Remembering Bob Bledsaw, Sr. Robert Eugene Bledsaw, or “Bob” to those who knew him, was born on May 18, 1942. In 1976 he and Bill Owen founded Judges Guild. Bob passed away on April 19, 2008. Judges Guild was the first company to publish a D&D adventure module, and was hugely influential on the evolution of fantasy role-playing games. For the anniversary of the birth of Bob Bledsaw Sr., we offer this homage, first written several years ago by his good friend and colleague Bill Owen, the co-founder of Judges Guild. My buddy Bob Bledsaw and I, both being avid wargamers, became fast friends in the fall of 1974. Dungeons & Dragons was the first game we played together and this launched a flurry of weekly adventures that he hosted at his house for about 18 months. Bob was an “older guy” of age 31; the rest of us were in our late teens. Along with D&D being a brand new game concept, we were in awe of his prodigious pace of campaign material production. I later learned that perhaps he had some insomnia that gave him more time than the average guy. That he had the time was especially remarkable as he had a wife and three young boys. The only other explanation was that he had been laid off as a designer at the local General Electric plant that made record players. It’s one thing to have the time to produce such a wide-ranging fantasy game campaign. What held us in thrall was his creativity and story-telling ability. Where did that come from? Over time I noted the dozens if not hundreds of comics and hardback books that one found in his house. This rich background of Swords & Sorcery styles is part of it. And Tolkien’s Middle Earth was the natural common reference for all of Bob’s players—we had devoured the Lord of the Rings trilogy so we had a base to launch from. And we even launched into the outer atmosphere finding ourselves on another planet! We paid little attention to the TSR approach, which struck me as dark, and domineering. Bob’s vision was expansive and frequently surprising. So many times, I remember the sheer adrenalin and excitement of reacting to some turn of events that had snuck up on us. Realism was often the goal...