Richard Baker (full name L. Richard Baker III) is an American author and game designer who has worked on many Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings. Early life, education, and military Rich Baker was born and raised in Florida, then moved with his family to New Jersey at age ten. Baker graduated from Virginia Tech in 1988 with a degree in English. He received a commission as an ensign in the U.S. Navy, and served as a deck officer for three years on board the USS Tortuga; he qualified as a Surface Warfare Officer and was a lieutenant (junior grade) by the time he left the Navy. Baker married his college sweetheart, Kim Rohrbach. They have two daughters, Alex and Hannah. Career Baker began looking for a new career, and found one at TSR. "I'd been playing the AD&D game off and on since 1979. When I decided to leave the Navy, I sent TSR my résumé just for the pure hell of it. TSR sent me back a writing test, which I must have done pretty well on, since they brought me out for an interview in September of 1991. I'd never published a word before then or even worked the convention circuit, but they hired me anyway." After joining TSR in 1991, Rich worked on most of TSR's product lines at one point or another. By 1998, he had published over thirty game products and many magazine articles. Baker started out writing game products such as Rock of Bral for the Spelljammer line, as well as material for the Forgotten Realms, Planescape, and Ravenloft settings. Baker and Colin McComb co-designed the Birthright campaign setting. The Birthright Campaign Setting boxed set won the 1995 Origins Award for Best New Role-Playing Supplement: "I'm very proud of it. It represents an entirely new approach to the traditional fantasy roleplaying campaign, and the world itself is filled with a strong sense of history." Baker also oversaw the development of the Player's Option series of second edition AD&D manuals, stating "I greatly enjoyed the work I did on the World Builder's Guidebook". Baker went on to co-design the Alternity science fiction game: "As much as I am proud of my other work, I probably learned the most from the work Bill [Slavicsek] and I put into the Alterity game system. Designing a new roleplaying game from the ground up is an immensely complicated undertaking,