Rick Loomis

Rick Loomis
Nationality	American
Occupation	Game designer

Rick Loomis is an American game designer, most notable as the founder of Flying Buffalo.

Rick Loomis served in the US Army in the 1960s, serving out his one tour of duty at Fort Shafter in Oahu, Hawaii. He had discovered the wargame Gettysburg by Avalon Hill in a toystore, and in 1970 had invented a game called Nuclear Destruction which - unlike most tabletop games - included hidden movement; in January 1970, Loomis started sending mail to readers of The General who had advertised for play-by-mail (PBM) opponents, offering to moderate multiplayer Nuclear Destruction games. He soon had more than 200 players in multiple games, and asked fellow soldier Steve MacGregor to write a computer program to moderate the games; they began renting time on a computer near Fort Shafter, using the name Flying Buffalo devised by Loomis. After leaving the military in 1972, Loomis and MacGregor incorporated their PBM company as Flying Buffalo, Inc., or FBI. Loomis and MacGregor pooled their savings to purchase a Raytheon 704 minicomputer to run PBM turns. Loomis claims to have been the first person ever to buy a computer solely to play games on it. Loomis acquired Nuclear War and began publishing it in 1972, soon becoming one of Flying Buffalo's best sellers.

Ken St. Andre asked Loomis to take 40 copies of Tunnels & Trolls to Origins in July 1975 to sell; when every copy sold, Flying Buffalo picked up the rights to T&T later that year and published a second edition under their own brand in December 1975. Loomis designed the Origins Award-winning play-by-mail game Starweb. After a friend suggested that someone should make a dungeon adventure book that allows the player to choose an answer and turn to another page, Loomis wrote Buffalo Castle (1976).Buffalo Castle was an introduction to Tunnels & Trolls, a basic dungeon for a warrior of level 1-2. On August 19, 1978, Loomis was elected as a temporary officer to be the President and Treasury of Association of Game Manufacturers (which soon became the Game Manufacturers Association or GAMA). Loomis came up with the idea for Grimtooth's Traps, which was published in 1981. When the company's lease on their headquarters ran out in 1985, Loomis moved the offices of Flying Buffalo to a farmhouse he had inherited in Scottsdale, Arizona.

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