Larry DiTillio

Lawrence G. DiTillio (February 15, 1948 – March 16, 2019) was an American film, TV series, and tabletop role-playing game writer. His creations include He-Man and She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword and the award-winning Masks of Nyarlathotep.

Education Larry DiTillio attended the film school at New York University for four years. He then spent an additional two years at UCLA's film school. DiTillio wrote The Isle of Darksmoke (1984), the final multiplayer Tunnels & Trolls adventure that Flying Buffalo published. For a few months, DiTillio was also a contributor to Chaosium's Different Worlds magazine, writing about news from the world of film and television in his "The Sword of Hollywood" column. Other Chaosium titles he wrote or contributed to, include; The Grey Knight, the first adventure for the Pendragon role-playing game, Demon Magic: The Second Stormbringer Companion for the Stormbringer fantasy role-playing game, and the Call of Cthulhu supplement Terror Australis.

Despite his success in the role-playing games industry, once the screenwriters' strike ended, DiTillio went back to screenwriting.

In 1985, he wrote the feature-length film He-Man and She-Ra: Secret of the Sword. Following its release, he and J. Michael Straczynski became writers for Filmation's spin-off show She-Ra: Princess of Power. Straczynski later recalled the considerable time DiTillio spent writing character background for the show. "One of the things Larry and I decided, very early on, was that She-Ra couldn't just be 'He-Man with boobs.' The show had to go deeper than that, especially given that we were creating this for a female lead character." However, when Filmation refused to give them credit on-screen, both left, finding work with DIC Entertainment on Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors.

In 1993, DiTillio worked with Straczynski again, this time on the science-fiction series Babylon 5, with Straczynski as producer and DiTillio the executive story editor. DiTillio also worked on the animated series Beast Wars, writing or co-writing most of the episodes. In 2002, he was a writer for the updated He-Man and the Masters of the Universe series.

DiTillio died at the age of 71 on March 16, 2019.

Filmography