Richard Tucholka

Richard Tucholka (February 9, 1954 – April 27, 2017) was a writer, game designer and publisher, best known for his work in the creation of the role-playing games Fringeworthy and Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic.

Career In 1974, Richard Tucholka, a computer technician in Michigan, collaborated with Robert Sadler on a number of pieces of fiction. One of their stories was a post-apocalyptic adventure story called The Morrow Project, about people who awake from cryogenic sleep 150 years after a nuclear holocaust. After completing two chapters, the two left the story in hiatus.

The following year, Tucholka was introduced to the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game (RPG), and he quickly realized that The Morrow Project could become an RPG. Using the story's setting as source material, Tucholka created the game background, and he and Sadler approached Kevin Dockery to add military realism to the game. After playtesting it at a local Michigan games convention, Tucholka, Sadler and Dockery formed Timeline Ltd. in 1979 to publish the new RPG.

Almost immediately, Tucholka and Sadler left Timeline due to creative differences with Dockery and formed their own games company, Tacky Tack Games, based in Pontiac, Michigan. Their first product was the light-hearted microgame Geriatric War,

Tucholka then created and published more serious RPGs such as Fringeworthy, the first RPG about dimensional travel, Given the more serious tone of these works, the company name was changed from Tacky Tack Games to the more professional-sounding Tri Tac Games in 1983.

Death Richard passed away surrounded by his many friends and his wife, after a prolonged battle with cancer.

Awards Tucholka's creation Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic was voted Best Fantasy RPG of 1991 by the RPGA Network at Gen Con 1992.