Rick Krebs

Rick Krebs
Full name	Richard S. Krebs
Notability	Adventure author
Location	Pennsylvania
Occupation	Game designer,; Higher education

Rick Krebs is a professional game designer and the author of the Eamon adventures Flying Circus and Blood Feud, both written in 1984 and published by the NEUC in May 1985.

Background

From an early age Krebs had a keen interest in games and game-making, starting in the 1960s with homemade simulation games built using materials like toothpicks, plastic bricks, cardboard chits, bingo chips, and designs on his bed quilt.[1] He was an early fan of Dungeons & Dragons, first published in 1974, and became involved in the production of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, being credited in the preface to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide (1979). Krebs also published the D&D fanzine Phanta Carta (1977) and wrote two articles for Dragon magazine: "D&D Meets the Electronic Age" (June 1979) and "Non-Player Characters Have Feelings, Too" (September 1979). He later created the gangster-themed historical role-playing game Gangbusters, published by TSR in 1982.

In addition to role-playing games, Krebs took an early interest in computer gaming and programming and in the spring 1977 bought one of the first TRS-80 machines. He also bought an Apple II which he used at the Gamer's Guild, a game store he founded in 1977 and operated until 1982. Krebs learned to code in BASIC and wrote programs designed to automate repetitious tasks in Dungeons & Dragons such as generating random numbers, creating encounters, and resolving combat. He authored two Eamon adventures in 1984 and also programmed the horse-racing game RHR. Since the mid-1990s he has worked on the play-by-mail game Elder Lords and refining several artificial intelligence games, and has enjoyed playing games like Sloth MUD and Minecraft. Krebs was a regular emailer on the Tony Kornheiser Radio Show.

Krebs studied social, cultural, and intellectual history at Albright College and received his B.A. 1971, with his senior thesis on writer and editor Burton J. Hendrick.

Eamon adventures

In correspondence with Huw Williams in 2021 Krebs recalls that a friend of his had talked with Eamon creator Donald Brown about the possibility of taking over the management of the Eamon adventure library and trying to turn it into a money-making venture. Says Krebs, "My friend asked me to make a couple adventures to evaluate the system. Flying Circus was fun, based on the popularity of Monty Python, and Blood Feud was my effort to allow characters to gain levels."

Krebs's friend decided that the project would require too much effort and the project never materialized; management of the Eamon library instead was taken up by John Nelson as part of the newly-formed National Eamon User's Club. Krebs sent copies of the adventures to Nelson in early 1985 and they were added to the library as adventures 93 and 94.