Biography
Tom Dowd is an associate professor and Associate Dean in the School of Media Arts where he oversees curriculum and scheduling, while working game design and production projects, as well as cross-media storytelling and worldbuilding. He is a 30-year veteran of the game design business, having been first published while still in high school, and is one of the co-creators of the award-winning Shadowrun role-playing game, as well as writer/contributor to Vampire: the Masquerade, other role-playing titles, two novels, and multiple short stories. He was a line developer at FASA Corporation, supervising the Shadowrun game line, as well as contributing to BattleTech, and EarthDawn. He joined the Microprose-FASA Corp joint venture FASA Interactive in the mid-90’s where he was a senior designer on the RTS computer game MechCommander. In 1999 he was the lead designer on the Xbox/Xbox-Live million+ selling release, MechAssault. His other computer game credits include Shadowrun games for the NES and Sega consoles, the MechWarrior 2, and MechWarrior 3 game series, Axis & Allies: Iron Blitz, Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, and DuelMasters. He was the lead of Skotos Tech’s online multiplayer text-based social/RPG game Castle Marrach, helped run the 50-person theatre-style Gateway Chronicles LARP in Chicago for nearly ten years, and is the co-author of the transmedia storytelling book Storytelling Across Worlds: Transmedia for Creatives and Producers. He holds an MA in Communication Arts from the New York Institute of Technology.
Instructional Areas
Game Design, Game Production and Project Management, Narrative Design, Interactive Narrative, Crossmedia Storytelling
Creative Practice and Research Interests
Game Design, Game Production and Project Management, Narrative Design, Interactive Narrative, Crossmedia Storytelling
Degrees
B.F.A., Communication Arts New York Institute of Technology 1986
M.A., Communication Arts New York Institute of Technology 1989