The Table That Ate TSR

In 1984, Grubb designed Marvel Super Heroes and its resolution engine: a single color-coded chart that handled everything. Every action in the game—punching a mugger, hacking a computer, lifting a building, surviving a cosmic blast—resolved through one table. Roll percentile dice, cross-reference against the acting attribute’s rank, read the color: White (failure), Green (success), Yellow (notable success), Red (extraordinary success).

Grubb acknowledged the Universal Results Table as a descendant of the Combat Result Tables from Avalon Hill and SPI wargames. The innovation wasn’t the existence of a lookup chart. It was the unification—one chart replacing dozens of subsystems—and the color-coded graduated outcomes that made results instantly legible without mathematical interpretation.

The table was so effective that it consumed its creator’s employer. TSR imported the Universal Table concept into Gamma World’s third edition, the Conan RPG, and other product lines. The Wandering DMs podcast explored how the Universal Table managed to take over all the other games at TSR for a decade. A single designer’s resolution mechanic became a company-wide standard—not through corporate mandate, but because it worked better than everything else on hand.

FASERIP itself—the seven-attribute architecture (Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intuition, Psyche) with adjective-based ranks from Feeble through Shift Z—solved the superhero scaling problem that had defeated every previous attempt. Street-level heroes and cosmic beings occupied the same mechanical space without the system breaking. Spider-Man and Galactus used the same character sheet. The Karma dual-use currency—spent for immediate success or banked for advancement—forced genuine strategic tension between winning now and growing later. The Resource Rank wealth abstraction eliminated currency tracking entirely.

The system still generates new games. The 4C System retroclone directly reproduces the Universal Table. Advanced FASERIP, Zenith Comics’ Heroic RPG, and multiple 2024 neo-clones continue building on the architecture forty years later. That’s a different kind of legacy than commercial dominance—it’s structural adoption by designers who could build on any foundation and choose this one.

Mapping the Infinite

In 1987, Grubb published Manual of the Planes—a sole-authored systematic framework for D&D’s entire multiverse. The Inner Planes, the Outer Planes, the Astral and Ethereal conduits functioning as a singular cosmological machine. Before Grubb, D&D’s planes were scattered references in rulebooks and modules, loosely connected, inconsistently described. Grubb organized them into the Great Wheel—a symmetrical arrangement of sixteen Outer Planes aligned along axes of law/chaos and good/evil, with the Material Plane at the center.

The Great Wheel cosmology has been the foundational framework for D&D’s multiverse for nearly forty years. Zeb Cook built Planescape (1994)—one of D&D’s most acclaimed settings—directly on Grubb’s Manual of the Planes architecture. Every subsequent edition of D&D has used it. Fourth Edition attempted a departure with the World Axis cosmology; the market rejected it, and Fifth Edition returned to the Great Wheel. Grubb’s framework proved more durable than the editions built around it.

Two years later, Spelljammer (1989) demonstrated the same unifying instinct applied laterally rather than vertically. Where Manual of the Planes connected the cosmological layers, Spelljammer connected the campaign worlds—a meta-setting where crystal spheres containing different D&D worlds floated in a phlogiston sea, traversable by magical ships powered by Helms that converted wizard spell levels into motive force. Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance—all reachable from the same ship deck.

The concept was unprecedented in tabletop RPGs. No designer had attempted a mechanical bridge between existing, independently published campaign worlds. The Helm mechanic was elegant subsystem design: wizards powering ships sacrificed their daily spells, creating genuine resource tension between travel and combat capability. Spelljammer was revived for D&D 5th Edition in 2022, thirty-three years after its debut.

The Forgotten Framework

The Forgotten Realms Campaign Set (1987), co-designed with Ed Greenwood, represents a different kind of architectural achievement. Greenwood had been building the Realms since childhood—a vast, detailed fantasy world documented in thousands of pages of personal notes. Grubb’s contribution was structural: organizing that material into a publishable campaign framework, designing the mechanical interface between Greenwood’s lore and AD&D’s rules, and establishing the scene-first worldbuilding approach that made the setting expandable.

The result became D&D’s dominant campaign setting for thirty-five years and counting. Hundreds of supplements. Dozens of novels. The Baldur’s Gate video game series. Neverwinter Nights. Baldur’s Gate 3, one of the best-selling RPG video games ever made. The Forgotten Realms Campaign Set sold approximately 207,000 copies by 1999—extraordinary for a campaign setting boxed product—but the derivative revenue dwarfs the original sales by orders of magnitude.

Grubb’s Al-Qadim: Arabian Adventures (1992) applied cultural kit-based character customization to a non-European fantasy setting within the Realms, proving the framework could accommodate radically different cultural contexts without mechanical overhaul. The kit system wasn’t Grubb’s invention, but his application demonstrated the Forgotten Realms architecture’s extensibility—which was, in a sense, the point all along.

The Modern Architect

By the early 2000s, Grubb had spent two decades proving that frameworks could unify disparate content. With d20 Modern (2002), he applied the same instinct to genre. Where the d20 System was built for fantasy, Grubb’s adaptation made it genre-agnostic: ability-based classes (Strong Hero, Fast Hero, Smart Hero) replaced traditional archetypes, and modular genre expansions (Urban Arcana, d20 Future, d20 Past) snapped onto the core like interchangeable lenses.

The system spawned a large OGL ecosystem during the d20 boom. More significantly, it established the template for modern-setting d20 gaming that persists today. Everyday Heroes (2023)—a spiritual successor with Grubb’s direct involvement—demonstrates the approach’s ongoing viability twenty years later.

Grubb’s later career expanded into board games (Buck Rogers: Battle for the 25th Century, 1988), miniatures (HeroClix, Star Wars Miniatures), video game writing (Guild Wars franchise), and collaborative worldbuilding (Midgard Worldbook for Kobold Press, earning a 2019 Origins Award nomination). The cross-format range confirms that the engineering mind behind the Universal Table wasn’t genre-bound—it was looking for structural problems to solve wherever they appeared.

The Honest Assessment

Grubb’s thirty-point score places him in the upper tier of evaluated designers, and the reasoning is structural rather than reputational. He designed systems that became infrastructure—the Great Wheel cosmology, the FASERIP engine, the Forgotten Realms framework—and the propagation evidence is documented across decades of other designers building on his foundations.

The Invention score holds at 7 rather than 8 because the critical threshold at 8 requires documented adoption by the broader industry, not just within one publisher’s product lines. The Universal Table took over TSR’s games for a decade, but TSR was one company. The retroclones copy the specific game, not the abstract mechanism applied independently. Worker placement (Breese) was adopted by hundreds of independent designers for original games—that’s the 8 threshold, and the Universal Table didn’t reach it.

Architecture earns the 8 because the dual test—quality AND propagation—is met. FASERIP’s Universal Table gives it exceptional internal consistency, and the system supports 40+ years of active play. Manual of the Planes’ Great Wheel cosmology survived four edition changes—including one deliberate attempt to replace it. The Forgotten Realms Campaign Set established the template for sustainable setting design. Other designers demonstrably adopted specific structural elements: Cook built Planescape on the Great Wheel, FASERIP has been extensively cloned, and the d20 Modern framework spawned a direct successor in 2023. Known weaknesses exist (FASERIP’s ceiling problem, Agility dominance, Advanced Set complexity), preventing a 9.

Mastery holds at 8. The craft arc from early editorial work through FASERIP through Manual of the Planes through d20 Modern shows demonstrable refinement. The engineering mind sharpens across each project. Substantial sole-authored work (Manual of the Planes, Spelljammer, Jakandor) alongside effective collaborative design (Forgotten Realms, d20 Modern, Al-Qadim). Hall of Fame induction. Cross-format range. Clear design voice. The 9 threshold requires the sustained solo-authored prolificacy of a Stafford or Dunnigan—Grubb’s later career shows more adaptation than original creation, and many credits are collaborative.

The Universal Results Table unified all RPG resolution into a single color-coded chart—descended from wargame CRTs but transformed by unification and graduated outcomes. It took over TSR’s product lines for a decade. FASERIP’s adjective-rank power scaling solved superhero RPG differentials. Manual of the Planes systematized D&D’s cosmology. Spelljammer created the first meta-setting. Multiple meaningful innovations opening new design space, noticed by the field, not adopted as industry-wide standard.

FASERIP: high internal consistency via Universal Table, 40+ year active community, extensively cloned. Manual of the Planes: Great Wheel cosmology survived four edition changes, directly ancestral to Planescape. Forgotten Realms: template for sustainable setting design, generating decades of derivative content. Real depth, interconnected subsystems. Others adopted specific structural elements. Known weaknesses (ceiling problem, Agility dominance) prevent a 9.

Thirty-six years of active design (1982–2018+). Clear craft evolution from editorial refiner to system designer to worldbuilder to genre adaptor. Identifiable design voice centered on structural unification. Substantial sole-authored work (Manual of the Planes, Spelljammer, Jakandor). Hall of Fame. Cross-format range spanning RPGs, board games, and miniatures. Collaborative credits and later-career adaptation prevent a 9.

The Scoring Case

The Unifying Principle

The hidden pattern in Grubb’s career is the engineer’s reflex: when confronted with complexity, don’t enumerate—unify. The Universal Table unified resolution. Manual of the Planes unified cosmology. Spelljammer unified campaign settings. d20 Modern unified genre. Each project is the same problem solved at a different scale: find the framework that makes other people’s work possible, then build it clean enough that it disappears underneath what they create.

This is why Grubb’s influence is structural rather than spectacular. He doesn’t have a single game that dominates cultural conversation the way Gygax’s D&D or Garfield’s Magic does. He has a half-dozen frameworks that other people’s spectacular games were built inside. The Great Wheel is the sky above every Planescape adventure. The Forgotten Realms is the ground beneath every Baldur’s Gate playthrough. The Universal Table is the engine inside every FASERIP retroclone.

Greg Porter built the better engine and nobody drove it. Grubb built frameworks and everybody moved in. The difference isn’t quality—it’s that Grubb’s frameworks were designed from the start as containers for other people’s creativity. The engineer who builds bridges wants people to cross them.

They’ve been crossing Grubb’s bridges for forty years. Most of them don’t look down to see who built the span.

30 points. 1984. The architect whose blueprints outlast the buildings.

Total: 30 points. Year: 1984.

30 points. 1984. The architect whose blueprints outlast the buildings.