Self-Contained Content

The credits page of Magic of Faerûn describes Duane Maxwell’s role with accidental precision: he was chosen by Wizards of the Coast to write “self-contained content.” Not the setting lore — that was Sean K Reynolds’ domain. Not the creative direction — that belonged to the development team. The self-contained content. The spells, the magic items, the prestige classes. The modular pieces that plug into a larger machine.

It is, inadvertently, the most accurate description of Maxwell’s entire career.

Maxwell’s earliest known design contribution predates his staff tenure. According to Steve Winter, Maxwell wrote the entire Metapsionics chapter for The Complete Psionics Handbook (PHBR5, 1991) — one of the five psionic disciplines in AD&D 2nd Edition’s dedicated psionics supplement. The chapter required conceiving an entire category of powers that affected other psionic abilities, balanced against the other four disciplines. Maxwell did not join TSR as staff until approximately 1995, suggesting the Psionics Handbook contribution was freelance work that preceded his hire.

From 1995 to 2003, Maxwell worked as a staff designer and editor at TSR and then Wizards of the Coast, producing approximately eleven authored products and seven editorial credits across six different game systems. He survived TSR’s collapse, made the relocation from Lake Geneva to Renton, and shipped content for AD&D 2nd Edition, the SAGA card system, Alternity, d20, Traveller, and Star Wars — three fundamentally different resolution engines in eight years. He was trusted to help design the first Forgotten Realms supplement for D&D 3rd Edition, to serve as editor on Monte Cook’s Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil — one of the largest and most ambitious adventure modules in 3rd Edition — and to provide editorial assistance on both the 3.0 and 3.5 Dungeon Master’s Guides.

Then, silence. No interviews. No convention panels. No social media. No public design philosophy. In October 2006, Duane Maxwell died at the age of forty-seven. The products remain. The person who built them left almost no public trace.

Magic of Faerûn — The Best Work

Magic of Faerûn (2001) is the clearest window into what Maxwell could do when given a prominent assignment.

The book was the first major supplement for the Forgotten Realms under D&D 3rd Edition — a high-stakes product that needed to establish how the Realms’ complex magical traditions would translate to the new rules system. Sean K Reynolds served as lead designer and handled the setting integration. Maxwell and Angel Leigh McCoy contributed the modular mechanical material: over 200 new spells, approximately 200 magic items, and eleven prestige classes.

RPG.net’s Alan Kohler rated it Style 4 out of 5, Substance 5 out of 5 — a perfect substance score. EN World reviewers compared it favorably to Tome and Blood, the official D&D 3E magic supplement, with one declaring it “a better Tome & Blood than Tome and Blood itself.” A 2024 retrospective called it “a functional workhorse of a book” — the phrase that defines Maxwell’s design signature.

The specific attribution within the book is impossible to delineate. Reynolds, Maxwell, and McCoy are credited equally as designers, with eight additional designers listed below them. Maxwell was one of only two primary designers who also served as a playtester, suggesting he tested his own mechanical contributions — an engineer’s instinct for quality control.

The Birthright and Dragonlance Years

Before Magic of Faerûn, Maxwell spent three years contributing to TSR’s fragmenting product lines during the company’s final collapse.

The Book of Priestcraft (1998), co-authored with Dale Donovan and Ed Stark, developed the priestly domain-management mechanics for the Birthright campaign setting. Reviewers praised it for something rare in AD&D supplements: genuine theological sophistication. Different temples dedicated to the same deity could have divergent teachings and mechanical expressions. One reviewer called this “something amazing for AD&D 2e.” The investiture ceremony mechanics — governing the transfer of divine bloodline power — were central to Birthright’s unique domain-level gameplay. The Birthright fan community at birthright.net still references these mechanics decades later.

Player’s Secrets of Tuarhievel (1996), co-authored with Steve Miller, earned 9 out of 10 from Arcane magazine — the highest single review score of Maxwell’s career. The reviewer praised its political complexity and value for money.

Heroes of Hope (1998), for the Dragonlance Fifth Age SAGA system, required Maxwell to create an entirely new magic type — Mysticism — within an existing card-based resolution engine. Where SAGA’s Sorcery represented external energy manipulation, Mysticism was internal and spirit-based, organized into spheres that used the Fate Deck in new ways. A French RPG database credits Maxwell as the primary creator despite shared credit with Steve Miller and Sue Cook. Heroes of Hope holds a 4.33 average on Goodreads — the highest among Maxwell’s works.

The Versatility Problem

Maxwell’s most distinctive quality — his ability to produce competent content across fundamentally different game systems — is also what makes him difficult to score.

In eight years he shipped content for card-based SAGA mechanics, percentile-based Alternity systems, d20, AD&D 2nd Edition, Traveller, and Star Wars d6. Three different resolution engines. Six different game systems. That kind of range demonstrates genuine professional craft — the ability to think in different mechanical languages, to understand how a subsystem must behave differently when the underlying math is cards versus percentile dice versus a d20.

But versatility across other designers’ systems is not the same as building your own. Maxwell never designed a complete game system. Every credited design is a subsystem or content module within a framework someone else built. The SAGA engine was William Connors’ work. The d20 system was Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, and Skip Williams. Maxwell built rooms inside other people’s buildings.

His most frequent collaborator was Steve Miller, with whom he co-authored at least four products across three different game systems. He never served as sole designer on any product — every authored credit is collaborative. Chris Perkins, in a 1999 interview, described Maxwell as part of a weekly D&D campaign at WotC’s offices alongside Sean Reynolds, Jeff Quick, Dave Gross, and Steven “Stan!” Brown. Maxwell was a recognized peer in that cohort. But against contemporaries like Reynolds, Perkins, and Rich Baker, he occupied a distinctly mid-tier position — more productive than a freelancer, less visible than a creative lead.

The Honest Assessment

Maxwell’s career illustrates a category of RPG professional the hobby rarely discusses: the reliable mid-list contributor who keeps product lines running during institutional chaos.

He entered TSR as its finances collapsed. He survived the Wizards of the Coast acquisition. He shipped content for dying product lines and for the new system that replaced them. He was trusted with the first Forgotten Realms 3E supplement, with editing Monte Cook’s massive Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, and with editorial assistance on core rulebooks. This is the work of someone the company relied on.

What he did not do is innovate. No mechanism he designed entered the broader design vocabulary. No game system he built was studied by other designers. His contributions were absorbed into the larger D&D ecosystem without distinct attribution — which is, in a sense, exactly what “self-contained content” is designed to do.

Here is what the numbers say.

The Scoring Case

What Remains

Duane Maxwell died in October 2006. He was forty-seven — three years past his last known design credit, fifteen years past his first. There was no farewell, no final interview, no retrospective.

The hidden pattern is institutional. Maxwell’s career maps exactly onto the most chaotic transition in RPG history — TSR’s collapse, the WotC acquisition, the shift from AD&D to 3rd Edition. He was the kind of designer who keeps the lights on while the building changes owners. Every product line needs people like this. The hobby rarely remembers them.

His best work — Magic of Faerûn at perfect substance, Priestcraft‘s theological depth, Tuarhievel‘s political craft — shows what reliable professional design looks like when it is given room to breathe. Not visionary. Not revolutionary. Functional. Workhorse. The self-contained content that lets someone else’s cathedral stand.

15 points. 1996.

Total: 15 points. Year: 1996.

15 points. 1996.