479:, I did find an award from the "Game Designer's Guild" for Lords of the Middle Sea. (Since that was the only wargame he put out for Chaosium, it's possible his other wargames also garnered some now-obscure awards.) But he should get partial credit for some of those awards, besides the Ghostbusters award I mentioned earlier. For example, the 3rd edition of Masks of Nyarlathotep won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Adventure of 1996. Though he was not the primary author of the original edition, he edited, rewrote, and contributed to it, and got co-author credit. And he also edited and did the art assignments, though not the layout, for the third edition. (This is from an interview with the co-authors.
510:. I have now incorporated some of the additional information into the article, as suggested by Wine Guy. In fact, this whole process has actually been a blessing in disguise. I first intended to create the article based on his wargaming work alone; I didn't know what had happened to Willis since the seemingly abrupt end of his wargame designing. In the process of checking "what links here" I found him linked from some RPG articles, and was able to put that into what I was writing. And having to defend him against PROD and AfD has forced me to turn up more information, which has now gone into the entry as well.
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creator left. I looked at the
Chaosium entry, which I found to be very Stafford-centric, and put in a mention for Willis and the other designers whose names I had run across. As a result, I think there is now a healthy number of other Knowledge (XXG) articles linking to him, and that's before any entries have been created for any of his wargames! --
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for them (as WP:BIO requires). However, I'm persuaded by Groggy Dice's argument in his last couple of paragraphs that these particular game designers generate a more substantial reputation. I saw enough minor webpages in those google results where Lynn Willis (and others) was mentioned prominently in
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I'm a wargamer, not an RPGer, so defending his notability based on what he's done since going over to the "dark side" feels a little strange. However, to wargamers, saying that games might be notable but not their designers, is akin to saying that
Knowledge (XXG) should have entries for notable films
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I'm getting better at "playing fair". I don't have an opinion about whether the games themselves are notable, but I'm skeptical about pages for game designers. Perhaps a passing mention in the articles for
Chaosium and Cthulhu would be appropriate? In any case, we have plenty of gamers on Knowledge
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The page lists some of his design credits, which implies that those who want to delete him consider all those games to be non-notable themselves. I have to wonder whether pro-deleters are familiar enough with the wargaming and RPG fields to know who is notable in them and who is not. Dungeons &
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Since AfD started, I have found four additional
Knowledge (XXG) articles where he was already mentioned but not wikilinked; I have now linked him, sometimes finding someone else to link, too. I added a sentence into the Call of Cthulhu page, noting Willis' assumption of the game after its original
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But in fields like wargaming, where the designers are identified (and rules are typically more complex), designers can gain reputation and loyalty. For a "grognard" wargamer, there are designers that walk as gods among men. Now, Willis wasn't prolific enough to be in that category, and I'll admit
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describes him as "a stalwart of the gaming industry" and the "longest serving member of the
Chaosium staff." If Chaosium is notable enough to get a Knowledge (XXG) entry, why shouldn't its Editor-in-Chief and "longest serving member" be notable enough for Knowledge (XXG)? If the Cthulhu RPG is
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I think part of the difference in perspective comes from the way mass market boardgame publishers fail to acknowledge designers. Nowhere on the box or in the rules will you find the credits for
Monopoly or Risk or Chutes and Ladders. Yes, you can find out from a historical source who designed
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got 10,000 hits, more than my previous search terms combined! Also, note that these searches exclude pages where his games and works are mentioned, but he himself is not. For instance, a search designed to turn up hits for his
Godsfire game, but excluding pages with "Willis," gets 1,350
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As far as the Google testing goes, I tried to run a search that would clear out false positives, and even err on the side of caution. The reason I revised the result upward is that afterwards I thought of adding "cthulhu" to my terms, and found that just the combination '"lynn willis"
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Perhaps the number of redlinked wargames helped convince you that he only designed non-notable games, but that says more about the weak coverage of wargames on
Knowledge (XXG) than Lynn Willis. Godsfire, at least, deserves an entry.
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only mentions original creator Sandy
Petersen as the designer, you can see in the graphic of the 6th edition cover that Willis is now being given co-designer credit. I've added Call of Cthulhu into the entry to reflect
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Monopoly, but Parker
Brothers and Milton Bradley want you to associate the games with them, not the designer. Furthermore, such games have relatively simple rules, so designing them doesn't seem like a lot of work.
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When it comes to awards, one problem is that his work for Chaosium seems to have been very collaborative, so it's hard to find an award for which he would get sole credit. On the Chaosium site's list of
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I am opposing PROD, I wouldn't have created the page if I didn't think he was notable. Also, there were already a few red wikilinks for him, so obviously others thought he was notable. (These were from
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that he was a co-designer on that as well, and it won the HG Wells Award for Best Roleplaying Rules of 1986. His name wasn't wikilinked on that page earlier, I'm going to link it now. --
409:. However, I learned more about Lynn Willis from the talk page (and this discussion) than from the article. If the article could be expanded, I would think this a Speedy Keep. --
369:, so if an RPG designer narrowly misses the notability criteria for an article of their own, there is still a home for content of this nature. I shall raise the question with
482:) Given his role as editor and contributor, I'm sure he deserves a good measure of credit for a lot of those awards, the Cthulhu-related ones in particular.
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Google claims to have 21,300 hits for "lynn willis", and though a good number of these are for other people, that still leaves thousands of hits. His
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turns up 600 results, and though he has 16 results on amazon, they're mostly game guides and such and amazon indicates nothing about
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There were already redlinks from three articles for Lynn Willis, so apparently I was not the only one who thought he was notable.
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Google gives 21,000 hits for "lynn willis", some of these are other people, but adding terms to narrow it down still gives
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that there are more prominent designers who don't have entries, but there are also less prominent ones that do. --
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for more AfD candidates. If you also feel the same way about computer and video games, the list gets even longer.
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Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a
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Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a
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600 with the name in the title. Over a dozen books ( editor/coauthor ) for sale on Amazon. Meets
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255:(XXG), so some knowledgeable comments shouldn't be long in coming. I admit my ignorance here.--
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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below.
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notable enough, why not its current co-designer? Not to mention his other work.
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Deprodded. This is a well written article, but there's no indication it meets
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per Peripterus. I think it might be good in the long term, though, for
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The page's creator left the following paragraphs on it's talk page.--
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If you're "skeptical about pages for game designers," you can visit
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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate.
432:(withdrawing nomination) I still don't think he meets WP:BIO. A
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Thanks to Chaser for "playing fair" and adding my comments from
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article fails to assert notability, and as such, fails
39:). No further edits should be made to this page.
196:credits him with being "the constant force behind
535:). No further edits should be made to this page.
235:Dragons isn't the only "notable" RPG, after all.
441:a brief blurb about various games (examples:
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438:multiple independent reviews of or awards
346:criteria for authorship alone probably -
341:requirements. Has 20K google hits, : -->
363:List of designers of role-playing games
18:Knowledge (XXG):Articles for deletion
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273:Category:Role-playing game designers
181:Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game)
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464:Ghostbusters (role-playing game)
462:Ah, but now I've found out from
79:. The person is non-notable.--
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269:Category:Board game designers
177:Ringworld (role-playing game)
434:more specific google search
367:List of Doctor Who villains
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528:Please do not modify it.
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173:Basic Role-Playing
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226:Talk:Lynn Willis
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247:Groggy Dice
242:12,900 hits
222:Strong keep
212:Groggy Dice
134:per above.
70:Lynn Willis
138:Alphachimp
448:interview
430:Weak Keep
399:Dionyseus
348:Peripitus
193:staff bio
115:hoopydink
88:withdrawn
485:cthulhu'
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191:Chaosium
508:Comment
489:results
387:Page Up
476:awards
452:Chaser
351:(Talk)
344:WP:BIO
257:Chaser
175:, and
153:Chaser
132:WP:BIO
130:fails
128:Delete
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92:Chaser
81:Chaser
77:WP:BIO
240:9,000
184:this.
60:email
16:<
495:. --
450:).--
420:Talk
407:Keep
395:Keep
383:Keep
359:Keep
335:Keep
271:and
245:. --
56:talk
46:keep
373:.
210:--
171:,
48:-
455:T
260:T
161::
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84:T
58:/
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