If this photo has meaning to you it probably means you are an old school RPG geek and it most certainly means we should be hanging out. I have always been quite taken by Trampier’s work in the early Dungeons and Dragon book and the his great Dragon magazine featured comic, Wormy. I remember scratching my head at its sudden disappearance back in the day, but had not given it any thought until recently when I was thumbing through some back issues. I decided to see what happened to Mr. Trampier (D.A.T) and its kind of interesting.
It seems that in 1988 Trampier just gave it up and stopped working in the gaming industry. In fact he even stopped cashing checks for Wormy, which of course made the folks at Dragon assume he had passed away, which he had not. He had just moved without a forwarding address.
So for nearly 15 years nothing, then a picture of a taxi driver appears in a Carbondale, Ill newspaper and guess who it is? David Trampier. A lot of people were excited to see him and many tracked him down with letters and phone calls. Mr. Trampier wanted nothing to with any of them and politely told them to stop trying to contact him. It seems Trampier was just fed up with the industry and moved along with his life.
Its kind of a shame. I would love to see a Wormy compilation and see Trampier get the geek cred he deserves. But of course this move just gives him more cred! Well played D.A.T +2000XP.
Metal Misfit
November 17th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Interesting… But I never was an RPG fan outside of video games (and I suck at those).
I understand wanting to leave it all behind, but the paychecks?! Madness!
Tim
July 12th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Obviously on his way to being a Bard….. After a few levels of cab driver he’s ready….
The Retroist
July 12th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Well it does work the charisma..
ceabaird
November 20th, 2009 at 1:39 am
DAT – damn fine artist. Wish the Wormy Archive had the images from after ‘84… seems to be crapping out, & no way to email the webpage owner…