Jim Bambra

Jim Bambra
Born1956 (age 69–70)
OccupationGame designer

Jim Bambra (born 1956) is a British designer and reviewer of fantasy roleplaying games (RPG), and a former company director. He is particularly known for his contributions to Dungeons & Dragons, Fighting Fantasy, Warhammer, and Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game which was based on the Star Wars films. Later he became head of design at MicroProse, then managing director of Pivotal Games, a publisher of video games including Conflict: Desert Storm.

Career

Jim Bambra worked on game design and materials for various companies during the 1980s and early 1990s, including TSR (publisher of Dungeons & Dragons), Games Workshop (Warhammer), and West End Games (Star Wars RPG).[citation needed]

In 1983, Bambra wrote "The Beginner’s Guide to Roleplaying Games" (with Paul Ruiz), published in Imagine magazine Issue 6 (Sept 1983), explaining what an RPG is and accompanied by a comic strip, "The Adventures of Nic Novice". He was a reviewer and writer for Imagine magazine 1983-1985. He was a reviewer for White Dwarf and Dragon magazines during the late 1980s and early 1990s.[citation needed] He was also a designer of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, published in 1986.: 5 

In 1989, Bambra co-wrote the Fighting Fantasy gamebook Dead of Night for Puffins, a Penguin inprint, with Stephen Hand. During the 1990s he was Head of Design at MicroProse, where he worked on projects including Fields of Glory, Grand Prix, Special Forces, various X-COM products, and Gunship.

In 1996 Bambra founded Pumpkin Studios, which achieved success with Warzone 2100, a computer game with a post-nuclear scenario. This company closed in 2000 after Eidos Interactive cancelled its then current project, Saboteur, a PlayStation video game.

In 2003 he became managing director at Pivotal Games Ltd, a videogame development company based in Bath and owned by SCi Ltd. During his period at the firm it published the series of Conflict: videogames, the most successful of which was Conflict: Desert Storm. He remained as director until 2008, when SCi closed down the company. Between 2005 and 2009 he was also a board member of The Independent Games Developers Association Ltd.

Gamebooks and materials

Jim Bambra produced the following gamebooks and materials for role-playing games, many in collaboration with other authors:

For Dungeons & Dragons

Other

References

  1. ↑ Jim Bambra: Director Summary, Company Check Ltd
  2. ↑ The Enemy Within, Again, Graeme Davis, 1 March 2012
  3. ↑ Imagine Magazine: Issue #6, Grognardia Games, 11 December 2012
  4. ↑ "The FictionMags Index". www.philsp.com. Archived from the original on 2014-10-23. Retrieved 2026-04-28.
  5. ↑ Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Games Workshop. 8 November 1986. ISBN 1-869893-02-6.
  6. ↑ "Company Directors". Pivotal Games. Archived from the original on 2006-06-02. Retrieved 2026-04-28.
  7. ↑ Jack Schofield, Games watch, The Guardian, 23 March 2000
  8. ↑ Pivotal Games website as at 2 June 2006
  9. ↑ "Conflict: Desert Storm - About Sim Games". Archived from the original on 2014-11-02.
  10. ↑ Staff at Conflict series developer notified of closure today; small team of specialists will be kept by SCi, Develop, 14 July 2008
  11. ↑ TIGA website as at 15 July 2007
  12. ↑ Maliszewski, James (2010-09-29). "Retrospective: Night's Dark Terror". GROGNARDIA. Retrieved 2026-04-28.
  13. ↑ The Legacy: Realm of Terror at MobyGames
  14. ↑ Joris Dormans, On the Role of the Die: A brief ludologic study of pen-and-paper roleplaying games and their rules, Game Studies, volume 6 issue 1, December 2006. ISSN 1604-7982