Jeff Tidball

Jeff Tidball is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.

Jeff Tidball
NationalityAmerican
OccupationGame designer

Career

Jeff Tidball was a college student when he began working full-time at Atlas Games when the company expanded after the success of On the Edge (1994).[1]: 254  John Nephew and Tidball were the only staff that Atlas retained after the collectible card game field crashed in 1996.[1]: 254  Tidball became the Director of Creative Development and soon began developing the next role-playing game from Atlas Games, Ars Magica, which Atlas had acquired from Wizards of the Coast.[1]: 254  Tidball also became the line developer for Ars Magica,[1]: 255  and the Feng Shui line developer as well.[2] Tidball designed Cults Across America (1998) which was one of the board and card game releases from Atlas.[1]: 257  Tidball left Atlas Games in 2000 to take a Master of Fine Arts film script-writing program available at the University of Southern California.[1]: 255  Tidball later went to work at Last Unicorn Games, and Tidball and Jess Heinig were the only remaining employees by January 2004 in the Last Unicorn Games role-playing game division of Decipher Games, so Decipher shut down Last Unicorn Games and laid them off.[1]: 318  Tidball designed the Cthulhu 500 card game for Atlas.[2] Tidball worked as the line developer for Decipher's The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game.[2] Tidball designed Pieces of Eight (2006), a game by using coins as a game mechanic which Atlas published.[1]: 259  Will Hindmarch and Tidball later started a small press company called Gameplaywright.[1]: 260  Tidball subsequently worked as the senior developer and editor for the board and card game departments at Fantasy Flight Games,[2] before returning to Atlas Games on a contract basis as chief operating officer. He has also continued to write in the roleplaying industry, notably the massive Eternal Lies campaign he wrote with Hindmarch for Pelgrane Press's Trail of Cthulhu RPG.

Tidball wrote The White Box: A Game Design Toolkit (2017, Atlas Games) with Jeremy Holcomb in partnership with Atlas Games and Gameplaywright to make use of their mutual backgrounds in writing and teaching about game design.[3][4][5]

Tidball lives with his wife and sons in the Twin Cities area.[2]

Notable WorksRoleYear
Ars MagicaLine Developer1996
Cults Across AmericaDesigner1998
The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying GameLine Developer2002–2004
Cthulhu 500Designer2004
Pieces of EightDesigner2006
Beowulf: The Movie BoardgameDeveloper2007
Things We Think About GamesCo Author2008
Horus HeresyDesigner and Producer2010
The Bones: Us And Our DiceCo Author2010
EcotopiaDesigner and Writer2011
SkullgirlsWriter2011
League of LegendsWriter2011
Dragon Age Roleplaying Game Set 2Developer and Co-author2011
MercanteDesigner2012
Doctor Who: Time ClashDesigner2016
The White Box: A Game Design Workshop-In-A-BoxDesigner and Writer2017

References
  1. Shannon Appelcline (2011). Designers & Dragons. Mongoose Publishing. ISBN 978-1-907702-58-7.
  2. Tidball, Jeff (2007). "Car Wars". In Lowder, James (ed.). Hobby Games: The 100 Best. Green Ronin Publishing. pp. 49–51. ISBN 978-1-932442-96-0.
  3. Olson, Lena (June 26, 2017). "Inside This Mysterious White Box Contains the Makings of Your Own Game". Nerdist. Archived from the original on May 3, 2024. Retrieved May 3, 2024.
  4. Bushner, Anthony J (August 2020). Hobbyist Board Game Design Practices: How Do Board Game Designers Craft Their Rules Manuals and Solicit User Feedback on Prototype Games? (PhD thesis). Purdue University. ProQuest 2827706699. Archived from the original on May 3, 2024. Retrieved May 3, 2024.
  5. Langsworthy, Billy (June 6, 2017). "The White Box co-creators on making game design accessible to anyone". Mojo Nation. Archived from the original on May 3, 2024. Retrieved May 3, 2024.
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