Richard Tucholka

Richard Tucholka (February 9, 1954 – April 27, 2017) was a writer, game designer and publisher, best known for his work in the creation of the role-playing games Fringeworthy and Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic.

Career
In 1974, Richard Tucholka, a computer technician in Michigan, collaborated with Robert Sadler on a number of pieces of fiction. One of their stories was a post-apocalyptic adventure story called The Morrow Project, about people who awake from cryogenic sleep 150 years after a nuclear holocaust. After completing two chapters, the two left the story in hiatus.

The following year, Tucholka was introduced to the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game (RPG), and he quickly realized that The Morrow Project could become an RPG. Using the story's setting as source material, Tucholka created the game background, and he and Sadler approached Kevin Dockery to add military realism to the game. After playtesting it at a local Michigan games convention, Tucholka, Sadler and Dockery formed Timeline Ltd. in 1979 to publish the new RPG.

Almost immediately, Tucholka and Sadler left Timeline due to creative differences with Dockery and formed their own games company, Tacky Tack Games, based in Pontiac, Michigan. Their first product was the light-hearted microgame Geriatric War, a fast-paced game where "characters battle over a few pension checks that survive the Social Security collapse of 2018".

Tucholka then created and published more serious RPGs such as Fringeworthy, the first RPG about dimensional travel, Bureau 13, the first horror RPG, and FTL: 2448, a space opera RPG. Given the more serious tone of these works, the company name was changed from Tacky Tack Games to the more professional-sounding Tri Tac Games in 1983.

Tucholka continued to create new games for Tri Tac, including Bureau 13, Hardwired Hinterland, Monster Squash, Pterroductyl, The Viral Vegetable Wars, Drive By, War on High, Escape From Westerville State, Baby Boomer, Duck Trooper, Beach Bunny Bimbos with Blasters and HOLES. He also created supplements and adventure scenarios for other games, including Invasion U.S., Cloistrs, Rogue 417, Weirdzone, Hellsnight, Haunts, Starcharts, and the DM's Book Of Nasty Tricks & Misfit Magic.

Tochulka was also a staff writer for Stardate and Stardrive small press magazines, and was the guest of honor at more than a dozen science fiction and games conventions.

Personal life
Tucholka's hobbies included gardening, house restoration, reading, and B movies. He was a fan of science fiction, and his personal collection of SF novels numbered over 18,000. He died of cancer in 2017.

Death
Richard passed away surrounded by his many friends and his wife, after a prolonged battle with cancer.

Awards
Tucholka's creation Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic was voted Best Fantasy RPG of 1991 by the RPGA Network at Gen Con 1992.