Dave Morris (writer)

David John Morris (born 19 March 1957) is a British author of gamebooks, novels and comics and a designer of computer games and role-playing games.

Dave Morris
BornDavid John Morris
(1957-03-19) 19 March 1957
Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, England, United Kingdom
Alma materMagdalen College, Oxford
GenreGraphic novels, video games, science fiction, fantasy
SpouseRoz Morris
Website
mirabilis-yearofwonders.com

Education

Dave Morris graduated from Magdalen College, Oxford,[1] where he read Physics from 1976 until 1979.

Writer

Morris began his writing career in 1984 by writing the fantasy adventure gamebook Crypt of the Vampire, part of the Golden Dragon series published by Grafton Books in the UK and Berkley Books in the US.

The following year, Morris and Oliver Johnson created the Dragon Warriors role-playing game.[2] Dragon Warriors was an attempt at releasing a role-playing game in a series of paperback books.[3]: 46  In a 1996 reader poll conducted by Arcane to determine the fifty most popular roleplaying games of all time, Dragon Warriors was ranked 48th.[4] In 2008, the game was licensed by Morris to James Wallis of Magnum Opus Press, and Serpent King Games acquired the Dragon Warriors license afterwards.[3]: 307 

In 1987, Morris and Johnson created the Blood Sword series, five adventure gamebooks published by Knight Books.

In 1990, Morris and Jamie Thomson wrote The Keep of the Lich-Lord for the popular Fighting Fantasy series of adventure gamebooks.

Fabled Lands

In 1995, Morris and Jamie Thomson wrote the first of several adventure gamebooks in the Fabled Lands series.[3]: 46  It received positive reviews, including 20 years later.[5]

Although well-received, the books were published when, as Sylvio Konkol noted, "the golden age of adventure gamebooks was actually over."[6] Morris and Thomson originally envisioned twelve books in the series, but various publishing problems, including underpricing the expensive books and a shrinking market, meant the series was curtailed after only six volumes.[7]: 1 

As Massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) became popular in the early 2000s, Morris and Thomson hired the French firm Eidos to convert their books into an MMO. However, Eidos ran out of money before the project was completed.[7]: 3 

Twenty-five years after the Fabled Lands books were published, Morris and Thomson granted a license to Prime Games to develop a Fabled Lands computer role-playing game.[8]

Other works

Morris also co-authored a number of other books, including Virtual Reality: Necklace of Skulls with Mark Smith (1993), Blood Sword: The Battlepits of Krarth with Oliver Johnson (1987), the Golden Dragon series, and a number of TV and movie novelisations.

His original novels include Knightmare (a historical fantasy adventure series set in the early 13th century that ties in with the television series of that name), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the contemporary horror novel Lost Souls. Another horror novel, Florien, was published as an ebook in 2010.[9] In 2008 his episodic comic strip Mirabilis[10] began weekly publication in Random House's subscription-based magazine The DFC.[11] Working with artist Leo Hartas, Morris founded electronic publisher Mirus Entertainment and published Mirabilis for the iPad in December 2010.[12]

In addition to his more than seventy published books,[13] Morris is a leading developer of the Empire of the Petal Throne gaming system (created by MAR Barker and published by TSR), creating a playable rules system (Tirikelu) and editing a fanzine.[14]

Morris also co-authored a book on the computer gaming industry,[15] having worked as a game designer for Eidos and Microsoft, and is a former mentor in the American Film Institute's Digital Content Lab.[16] In April 2012, he published an interactive reworking of Frankenstein in which the reader is able to give advice to the first-person narrator of the story.[17]

Bibliography

Dave Morris's published works include:

Blood Sword series
  • The Battlepits of Krarth (1987, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 0-340-40154-0)
  • The Kingdom of Wyrd (1987, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 0-340-40155-9)
  • The Demon's Claw (1987, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 0-340-41206-2)
  • Doomwalk (1988, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 0-340-42397-8)
  • The Walls of Spyte (1988, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 0-340-49168-X)

Chronicles of the Magi

Crystal Maze
  • The Crystal Maze (with Jamie Thomson, 1991)
  • Crystal Maze Challenge! (with Jamie Thomson, 1992)

Dragon Warriors series
  • Dragon Warriors (1985, Transworld, ISBN 0-552-52287-2)
  • The Way of Wizardry (1985, Transworld, ISBN 0-552-52288-0)
  • Out of the Shadows (1986, Transworld, ISBN 0-552-52333-X)
  • The Lands of Legend (1986, Transworld, ISBN 0-552-52335-6)
  • Dragon Warriors (revised edition 2008, Magnum Opus Press, ISBN 978-1-906103-96-5)
  • Sleeping Gods (2008, Magnum Opus Press, ISBN 978-1-906508-03-6)
  • Bestiary (2008, Magnum Opus Press, ISBN 978-1-906103-99-6)

Fabled Lands series

Fighting Fantasy series

Golden Dragon series
  • Crypt of the Vampire (1984, Transworld, ISBN 978-0-583307-49-9)
  • Temple of Flame (with Oliver Johnson) (1984, Transworld, ISBN 978-0-583307-48-2)
  • The Eye of the Dragon (1985, Transworld, ISBN 978-0-583307-61-1)
  • Castle of Lost Souls (with Yve Newnham) (1985, Transworld, ISBN 978-0-583307-62-8)

Heroquest series

Knightmare series

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series

Virtual Reality series
  • Down Among the Dead Men (1993, Reed Consumer Books, ISBN 0-749-71485-9)
  • Necklace of Skulls (1993, Reed Consumer Books, ISBN 0-749-71487-5)
  • Heart of Ice (1994, Reed Consumer Books, ISBN 0-749-71674-6)
  • Twist of Fate (1994, Reed Consumer Books, ISBN 0-749-71675-4)

Other works
  • Game Architecture and Design (with Andrew Rollings, 2003, Pearson Education, ISBN 0-735-71363-4)
  • Game Guru: Role-Playing Games (with Leo Hartas, 2004, ILEX Press, ISBN 1-904-70544-8)
  • Game Guru: Strategy Games (with Leo Hartas, 2004, ILEX Press, ISBN 1-904-70545-6)
  • Machinima : Making Animated Movies in 3D Virtual Environments (with Dave Lloyd and Matt Kelland, 2005, ILEX Press, ISBN 1-904-70564-2 )
  • A Minotaur at the Savoy (2011, Mirus Entertainment, ISBN 978-0-956-67789-1)
  • Mirabilis: Year of Wonders, Volume One (2011, Printmedia Productions, ISBN 978-0-956-71211-0 )
  • Frankenstein (2012, Profile Books, ISBN 978-1-847-65831-9)[18]
  • Can You Brexit? Without Breaking Britain (with Jamie Thomson, 2018)

References
  1. Biography at Magnum Opus Press Archived 21 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  2. Dale, Robert (February 1986). "Open Box". White Dwarf. No. 74. Games Workshop. p. 8.
  3. Shannon Appelcline (2011). Designers & Dragons. Mongoose Publishing. ISBN 978-1-907702-58-7.
  4. Pettengale, Paul (Christmas 1996). "Arcane Presents the Top 50 Roleplaying Games 1996". Arcane. Future Publishing (14): 25–35.
  5. Campbell, Byron Alexander (9 August 2015). "Sessioin Report: Fabled Lands and Beginnings". Entropy. Retrieved 10 February 2022.
  6. Konkol, Sylvio (28 January 2019). "Gamebooks und die Open World der Fabled Lands". spielkritic.com (in German). Retrieved 10 February 2022.
  7. Martin, Joe (9 April 2010). "Fabled Lands: The MMO that Never Was". Bit-Gamer. Retrieved 10 February 2020.
  8. Atanasov, Victor (16 June 2020). "Fabled Lands: How it all began..." Retrieved 10 February 2022.
  9. Megara Entertainment
  10. Mirabilis The Year of Wonders blog
  11. Mirabilis comic book
  12. Mirabilis comic book reader app
  13. Published works of Dave Morris at Library Thing
  14. The Eye of All-Seeing Wonder
  15. Game Architecture and Design, by Andrew Rollings and Dave Morris, 2003, New Riders, ISBN 978-0735713635
  16. Law & Order: Motive, Means, Opportunity at the AFI
  17. 'The Divided Self: Remaking Frankenstein as an Interactive Novel' in the Huffington Post
  18. "Frankenstein remixed". Salon. 12 April 2012. Retrieved 13 September 2023.
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