Jonathan Tweet
| Jonathan Tweet | |||||
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Jonathan Tweet at his home in Seattle, Washington – 2015
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| Born | 1965/1966 Rock Island, Illinois |
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| Residence | Seattle, Washington | ||||
| Nationality | American | ||||
| Alma mater | St. Olaf College | ||||
| Occupation | Game designer, author, blogger, writer | ||||
| Spouse(s) | Tracy | ||||
| Children | Tessa Tweet | ||||
| Parent(s) | Roald Tweet, Margaret Tweet | ||||
| Website | http://www.jonathantweet.com/ | ||||
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Jonathan Tweet (born 1965) is an American game designer from Rock Island, Illinois who has been involved in the development of the role-playing games Ars Magica, Everway, Over the Edge, Talislanta, the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons and 13th Age, and the Collectible Miniatures Game Dreamblade. In 2015 Tweet released Grandmother Fish, a full-color, full-sized book about evolution aimed at preschoolers.
Native to Rock Island, Illinois, Tweet is the son of Roald Tweet, Augustana College professor emeritus and a popular local historian, and Margaret Tweet. Jonathan Tweet started playing D&D in the 1970s, when his father gave him his first Dungeons & Dragons game. He briefly played with a group of college students, although he says, "but the DM killed me off... because he didn't want a twelve-year-old in his group". Tweet then formed his own gaming group by recruiting classmates. Tweet graduated from Rock Island High School class valedictorian in 1983. He majored in psychology and sociology at his parents' alma mater, St. Olaf College in Minnesota.
Jonathan Tweet and Mark Rein-Hagen founded Lion Rampant in 1987, while students at St. Olaf College where they also met Lisa Stevens who later joined the company. His article "Egyptian Magic for Call of Cthulhu" appeared in Different Worlds #47 (Fall 1987), the magazine's final issue. In 1987, Tweet and Rein•Hagen designed the game Ars Magica, a game centered around wizards in the Middle Ages. Tweet left Lion Rampant and the RPG industry in 1989 to start a new career. Tweet wrote Festival of the Damned (1991), an adventure published by Atlas Games for Ars Magica. Tweet continued to run a game for a group in Rock Island, Illinois, and wrote about the game "Al Amarja" in Alarums and Excursions; when John Nephew saw these A&E articles he wanted to publish the game, and the result was Over the Edge (1992), the first original game from Atlas Games. His design on Over the Edge notably involved free-form rules and a subjective approach. Lisa Stevens suggested that Tweet revise the Talislanta rules for Wizards of the Coast and write its first new adventure; this resulted in a revision of the Talislanta Guidebook (1992), which was soon followed by his adventure The Scent of the Beast (1992). Tweet wrote the adventure Apocalypse (1993) for Mayfair Games' Role Aids line. Nephew and Tweet also designed On the Edge (1994), a collectible card game based on Over the Edge. Tweet became a full-time employee of Wizards of the Coast in June 1994, and heralded in new lines from Wizards, the first of which was Ars Magica, recently acquired at Tweet's suggestion. Tweet designed Everway, which was first published by Wizards of the Coast in 1995. After Wizards of the Coast moved away from role-playing games, Tweet worked on Portal, a Magic: The Gathering set designed to help new players learn the game.
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