Eric J. Gibson is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.
Career[]
Eric J. Gibson's Purgatory Publishing became the new owner of the West End Games, and the deal was announced by previous owner Humanoids Publishing on November 14, 2003.[1] Gibson's purchase of West End involved the Masterbook, d6 classic and D6 Legend rules systems, plus the Bloodshadows, Shatterzone and Torg settings, and the West End trademark itself.[1] Gibson's contribution to West End included turning d6 classic into a more generic system.[1] Gibson intended to publish Torg in a new edition and revitalize the line, but he ended up producing only two PDFs for the Torg line.[1]
When West End was having difficulty financing their publications, Gibson turned to Bill Coffin to publish his Septimus role-playing game, but even with preorders was unable to raise the money to print the book; in 2008, Gibson announced that he was cancelling Septimus, that he could not refund preorders, that he could not afford to ship books to people who wanted to take product instead of a refund, that none of his D6 lines had ever made money, that he had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and that he was would be dissolving West End Games.[1] Gibson claimed that he had decided not to sell off his properties, and did end up refunding Septimus preorders a year later - he also eventually released Bill Coffin's Septimus (2009) as a PDF, West End Games' last product.[1] Gibson released his core genre books under the OGL, so that the D6 system could be used by other publishers.[1] Gibson sold off West End's remaining properties: Torg went to German publisher Ulisses Spiele, and the Masterbook system and the Bloodshadows and Shatterzone settings both went to small US publisher Precis Intermedia.[1]