1. Michael Alyn Pondsmith is an American roleplaying, board, and video game designer.
41 Facts About Mike Pondsmith
1. 2.
Mike Pondsmith founded the publisher R T rian Games in 1982, where he developed a majority of the company's role-playing game lines.
3.
Mike Pondsmith is the author of several RPG lines, including Mekton, Cyberpunk and Castle Falkenstein.
4.
Mike Pondsmith worked as an instructor at the DigiPen Institute of Technology.
5.
Mike Pondsmith's interest spiked when he acquired a copy of Traveller, a science fiction role-playing game published in 1977 by Game Designers' Workshop.
6.
Dissatisfied with its mechanics, Mike Pondsmith rewrote the game for his personal use under the name Imperial Star.
7.
Mike Pondsmith later called Traveller the best roleplaying game he had encountered in the Green Ronin's award-winning Hobby Games: The 100 Best.
8.
Mike Pondsmith later moved on to create designs for the original titles produced by Bill Budge and for the early Ultima games designed by Richard Garriott, all of which were published by CPCC.
9.
Mike Pondsmith got his start in amateur game design in the early 1980s, designing a game for himself called Imperial Star as a result of trying to improve the combat system of Traveller.
10.
The first game Mike Pondsmith designed from the ground up was Mekton, a mecha game with heavy manga and anime influences, released in 1984.
11.
Mike Pondsmith admitted that he was mostly basing his work on the Mobile Suit Gundam manga written in Japanese, which he had acquired.
12.
In 1986, Mekton was re-released as a proper roleplaying game with Pondsmith and Mike Jones credited as authors.
13.
In 1987, RTG released another of Mike Pondsmith's games inspired by Japanese manga, Teenagers from Outer Space,.
14.
In 1987, Mike Pondsmith released Mekton II, a new edition of the system, featuring mechanics based on the Interlock System, later used with slight modifications in the Cyberpunk line.
15.
Mike Pondsmith collaborated with the Hero Games designers on the Fuzion system.
16.
Mike Pondsmith designed Cyberpunk 2013 as the second game to use the Interlock system.
17.
In 1993, again under the RTG banner, Mike Pondsmith released an alternate timeline for the Cyberpunk line.
18.
Mike Pondsmith made minor, uncredited contributions to the original Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game released in 1987 by West End Games.
19.
Mike Pondsmith has been president of the Game Manufacturers Association, and in his role of GAMA President in 1993, he arbitrated an out-of-court settlement between Palladium Books and Wizards of the Coast over Wizards' use of Palladium system integration notes in The Primal Order.
20.
Late in the year 2000, Mike Pondsmith accepted a job offer at Microsoft to produce games for Xbox.
21.
Mike Pondsmith was credited in Stormfront Studios' Blood Wake released in the same year.
22.
Mike Pondsmith ended up doing mission design for the game under Online Creative Director and Lead Game Designer Toby Ragaini.
23.
In 2000 Mike Pondsmith announced that he was working on the third edition of Cyberpunk.
24.
Illustrations in the game were criticized, for being photographs of slightly modified action figures of which Mike Pondsmith was a collector at the time.
25.
Mike Pondsmith holds the rights to Fuzion jointly with Steve Peterson and Ray Greer of Hero Games.
26.
Currently Lisa Pondsmith, Mike Pondsmith's wife, serves as a general manager of the company, with Mike Pondsmith remaining the owner, CEO and lead designer.
27.
Mike Pondsmith uses his alter-ego "Maximum Mike" across many of the Cyberpunk books.
28.
On May 30,2012, it was confirmed that Mike Pondsmith was working with CD Projekt Red on a video game set in the Cyberpunk universe.
29.
Immediately afterwards, Brian Crecente was able to confirm with the game's creators that Mike Pondsmith was working on a new edition of Cyberpunk pen and paper RPG game that would evolve the genre.
30.
Mike Pondsmith has a wife, Lisa, and a son, Cody who both work at RTG.
31.
Mike Pondsmith was involved in the promotion and community communications relating to RTG's steampunk title Castle Falkenstein.
32.
Mike Pondsmith has been very active in gaming communities and has appeared at many gaming conventions over the years.
33.
Mike Pondsmith was present at many of the Gen Cons which led to his memories of his experiences to be featured in Robin D Laws' 40 Years of Gen Con published in August 2007 by Atlas Games.
34.
Mike Pondsmith attended I-CON, A-Kon, Norwescon, Origins, DexCon, DunDraCon and others.
35.
Mike Pondsmith was a guest of honor at Ropecon 1999, Astronomicon 2001 and I-CON 25.
36.
Mike Pondsmith appeared on stage to talk about the Cyberpunk 2077 video game during two of CD Projekt Red's conferences.
37.
Between the years 2010 and 2011 Mike Pondsmith worked in the Department of Game Software Design and Production at the DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, where he taught game design classes.
38.
Various games designed or co-created by Mike Pondsmith received awards over the years.
39.
On September 12,2020, Mike Pondsmith was presented with the Jerry Lawson Lifetime Achievement Award at the fourth annual Black in Gaming awards.
40.
In 1990, during his time with TSR, Mike Pondsmith co-designed three, two-player board games for the publisher.
41.
Mike Pondsmith worked on or contributed to various R T rian Games' and TSR's products over the years and wrote several articles in gaming magazines.