Name Robert Charrette | Role Author | |
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Books Never deal with a dragon, Choose Your Enemies, Find Your Own Truth, Never Trust an Elf, Wolves on the Border Similar People Nigel Findley, Blaine Pardoe, Michael A Stackpole, Carl Sargent, Steve Kenson | ||
Retro RPG: Bushido
Robert N. Charrette (born 1953) is an award-winning graphic artist, game designer, sculptor and author. Charrette has authored more than a dozen novels. His gaming materials have received many Origins Awards. Charrette was inducted in the Origins Hall of Fame in 2003. His work is known for a clean, realistic style that invokes themes from Feudal Japan and Chanbara films and in particular, historical and fantastic representations of Samurai culture. His early work in game design and miniature sculpting set the tone for depictions of Japanese mythology in American fantasy and science fiction. His 1979 role-playing game Bushido was one of the first role-playing games with a non-Western theme and remained in print for more than three decades. Charrette produced gaming products for Fantasy Games Unlimited, Grenadier Models Inc. and Ral Partha Enterprises, FASA and currently operates Parroom Enterprises, LLC, a boutique miniatures game company.
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Early life
Charrette grew up in Rhode Island. He earned an interdisciplinary degree in biology and geology at Brown University. He is a lifelong fan of dinosaurs and participates in the La Belle Compagnie, a non-profit dedicated to educating the public about daily life during the Hundred Years War.
Career
Charrette began his career in 1976 as an illustrator for Little Soldier Games. He continued on at the company's successor, Tyr Games, which became Phoenix Games and then Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1980.
Charrette added game design and sculpting to his repertoire. With Paul R. Hume, he co-wrote and illustrated Bushido (1979), Aftermath! (1981) and Daredevils (1982). Charrette co-wrote Spacefarers with Ed Lipsett. By 1979, Charrette had created 25 mm miniatures to accompany Bushido and Fantasy Games Unlimited's Gangster! and Space Opera game worlds. Those initial Japanese-themed figures began a series that he would revise many times. He produced similar Samurai-themed lines for Grenadier Models Inc., Ral Partha Enterprises, Reaper Miniatures and others.
Charrette became a prolific sculptor. He joined Ral Partha in 1984 and contributed to Tom Meier's The Hoplites, 1200 A.D. and CS/02-xxx Collector Series lines. In 1985, Charrette inaugurated figures for Chaosium's RuneQuest and a line of pulp era adventurers that were initially called "20th Century Plus", but were later renamed 20-xxx The Roaring Twenties. They were an update of the line of figures he sculpted in 1979 to accompany Fantasy Games Unlimited's Gangster!. and included cinematic themes such as the intrepid archaeologist.
He was part of a team of sculptors that produced a line of miniature robot war machines for Ral Partha in 1985. The miniatures were for a game that was first called "Battledroids" and renamed BattleTech in 1986, for FASA's game of the same name. It was the beginning of a permanent relationship between the two companies that would eventually lead to Ral Partha's sale to FASA. Charrette began a long-term relationship with FASA as a sculptor, game designer and novelist.
In 1986, Charrette introduced Ral Partha's 53-9xx Bushido, an expansion of his earlier line. Bushido coincided with TSR, Inc.'s 1985 release of Oriental Adventures supplements, a gaming world that resembled the one crafted by Charrette and Hume in 1979.
At the time integrated campaign worlds such as Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy Battle were showing early success, Ral Partha introduced the "Chaos Wars" theme into their 1986 and 1987 product lines. It was the first step toward unifying a collection of disparate product lines into an integrated game world. Charrette added a fantasy component to Ral Partha's existing Rules According to Ral for medieval battles. It was released in 1987 as part of a boxed set Rules According to Ral: Chaos Wars. Chaos Wars unified existing product lines and their packaging was marked with stickers. Among these sets were Charrette's popular Fangs of Fury Beastmen. Still Nascent, the Chaos Wars theme, was dropped in 1988 to promote a new contract for a line of official miniatures for TSR, Inc.'s Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game.
As Ral Partha became engaged with TSR, Charrette solidified his relationship with FASA. In 1988, he joined his longtime partner Paul R. Hume and others to construct FASA's 1989 Shadowrun game world. Charrette provided design elements and artwork for Shadowrun and sculpted a line of figures produced by Grenadier Models Inc. While at Grenadier, Charrette also crafted a line of miniatures for Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game (by West End Games), Lost Lands range of dinosaurs and 15 mm Warlord ranges. As the creative focus of Grenadier Models Inc. moved to the United Kingdom in 1991 and 1992, FASA moved its production of Shadowrun figures to Ral Partha.
Charrette had quickly become an integral member of FASA's creative team. In 1989, he expanded his design concepts for FASA games into supporting novelizations. Over the next six years, Charrette produced nine novels for FASA's Shadowrun, Battletech and Mechwarrior game worlds. As FASA's attention turned to video games, Charrette wrote Strange World of John Reddy Trilogy (1994-1995) for Warner Books, Chronicle of Aelwyn Trilogy (1996-1997) for Harper Collins and two Interstellar Defense League (1999, 2004) novels for Eos and under the pseudonym "Richard Fawkes."
In 2001, Charrette returned to game design and began Parroom Enterprises, LLC. and miniature and games company which offers miniatures, games and supplements with fantasy themes inspired by the Victorian and medieval Japanese periods.
Awards
Origins Awards / H.G. Wells Awards
Origins Hall of Fame