Talk:Laura Hickman

First?
The body of the page describes Laura Hickman as "first female game designer of a published role-playing module." However, Judy Kerestan co-wrote Palace of the Vampire Queen, a stand-alone role-playing adventure, in 1977, but I believe this included its own RPG system and was not a module for an existing system. Jennell Jaquays wrote The Caverns of Thracia, published in 1979, which was an "official dungeon approved for Dungeons and Dragons." Its Wikipedia page describes it as "an adventure" while Rahasia is an "adventure module." Adventure (Dungeons & Dragons) uses the terms "adventure" and "module" interchangeably, acknowledging that they are hard to define. Is there a significant difference? I'm thinking of changing to wording to be less specific, since I'm not sure if "first" is accurate. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:40, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'm reading more. Jennell identifies as a trans woman, and came out in 2011, which may be why the "first female" wording was used in the Shadow Mountain source. Hmmm. This is tricky. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:43, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
 * It sounds like Vampire Queen beats out the Hickman and Jaquays examples (all published in 1979). BOZ (talk) 20:17, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi BOZ, Vampire Queen isn't a "module", but a stand-alone adventure. Is the distinction useful? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 20:33, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Not really - back in the old days, "module" and "stand-alone adventure" meant about the same thing. BOZ (talk) 20:49, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Module published way before Jaquays's transition. Neither do we write that Caitlin Jenner was the first woman to win the Olympic men's decathlon. One can't claim a "first" by only meeting the qualification decades after the event. --GRuban (talk) 22:54, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
 * But perhaps more importantly, if Palace of the Vampire Queen was published two years earlier then this would be a moot point. BOZ (talk) 02:56, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I kind of asked two questions in one. Thanks for answering one of them (that the "female" distinction is unnecessarily specific)., do you think the distinction between "module" and "stand-alone adventure" is a useful one? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 15:29, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Probably not for "first to write". I do know that there are adventures that definitely aren't "modules" in the sense that they aren't meant to be part of a campaign, where the players play premade characters, and never play them again afterwards. Often these are horror adventures, where the world gets destroyed at the end; others are convention-only adventures, where the players and GM likely will never see each other again. However, I'm not at all sure that Vampire Queen is one of those. We'd need a source that says that, in any case, and not just my obsessed rantings on a talk page! --GRuban (talk) 18:35, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for both of your input. The cited source still says she was the first female to write a tabletop module, but I changed the text to say that she was among the first women to write tabletop adventures. It would be great to get an article about women writers of early tabletop scenarios as a source, but the best I could find was a Reddit post. :-) Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 19:06, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
 * "Among the first" is probably the most diplomatic solution we are going to get here. :) BOZ (talk) 20:37, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Riddle of the Griffon
I have conflicting sources about the identity of the "Susan Lawson" pen name that is the author of Riddle of the Griffon Endless Quest book. Laura Hickman states that it was "the first book I wrote that was published" on Goodreads. She also lists it on a now-defunct author page. Another person commented with a video from GaryCon 2018, where Margaret Weiss talks about having to rapidly finish the book that someone named Jean (probably Jean Rabe) had outlined the decision tree for. She says that she worked with Roger E. Moore to complete the book. The series listing on Endless_Quest and on ISFDB lists Margaret Weiss and Roger E. Moore as the authors behind "Susan Lawson." Fantastic Fiction lists her as an author, but it's under "series contributed to." I'm going to take it off for now and we can add it back if we get a better source for Laura Hickman's part in the Susan Lawson creation. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 18:32, 8 September 2021 (UTC)