that is the availability of many armies for the gamer that nobody would bother to make if there was no market for them.

And Larry Brim for TSATF, the best rules set ever written.

Terry Wise
Stuart Asquith

Scott Bowden.
Arty Conliffe.

Rick Priestly, Larry Brom, John Hill

"Brom", of course.
Noticed my gaff after I couldn't edit.

It was John Hill who showed me what a wargame could be.

John Hill
Larry Brom
Paul Koch
and love him or loathe him – Phil Barker

Mersey and others with the new school of rules coming out from Osprey seem to be having an impact

The "Immortal Sergeant," Larry Brom.

Gene McCoy, while he never published his own set of rules, the 'Series 78' WW2 units were highly influential, and all of the scenarios published in Wargamers Digest!

Fred Jane, Fletcher Pratt, Joe Morshauser, Duke Seifried, Greg Novak, Dave Arneson, John Candler, Lou Zocchi, Howard Whitehouse

Arty Conliffe.

Georg Leopold von Reiswitz who wrote der Kriegspiel.
His son Georg Heinrich Rudolf von Reiswitz who updated the work.
Julius von Verdy du Vernois for speeding it up as Free Kriegspiel (the original game developer?)
Helmuth von Moltke the Elder for "popularizing" the "game".

James F. Dunnigan

link

I would say that James Dunnigan and the designers at SPI had a greater impact on miniature wargaming than any four of the designers so far mentioned, as significant as they were. The reason being, Dunnigan basically laid out the wargame design concepts, methods and parameters that circumscribed the thinking of miniature wargame designers from the late 1970s onward. We are still working with [and struggling with] them today. Read his 1980 book The Complete Wargame Handbook and what he lays out about designing wargames, which has been republished several times with little editing. It is available on the web.
PDF link

Steve Jackson

Positive impact:

John Hill
Frank Chadwick
Phil Barker

Large impact:
Rick Priestly (Warhammer, 40K, Flames of War)

tomT