(6/41: 1992) Billy Littlepage
The Credit
Billy Littlepage’s tabletop game design career exists in a single line on a single credits page. As co-designer of Scortch — a supplement for Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards, the licensed RPG published by Whit Publications in the early 1990s — Littlepage contributed to one of the more unusual corners of the small-press RPG landscape.
The Wizards RPG itself was authored by Edward Bolme, translating Bakshi’s 1977 animated film into a tabletop roleplaying framework. Scortch expanded that world into one of the film’s defining locations — the irradiated wasteland ruled by the dark wizard Blackwolf. The supplement fleshed out a setting that the film had painted in broad, apocalyptic strokes.
Littlepage’s primary professional identity was as a graphic designer and illustrator based in Henderson, Kentucky. The Scortch co-design credit represents a side venture into game content creation — a creative detour rather than a career path.
The Context
Whit Publications operated in the early 1990s small-press RPG ecosystem — a world of convention sales, hobby shop distribution, and print runs measured in hundreds rather than thousands. Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards was a cult film with a devoted following, and the RPG adaptation served that niche audience. The supplements Montagar and Scortch expanded the game’s geographic and narrative scope, giving game masters more territory to explore within Bakshi’s post-apocalyptic fantasy world.
In this context, a co-design credit on a supplement means content creation: locations, encounters, NPCs, scenario hooks, and setting material that functions within an existing mechanical framework. It is real design work. It is not system design.
The Scoring Case
Invention (2): “Someone tried.”
Co-designed a single supplement for an existing licensed RPG. The contribution was content design — setting material, encounters, scenarios — within Edward Bolme’s mechanical framework. No evidence of original mechanical innovation. The work expands a world; it does not create new systems. A co-design credit, not sole authorship. 2.
Architecture (2): “Someone tried.”
Supplement-level content design does not test architectural skill the way a full system or standalone game does. Scortch needed to function within the Wizards RPG framework, not build its own structural logic. No evidence of the supplement’s content being adopted or referenced by other designers. 2.
Mastery (2): “Someone tried.”
One known co-design credit on one supplement. No documented career progression in game design, no sustained body of published work, no evidence of craft evolution over time. The methodology requires evidence of improvement — one supplement provides no arc to measure. 2.
Adjustments (+0):
- ■ Longevity: +0 — Single credit, no sustained design career documented.
- ■ Full-time career: +0 — Graphic design was primary profession.
- ■ Awards: +0 — No industry awards.
- ■ Branded name: +0 — Unknown outside the Wizards RPG niche.
- ■ Cross-genre: +0 — One RPG supplement credit only.
- ■ Commercial success: +0 — Small-press distribution.
- ■ Design propagation: +0 — No documented adoption by other designers.
- ■ Field stewardship: +0 — No mentorship, educational, or institutional contributions documented.
Total: 6 points. Year: 1992.
What Remains
A co-design credit on a supplement for a licensed RPG adaptation of a cult animated film, published by a small Kentucky press in the early 1990s. It is a specific, verifiable contribution to a specific, unusual game. Most people who have played tabletop RPGs their entire lives have never heard of Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards as a roleplaying game. Billy Littlepage helped build one corner of that world.
6 points. 1992. One supplement, one world, one corner of Scortch.
Not every designer builds a cathedral. Some furnish a single room — and that room exists because they were there.