Rick Priestley

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This article is awesome. Do not fuck it up.

See this guy? He created Warhammer. Both of them. Bask in his glory.

Rick Priestley, a deceitful name as he was never ordained but is also known as "Based Priestly" on /tg/, was once an employee of Games Workshop early on in its history. He wrote the early storyline for both Warhammers, and as such is considered their creator; the genesis of Fantasy was his take on generic fantasy settings given a touch more grounding, and 40k began with an existing setting idea of his combined with the themes of Paradise Lost. He was one of the designers of the actual rules of Warhammer Fantasy Battle along with Bryan Ansell and Richard Hailliwell, and also designed WFB's large-scale counterpart called Warmaster. Rogue Trader was developed as a retooling of a boxed game he had created which had been largely unsuccessful. By July 1997, he and Andy Jones and Marc Gascoigne had developed the idea of the Black Library, Games Workshop's publishing arm, and the Inferno! magazine dedicated to their Specialist Games line. The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game was his last GW game, designed to steer the company back in his preferred design direction.

He left GW in 2010, ostensibly due to a change in corporate culture (read: GW caring more about fleecing their playerbase than making fun games). Since then he has worked with Warlord Games on Bolt Action, Hail Caesar, Black Powder and Beyond the Gates of Antares alongside other former GW game designers. His legacy is generally well-regarded by most players, even if some of his later ideas got pretty weird.

He recently released the fantasy wargame Warlords of Erehwon, which is loosely based on the rules in Bolt Action and Gates of Antares, and is great.

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  Rick Priestly, fragment of the Emprah's soul, pulling a Stan Lee in 40k.

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  Rick Priestly is shown as an example of the Scribe class in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1e. One smudge and Tzeentch becomes "Shaos Ood of Lust As Blanned".

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  Rick circa 1982, bottom row and second from the right. That's right, he was sporting the full Jesus.

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  Rick circa 2011. You're goddamned right he's still making the finest rulebook on the streets.