Richard Garfield

Richard Garfield (New York, 1963) is an American mathematics teacher and game designer. He has designed card games such as Magic: The Gathering, Netrunner, Battle Tech, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle (originally known as jyhad), The Great Dalmuti, Star Wars Trading Card Game and the board game RoboRally. Magic: The Gathering is the most successful game of his and the development of it credited him as the originator of the collectible card game genre.

Biography

Garfield designed his first game when he was a teenager. He had a wide range of interests, including language and mathematics. In 1986 he graduated with a degree in mathematics and computing. He entered Bell Laboratories and worked there for a couple of years, but then decided to continue his studies and entered the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

He began designing a game called Magic: The Gathering while still a student in the 1980s. An "East Coast" mostly by students from Pennsylvania, it was formed around the development of the game. While looking for a publisher for the game RoboRally , he came across Peter Adkinson of the newly founded Wizards of the Coast. Adkison agreed to publish his board game and expressed his interest in a game like Magic, where the games lasted a short time.

Garfield earned a Ph.D. in Combinatorial Mathematics in Pennsylvania in 1993. He became Professor of Mathematics at Whitman College in Walla-Walla, Washington.

Magic: The Gathering became wildly popular upon its release in 1993. Garfield left the academy to join Wizards of the Coast as a full-time designer in June 1994. After the rise of the game, Richard moved to Kennewick, Washington.

"Richard Garfield, Ph.D." is also the name of a card from the Unhinged joke set from Magic: the Gathering. This theme had previously been explored with the card "Phelddagrif", an anagram of "Garfield, Ph.D.".

Garfield still contributes sporadically to Magic: The Gathering, most recently as part of the team that designed the Ravnica expansion in 2005, and most recently on Innistrad in 2011.

Garfield has created three Magic cards, celebrating events from his life: A card called simply "Proposal" (the cards were only made in English) was used for his marriage proposal to Lily Wu during a Magic game. Its text reads: “Allow Richard to propose to Lily. If the proposal is accepted both players win; shuffle cards in play, shuffle libraries and graveyards as a single shared deck”. It is popularly believed that it took him four games to steal the card from Richard, but the proposal was eventually accepted. Nine copies of the letter were made, and given to colleagues and friends. Apparently one of the letters was stolen.^{[citation needed]}

The other two cards "Splendid Genesis" and Fraternal Exaltation commemorate the birth of his two sons. Both letters were printed in the same way as all. Several copies of the cards were given to friends and associates and are considered extremely rare among collectors.

There is a commonly accepted rule among fans of Magic: The Gathering, and that is that if Richard Garfield personally alters a card with his hand, the change is permanent for that particular card. This has sparked several urban legends. The fact that Garfield possesses god powers in the Magic universe is immortalized in the card, "Richard Garfield, Ph.D."