Dave Nilsen

Dave Nilsen is a Traveller author, contributor, and fan.

• He is a long-time Traveller writer.

Description (Biography)

David writes:

I arrived at Game Designers' Workshop in October 1991. At that time we were still publishing MT, and DarkCon was still new. Space 1889 had just been discontinued. DGP had already by this time pulled out of supporting Traveller, and was moving over to AI, which ultimately turned out as the winding down of DGP and ultimate closing. Lester Smith was DarkCon line manager, Loren Wiseman was Twilight line manager, and I soon became Traveller line manager after we decided to pull the game back in house (not from DGP, but from another out-of-house developer). I was also the Harpoon in-house manager (I can’t remember what our name for that was). Frank Chadwick was president of course, and did some of everything, including boardgames, miniatures rules, and being involved in all RPG work as well. During this period the “Carpenter Project” was also underway, which emerged briefly as Dangerous Dimensions—uh, I mean Journeys. Following the painful death of DJ, Lester Smith went to TSR, and on his departure I became Chief of Design at GDW. That meant that I was in charge of making sure everything we did got coordinated properly through manuscript acceptance, design, development, text department, art department, etc. That also meant that I became the de facto line manager of anything that didn’t have a daddy. I worked on, managed, designed, developed, or edited 93 products in my 48 or 49 months at GDW. Some of them were Traveller products. While I was there, we were the last wargame company in existence whose staff didn’t have to have day jobs. I know I’m in a tiny, contemptible minority on this board for believing this, but until we got killed by the CCG dementia, I think we did a pretty good job.

External Link/s

This gentlesophont has the following external links available:

• EXTERNAL LINK: Pen & Paper RPG Database entry

Library Data Entries (Public)

1. TBD

Image Repository

No information yet available.

History & Background (Dossier)

This person has been involved with Traveller in the following ways:

• He was a staff member at Game Designers' Workshop and the lead writer on Traveller: The New Era core book and designer on many of the supplements.

Traveller RPG Wiki Participation

This gentlesophont has not yet elected to participate at the wiki.

• He has spoken to wiki staff and conferred about his author page here.

Bibliography-Ludography (Published Products)

This gentlesophont has authored, contributed, playtested, or otherwise participated in the publication of the following products: