The Mysterious Disappearance of David A. Trampier, TSR Illustrator and Creator of “Wormy”!

If this picture 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 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, Illinois 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 do 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.

It’s 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.

Updates 3/28/14 – I am sad to report that I just read online that Mr. Trampier passed away.