David L. Pulver
David L. Pulver (born 2 November 1965 in Kingston, Ontario) is a Canadian freelance writer and game designer, with a History degree from Queen's University. He is the author of more than fifty role-playing game rulebooks and supplements, including the award winning Transhuman Space.
Career
Steve Jackson and David Pulver coauthored a novella entitled Thera Awakening that was distributed with the Interplay computer game Stonekeep. This novella describes the back story and history of the Stonekeep world and characters and was completed before the game itself was finished.
David was the Guest of Honor at the 1992 U-Con gaming convention (held annually at the University of Michigan).
Pulver designed GURPS Ultra-Tech (1989), an equipment guide that could be used with many different worlds.[1]:107 Pulver also designed GURPS Psionics (1991) and GURPS Vehicles (1993), the latter of which featured a very mathematical vehicle construction system.[1]:109 Mark MacKinnon brought Pulver on to Guardians of Order in November 1998, and Pulver took the lead in extending Big Eyes, Small Mouth from its simplistic start to a more complete game system.[1]:335 Pulver also simultaneously worked on more licensed, standalone games, resulting in releases such as Dominion: Tank Police (1999), Demon City Shinjuku (2000), and Tenchi Muyo! (2000).[1]:336 Pulver and John R. Phythyon, Jr., designed the gangster Samurai Tri-stat game Ghost Dog (2000) based on the film of the same name.[1]:336 Pulver designed the hard science-fiction Centauri Knights (2001), the first original setting from Guardians of Order.[1]:336 Pulver designed Transhuman Space (2002), a new science fiction setting for GURPS.[1]:111 Pulver oversaw the fourth edition of GURPS beginning in September 2002.[1]:112
David is the designer of GURPS Vehicles, a set of rules to design vehicles from a stone-age canoe to faster-than-light starships. GURPS Traveller (especially GURPS Traveller: Starships and GURPS Traveller: Ground Forces) and GURPS World War 2 (including GURPS WW2: Motorpool) use somewhat simplified specialized versions of it. The design rules in GURPS Robots and GURPS Mecha are fully compatible with it. GURPS Reign of Steel uses the rules from GURPS Robots.
In 2007, he completed the first vehicle design rules for the 4th edition of GURPS, titled GURPS Spaceships.
Pulver has stated in an interview that although he has been doing work for Steve Jackson Games "ever since I became a freelance writer," he has also done work for Guardians of Order (particularly in creating the second edition of the anime RPG Big Eyes Small Mouth aka "BESM"), White Wolf Publishing, Game Designer's Workshop, West End Games, Iron Crown Enterprises, and TSR. He is a fan of anime and manga.[2]
Writing credits: GURPS Books, Fourth Edition
- GURPS Mass Combat (2009)
- GURPS Banestorm: Abydos (2008)
- GURPS Basic Set 4th edition
- GURPS Bio-Tech 2nd edition
- GURPS Spaceships (2007)
- GURPS Ultra-Tech 4th edition
Writing credits: GURPS Books, Third Edition
- All-Star Jam 2004
- Bio-Tech
- Cyberpunk Adventures (Winner of the 1992 Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Adventure[3])
- Fantasy Adventures
- GURPS Lite for Transhuman Space
- Mecha
- Psionics
- Reign of Steel
- Robots
- Space Atlas IV
- Special Ops, 2nd edition
- Technomancer
- Time Travel Adventures
- Transhuman Space
- Main rulebook (Winner of the 2003 Grog d'Or Award for Best Role-playing Game, Game Line or RPG Setting.[4])
- Deep Beyond
- The High Frontier
- Traveller Alien Races 1, 2, 3 and 4
- Traveller: Ground Forces
- Traveller Planetary Survey 6: Darkmoon
- Traveller: Star Mercs
- Traveller: Starships
- Ultra-Tech I and II
- Vehicles 1st and 2nd Editions
- Vehicles Expansion I
- Vehicles Expansion II
- Vehicles Lite
- Y2K
Writing credits: Other Game Systems
- Aliens and Artifacts
- The Authority Role-Playing Game
- Big Eyes, Small Mouth
- BESM Dungeon
- Big Eyes, Small Mouth (main rulebook) 2nd edition and 3rd editions
- Big Robots, Cool Starships
- Centauri Knights
- Hot Rods and Gun Bunnies
- Bubblegum Crisis: Before and After
- AD&D 2nd Edition The Complete Druid's Handbook
- AD&D 2nd Edition The Glory of Rome
- Cybor Gladiators
- d20 System
- BESM d20 Role-playing Game
- Centauri Knights d20
- d20 Mecha
- d20 Military Vehicles
- Demon City Shinjuku Role-playing Game and Resource Book
- Dominion Tank Police Role-playing Game and Resource Book
- Dreaming Cities
- Escape from Monster Island
- Ex Machina
- Gamer's Handbook of the Marvel Universe 1992 Character Updates
- Ghost Dog Role-Playing Game and Resource Book
- Indiana Jones and the Rising Sun
- Tenchi Muyo Role-playing Game and Resource Book
- Tri-Stat dX Core Role-playing System
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Shannon Appelcline (2011). Designers & Dragons. Mongoose Publishing. ISBN 978-1-907702-58-7.
- ↑ DiceCast Special Holiday Interview Episode (by Polymancer Studios). Podcast, includes interview with David Pulver
- ↑ "Origins Award Winners (1992)". Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design. Archived from the original on 2007-09-29. Retrieved 2007-09-04.
- ↑ "Transhuman Space wins Grog d'Or 2003". GamingReport.com . Retrieved 2007-09-05. External link in
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External links
- David L. Pulver's webpage
- David L. Pulver at BoardGameGeek
- List of David L. Pulver's books at Google Books
- List of David Pulver's books available as PDF from e23.sjgames.com
- List of David Pulver's books available as books from www.warehouse23.com