Chadwick formed the ISU Game Club at Illinois State University with Rich Banner. The club focused on wargaming, but the students also began designing games as a fun activity and were able to convince the university to fund a new program called SIMRAD ("SIMulation Research And Design"), with the intent of aiding instructors to produce specifications for simulation games.[3]: 53 They used their club funding to design war games. They also formed a small educational games organization in response to a project by the university to bring new ideas into the system. After failing to win this project, Chadwick and Banner, along with newcomers Marc Miller and Loren Wiseman, continued to work together, forming Game Designers' Workshop.[4][3]: 53 When ISU stopped funding SIMRAD after 18 months, Miller, Chadwick, and Banner founded Game Designers' Workshop on June 22, 1973, as a commercial outlet for their creations, initially headquartering the company in Chadwick's and Miller's apartment.[3]: 53
Game Designers' Workshop
There is little doubt that, even in the rather busy pantheon of (wargame) industry heroes, Frank Chadwick is a Zeus amongst the Ajaxes. He is one of—if not THE—finest game designer working today. Since GDW's emergence in the mid-1970s, Chadwick has been GDW's main designer, producing a body of work remarkable for its breadth and width. ... ever resourceful, Frank C covered his simulated butt with the out-of-sight success of his Desert Shield Fact Book. Its reported, six-figure sales will probably bank-roll the company for the next decade. And, as if that weren't enough, he has steered GDW (admittedly with the astute help of others) from a small-town, Third World company to its status as one of the major simulation and RPG publishers in the market today. Frank is also president of the industry professional association, the Game Manufacturers Association, so GDW's tentacles reach out to almost every cave in which hobbyists can hide in. If dice produced olive oil, there is no doubt that Frank Chadwick would be wargaming's Godfather.
Game Designers' Workshop existed from 1973 until 1996.[2] There, he designed several well-known and award-winning games, including En Garde! (first swashbuckling role-playing games) in 1975,[3]: 53 [5]Space: 1889 in 1989[3]: 59 [6] (which was set in a steampunk milieu before the term was coined),[7] and Twilight 2000 in 1984.[1][3]: 57 Chadwick and Miller designed Traveller.[3]: 54 Game Designers' Workshop also published the Gulf War Fact Book, a book he wrote on the military capabilities of the United States and Iraq at the time of the Gulf War. The book was on The New York Times bestselling list, and led to appearances on various news programs by Chadwick.[8] After the closure of Game Designers' Workshop, Chadwick got the rights to Space: 1889.[3]: 63
After Game Designers' Workshop
Chadwick has written blogs on history and military issues at Greathistory.com.[9]
2014: The Forever Engine, Baen Books, ISBN978-1-62579-221-1, time travel novel set in a divergent Space: 1889 universe (serves as something of a prequel to Space: 1889 & Beyond, and shares some of the same characters as Conspiracy of Silence).
(2017) Chain of Command. Baen Books, ISBN9781481482974, science fiction, set in the same universe as How Dark the World Becomes and Come the Revolution, but with new characters.
