Bill Bridges (game designer)

Bill Bridges was an original developer for White Wolf Publishing from 1992 to 1995, where he contributed to Werewolf: The Apocalypse.[2] Bridges was the line editor for Werewolf and as one of the early World of Darkness developers, he was central to defining the look and feel of White Wolf's World of Darkness productions.[3]^:218 He worked on the Storytelling system rules for all the World of Darkness games.[4] It was his goal to present werewolves as something besides accursed humans,[5] an idea which has since been echoed in some popular contemporary novel series.[6] He was a part of the original Mage: The Ascension design team. He has many writing credits encompassing most of the second edition World of Darkness games, and helped design Rage, the Werewolf collectible card game.[7]

He left White Wolf Publishing in 1996 to join Holistic Design[3]^:322[8][9] (HDI), where he co-created Fading Suns with Andrew Greenberg.[3]^:322 Bridges points to Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun and Isaac Asimov's Foundation as his inspiration for the setting.[3]^:322 Bridges' largest were his Alustro's Journals, a series of "Marco Polo" style diaries featuring the travels of the pilgrim Alustro and his companions. He was the primary author of the War in the Heavens series, which revealed the secrets of the Symbiots and the Vau. Minor literary similarities can be seen between the Symbiots and the 'defenders of Gaia' Garou in Werewolf: the Apocalypse.

His other work includes writing for Chaosium, the development of the Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine role-playing games for Last Unicorn Games, Emperor of the Fading Suns for Segasoft (based on Fading Suns,), co-writing scripts for Viacom's "interactive horror movie" Dracula Unleashed, and work on Starfleet Academy for Interplay.[10]

Bridges moved back to White Wolf Publishing on February 12, 2002,[3]^:323 replacing Jess Heinig as the developer for the revised edition of Mage: The Ascension.[11] Bridges saw the game he created through to its conclusion in the Time of Judgment. Bridges and Ken Cliffe developed the book, The World of Darkness (2004), which combined the new setting and rule system into a single game book.[3]^:228 For the new World of Darkness edition, he worked on the new core rules and was a designer, author, and developer on Mage: The Awakening.[12] He later moved on to Promethean: The Created,[4] which won several awards.[13]

Bridges also co-chairs the presenter programming for the biannual myth-based academic conference and performance festival, Mythic Journeys.[4][14] His published novels include The Silver Crown,[4] and The Last Battle, both of which are set in the Werewolf: The Apocalypse setting.