23 Facts About Jennell Jaquays

Jennell Jaquays influenced the video game industry with significant works at Coleco, id Software, and Ensemble Studios.

In 1995, collaborating with Lester W Smith, Jaquays developed the Dragon Dice collectable dice game for TSR, contributing stylized dice icons and cover art.

Jennell Jaquays is regarded as an influential pioneer in the adventure game community.

Jennell Jaquays was born on October 14,1956, in Michigan and grew up in Michigan and Indiana.

Jennell Jaquays graduated from Michigan's Jackson County Western High School in 1974 and Spring Arbor College in 1978 with a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art.

Jennell Jaquays was preparing for graduation by late 1977 which meant spending more time working in the art studio, so FDS sold The Dungeoneer to Chuck Anshell of Anshell Miniatures.

Jennell Jaquays began working at Judges Guild in October 1978, spending a year there as an illustrator and designer for adventures, but refused to move to Decatur to work on-site at Judges Guild.

Jennell Jaquays provided a variety of content on a freelance basis thereafter, particularly to The Dungeoneer.

Jennell Jaquays expanded her career to include video game design in the early 1980s, but continued to work as a freelancer for various table-top game publishers including TSR, Chaosium, West End Games, Flying Buffalo, and Iron Crown Enterprises.

Jennell Jaquays produced illustrations for Game Designers' Workshop, most notably creating all the starship illustrations in Traveller Supplement 9: Fighting Ships.

Jennell Jaquays worked on a series of supplements focusing on character creation called Central Casting to be published by Flying Buffalo, although they were instead published by Task Force Games.

Jennell Jaquays prepared three more supplements in the Citybook line out of house from 1990 to 1994 for Flying Buffalo.

Jennell Jaquays left TSR just before their takeover by Wizards of the Coast.

Jennell Jaquays developed and designed arcade conversions of many well-known titles such as Pac-Man and Donkey Kong for their home arcade video game system.

Jennell Jaquays assembled one of the first art and design studios for video game development at Coleco to make ColecoVision games.

From March 1997, Jennell Jaquays was employed as level designer for id Software, best known for their Quake series of video games.

Petersen had previously hired Jennell Jaquays to be a content designer at id Software.

In 2003 Jennell Jaquays co-founded The Guildhall at SMU, a video game education program, located at the Plano campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Jennell Jaquays helped create much of the program's original curriculum.

Jennell Jaquays divided her creative energy between projects for design studio Dragongirl Studios, her Fifth Wall brand of game adventures and miniatures, and serving as the creative director for Olde Skuul, Inc.

Jennell Jaquays announced in December 2011 that she was a lesbian and trans woman.

Jennell Jaquays resided in Seattle, Washington, with her wife Rebecca Heineman.

Jennell Jaquays was co-author and illustrator for Chaosium's Griffin Mountain RuneQuest scenario.