Eric J. Gibson


Eric J. Gibson is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.

Career

Eric J. Gibson's Purgatory Publishing became the new owner of the West End Games, and the deal was announced by previous owner Humanoids Publishing on November 14, 2003. Gibson's purchase of West End involved the Masterbook, d6 classic and d6 legend rules systems, plus the Bloodshadows, Shatterzone and Torg settings, and the West End trademark itself. Gibson's contribution to West End included turning d6 classic into a more generic system. Gibson intended to publish Torg in a new edition and revitalize the line, but he ended up producing only two PDFs for the Torg line.
When West End was having difficulty financing their publications, Gibson turned to Bill Coffin to publish his Septimus role-playing game, but even with preorders was unable to raise the money to print the book; in 2008, Gibson announced that he was cancelling Septimus, that he could not refund preorders, that he could not afford to ship books to people who wanted to take product instead of a refund, that none of his D6 lines had ever made money, that he had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and that he was would be dissolving West End Games. Gibson claimed that he had decided not to sell off his properties, and did end up refunding Septimus preorders a year later - he also eventually released Bill Coffin's Septimus as a PDF, West End Games' last product. Gibson released his core genre books under the OGL, so that the D6 system could be used by other publishers. Gibson sold off West End's remaining properties: Torg went to German publisher Ulisses Spiele, and the Masterbook system and the Bloodshadows and Shatterzone settings both went to small US publisher Precis Intermedia.