(13/41: 1960) DUKE SEIFRIED (1935–2018)
The Coaster
Before we talk about what Duke Seifried designed, we need to talk about what he built. The distinction is the entire story.
Bruce “Uncle Duke” Seifried sculpted over ten thousand miniature figures. He co-founded Custom Cast and Heritage Models, the dominant American miniatures company of the late 1970s. He introduced blister packs for gaming miniatures—the universal packaging standard that every manufacturer from Games Workshop to Reaper still uses. He created the first licensed gaming figures: Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, John Carter of Mars, Conan the Barbarian. He pioneered acrylic paints for the hobby, boxed starter sets, varied poses within figure packs, and professional trade-show displays. He coined the term “adventure gaming.” He got Dungeons & Dragons into Waldenbooks and B. Dalton while serving as TSR’s first Executive Vice President. He built forty-six museum-quality interactive dioramas—his “Extravaganzas”—that drew thousands of spectators at conventions across four decades.
He was inducted into the Origins Hall of Fame in 2005. He received the Jack Scruby Award for lifetime achievement in historical miniature gaming in 1995. The Historical Miniatures Gaming Society renamed its Game Master of the Year Award in his honor in 2010. Shannon Appelcline, the foremost RPG industry historian, wrote that Seifried is “one of the most influential people in the early hobbyist miniatures market.”
And he wrote one set of wargame rules.
The Dayton Gang
Seifried came up in the Dayton War Game Gang of the late 1950s—Tom Bookwalter, Gary Locker, Dave Towell, Dave Glazier, John Chandler, Ted Haskill, Stan Glanzer, Fred Vietmeyer. They played giant Napoleonic battles on eight-by-sixteen-foot tables with Scruby Miniatures. In 1962, Seifried organized the Battle of La Fère with eight thousand figures and fifteen players across four six-by-twelve-foot tables. The spectacle instinct was there from the beginning.
Somewhere around 1960, he wrote Melee—a Napoleonic miniatures wargame that has nothing to do with Steve Jackson’s fantasy combat game of the same name published seventeen years later. This is Seifried’s only confirmed solo game design. The full rules were reprinted in Duke Seifried and the Development of American Miniature Wargaming (History of Wargaming Project, 2017, edited by John Curry and Jim Getz), but no detailed mechanical analysis has been published in any secondary source. The rules exist in a book. They do not exist in the public conversation about game design.
Jim Getz confirmed that the book contains “a genealogy of wargames that trace their DNA back to Melee,” indicating downstream influence on subsequent American Napoleonic rule sets. This genealogy is the single strongest piece of evidence for Seifried’s importance as a rules designer. But its contents have not been publicly reproduced, making it impossible to verify which games descended from Melee or what specific mechanical innovations they inherited.
The Credits That Aren’t His
This section exists because the historical record requires it. Duke Seifried’s enormous public profile as head of Heritage Models means he is routinely associated with everything Heritage published. The conflation is understandable and wrong.
Knights and Magick (1980) was designed by Arnold Hendrick. Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier (1978) was designed by Michael Scott. John Carter, Warlord of Mars (1978) was designed by Michael Matheny. Swordbearer (1982) was designed by B. Dennis Sustare. The Dwarfstar microgame line—Barbarian Prince, Outpost Gamma, and others—was designed by Arnold Hendrick and Howard Barasch. The Paint’n’Play dungeon crawl sets were uncredited to Seifried.
In every case, Seifried’s role was company executive and publisher, not game designer. He approved projects, secured licenses, directed manufacturing, and sold the products. He did not write the rules.
The Miami University alumni magazine called him “one of the originators of Dungeons & Dragons.” This is demonstrably false. He had no involvement in D&D’s design. He joined TSR in 1982, eight years after D&D’s publication, in a manufacturing and distribution role.
The actual design credits are four titles, and even those carry caveats.
The Four Credits
Melee (c. 1960): Seifried’s Napoleonic miniatures rules. His only confirmed sole design. Mechanics undocumented in secondary sources. Reportedly influenced subsequent American Napoleonic rules through a genealogy documented in the 2017 Curry/Getz book.
Napoleonique (1971, revised 1979): Subtitled “A Miniature Wargame Strategic-Tactical Manoeuvre in the Napoleonic Era.” Credited as “Written by Jim Getz with the assistance of Duke Seifried.” Getz was the primary designer. Seifried contributed in an assistant role. Published by Heritage Models. A later edition, Napoleonique Encore, credits Getz alone.
Frappé! (late 1970s): A Miniature Wargame of Tactical Maneuver in the Napoleonic Era. Published by Heritage as the first volume in the Wargamers’ Library line. BoardGameGeek describes it as “From an idea by Duke Seifried, developed by Ray Johnson.” This is a concept credit, not a design credit. Johnson did the rules work.
Panzertroops (late 1970s): The 15mm WWII Paint’n’Play sets included rules co-designed by Seifried and Stan Glanzer. Seifried stated in interview: “Panzertroops in 15mm were a collaboration of Stan Glanzer and me.” Relative contributions undocumented. Glanzer died at age thirty-three, making retrospective clarification impossible.
One solo design. One assistant credit. One concept credit. One co-design. That is the complete design bibliography of a man who spent sixty years in the hobby and was inducted into its Hall of Fame.
The Innovations That Weren’t Game Design
Seifried’s innovations were genuine, important, and overwhelmingly industrial rather than mechanical.
The blister pack transformed miniatures from a mail-order curiosity into a retail product. Before Seifried, figures were sold individually or loose in bags. After Seifried, they hung on pegboards at hobby shops. Every manufacturer adopted the format. It remains the universal standard. This was a packaging revolution, not a game design innovation. It changed how miniatures were sold, not how games were played.
Licensed gaming figures opened intellectual properties to the miniatures hobby for the first time. Lord of the Rings figures from the Bakshi film, Star Trek landing parties, John Carter—Seifried pursued and secured these licenses before anyone in the industry thought to try. Games Workshop, Wizkids, and every subsequent licensed miniatures manufacturer followed the path he cut. Again: a business innovation, not a mechanical one.
The term “adventure gaming” bridged the cultural gap between historical wargaming and the emerging fantasy RPG community at the precise moment that bridge was needed. The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design and the Origins Awards both carry the word he coined. This was a marketing innovation—a rebranding of the hobby that made space for D&D to coexist with Napoleonics.
Getting D&D into Waldenbooks and B. Dalton during his TSR tenure dramatically expanded the game’s retail footprint. This was a distribution achievement.
Acrylic paints for miniatures. Varied poses within packs. Professional trade-show displays. Boxed hobby starter sets. Each one mattered. None of them is a game mechanic.
The Extravaganzas
If Seifried’s design signature exists anywhere, it exists on the convention floor.
Beginning in the 1990s, he created forty-six museum-quality interactive gaming displays sold to collectors in Monaco, Australia, Bahrain, Italy, New Zealand, and across the United States. Each took nearly a year to prepare. The Siege of Minas Tirith. Helm’s Deep. The Battle of Five Armies. El Cid at Cuarte, 1094. Khartoum. The Alamo. Custer Meets Crazy Horse. The Bocage in Normandy. Pirate games with ships elevated on poles above water terrain. Up to twenty thousand miniatures across thirty sand tables, accommodating dozens of simultaneous players.
The rules for these events were posted on flip charts beside the tables. Deliberately simplified. Designed so a stranger could walk up, receive a thirty-second briefing, and start playing. A TMP forum commenter described them as “huge crowd pleasers” that “often gets people hooked into wargaming.”
This was Seifried’s true design philosophy in action: accessibility through spectacle. Make the table so visually overwhelming that people cannot walk past it. Make the rules so simple that they cannot fail to play. The game is the hook. The miniatures are the line. The experience is the catch.
His own words captured it: “The historical people sometimes turn their noses up at the fantasy people. The fantasy people sometimes turn their noses up at what they call the hysterical people. I find no difference, and so I have done mostly blending.”
HMGS named its Game Master of the Year Award after him. Not its Game Designer of the Year Award. The distinction matters.
The Craft Arc
Seifried’s career tells the story of a man moving steadily away from game design and toward everything else the hobby needed.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was a rules-writing wargamer in the Dayton Gang—playing and designing Napoleonic miniatures games on enormous tables. This was his most active period as a game designer, and it produced exactly one solo rule set.
By the 1970s, he had become a miniatures sculptor and manufacturer. Der Kriegspielers, Custom Cast, Heritage Models. His creative energy went into figures, not rules. The games Heritage published were designed by Arnold Hendrick, Jim Getz, Michael Scott, and others. Seifried’s contributions narrowed to concept work (Frappé!) and assistance (Napoleonique).
The early 1980s at TSR were pure business: manufacturing, distribution, retail strategy. No game design output.
From the 1990s onward, the Extravaganza period produced spectacular convention gaming experiences with simplified house rules. The creative output was in terrain building, miniature painting, and event production—not in mechanical design.
The trajectory is unmistakable. The young Seifried wrote rules. The mature Seifried built companies. The elder Seifried built dioramas. Game design was a starting point, not a destination. The career moved from designing games to designing the entire ecosystem around games—the figures, the packaging, the paints, the retail channels, the convention experiences—and that ecosystem mattered enormously. But the methodology measures the games, not the ecosystem.
The Scoring Case
Invention (3):
“Minimal documented innovation.” One solo rule set (Melee, c. 1960) with undocumented mechanics. One concept credit (Frappé!), one assistant credit (Napoleonique), one co-design (Panzertroops). The specific mechanical innovations within these games are not described in any publicly available secondary source. The “genealogy of wargames tracing their DNA back to Melee” exists in the 2017 Curry/Getz book but has not been publicly reproduced. His industry innovations—blister packs, licensed figures, acrylic paints, the term “adventure gaming”—are genuine and important but fall entirely outside the game design pillar. They changed how games were packaged and sold, not how they were played.
Architecture (3):
“Insufficient evidence.” No detailed reviews, design analyses, or structural critiques of Seifried’s game systems exist in publicly accessible sources. System quality cannot be rigorously assessed from available evidence. What evidence exists suggests deliberately simplified rules designed for convention spectacle—flip-chart rules for dozens of simultaneous players on massive sand tables. This is a legitimate design philosophy, but “rules on a flip chart for a convention game” does not demonstrate structural depth, balance, or subsystem interaction. No propagation of his game architecture is documented in available sources.
Mastery (4):
“Identifiable philosophy, minimal output.” Sixty-plus years in the hobby (c. 1955–2018), but active game design concentrated in roughly fifteen years (late 1950s through mid-1970s), producing two to four rule sets. The craft evolution moves away from game design toward sculpting, manufacturing, business leadership, and diorama production. Identifiable design philosophy—accessibility through spectacle, visual feedback over paper tracking, genre-blending—is clear and consistent. But it is a showmanship philosophy more than a design methodology. The overwhelming majority of his creative output was sculpture, business innovation, and event production, not game design.
The Adjustment Triggers
Adjustments (+3):
■ Longevity 10+ years: +1 (c. 1960–2018. Nearly sixty years of continuous involvement in the hobby, though active game design was concentrated in the first fifteen.)
■ Longevity 20+ years: +1 (Easily clears the threshold. His career in the hobby spanned six decades.)
■ Full-time career: No (Game design was never his primary profession. His careers were, in sequence: advertising, miniatures sculptor and manufacturer, gaming industry executive, and diorama creator. He was full-time in the game industry but not as a game designer.)
■ Awards: +1 (Origins Hall of Fame 2005. Jack Scruby Award 1995. HMGS Lifetime Achievement Award 2010. HMGS Duke Seifried Game Master of the Year Award named permanently in his honor. These recognize his overall contribution to the hobby, not game design specifically—but the triggers are binary, and the awards are real.)
■ Branded name: No (Seifried was a legend within the miniatures and wargaming community but unknown outside it. The name does not register beyond the hobby.)
■ Cross-genre success: No (His design credits are exclusively in miniature wargaming—Napoleonic and WWII rules. His convention Extravaganzas spanned historical and fantasy themes but used simplified house rules, not published game designs in multiple genres.)
■ Commercial success $10M+: No (No documented sales figures for his game designs. Heritage Models was commercially significant, but the games were designed by others. Seifried claimed Custom Cast “did more business than all the other tin soldier firms combined in the USA” at its peak, but this reflects miniatures sales, not game design revenue.)
■ Design propagation: No (The “Melee genealogy” in the 2017 Curry/Getz book documents downstream influence on American Napoleonic wargaming rules, but its contents have not been publicly reproduced, making verification impossible. The blister pack and licensed figures propagated universally across the miniatures industry, but these are manufacturing and business practices, not game mechanics. Without access to the specific genealogy, the design propagation threshold is not met.)
The Hidden Pattern
Duke Seifried is the hobby’s most important non-designer.
This is not an insult. It is a precise description of a man who understood something most designers never grasp: that a game is not just its rules. A game is its figures and its table and its packaging and its retail shelf and its convention booth and the gasp a twelve-year-old makes when she sees eight thousand miniatures on a sand table for the first time. Seifried built all of that. He built the stage on which tabletop gaming performs.
The score reflects the pillars as written. The pillars measure game design: invention, architecture, mastery of the craft of writing rules that produce emergent play. By those measures, Seifried’s contribution is thin—one solo rule set, a handful of partial credits, mechanics that no secondary source has bothered to analyze. The score is honest.
But there is a version of this ranking that measures something else—industry building, infrastructure creation, the unglamorous work of making a hobby commercially viable. In that ranking, Duke Seifried would sit very near the top. He invented the blister pack. He coined “adventure gaming.” He put D&D on bookstore shelves. He showed an entire generation that miniatures were not just toys but authored works of art, sold in professional packaging, supported by professional paints and professional rules and professional spectacle.
He built the ecosystem. He just didn’t write many of the games that lived inside it.
What Remains
Ten thousand sculpted figures. Blister packs on every pegboard. A word—”adventure gaming”—that named the hobby. Licensed miniatures lines that opened Tolkien, Trek, and Burroughs to tabletop play. Forty-six Extravaganzas that turned convention halls into living dioramas. A Hall of Fame plaque. An award that carries his name.
And one set of Napoleonic wargame rules, written around 1960 in Dayton, Ohio, by a young man who loved the spectacle of tiny armies on enormous tables.
Everything else he built—and he built a great deal—was the infrastructure that made other people’s games possible.
The plays were written by other men. The audience came because of him.
Total: 13 points. Year: 1960.
Total: 13 points. Year: 1960.
The plays were written by other men. The audience came because of him.