Kim Mohan

Kim Mohan was an author, editor, and game designer who worked for TSR, Inc. and Wizards of the Coast. He was a long-time editor and editor-in-chief of Dragon magazine and later Lead Editor and then Managing Editor of Dungeons & Dragons, overseeing the development of 3 edition. Having worked on Dungeons & Dragons from 1 through to 5 editions over nearly 40 years, he is the longest serving of any designer, writer, or editor.

Career
After graduating third in high school, Kim studied everything from philosophy to mathematics at Beloit College, Wisconsin, but focused on English and journalism. In his words, "I decided that what I really wanted to do was write" and he dropped out of college.

Mohan began his career as a newspaper journalist, first working for the Lake Geneva Regional News for a few months then the Beloit Daily News for nine years, but eventually tired of daily deadlines. He quit and went freelance, but was unable to live off it. "Besides, I discovered that I really needed someone to tell me when I had to be at work." Kim reflected.

Finally, in summer of 1979, he came to work for TSR. On the suggestion of a friend, Kim visited the TSR Periodicals headquarters in Lake Geneva and invited himself for an interview: "I walked in the door of TSR World Headquarters——a run-down house in Lake Geneva—and offered my services to help out on what was then known as The Dragon." After completing some editing tests, they hired him there-and-then for The Dragon magazine, as third of a three-person staff. He began with Dragon #29 in September 1979. Mohan and fellow Dragon editor Bryce Knorr wrote the "Food Fight" school cafeteria war-game in Dragon #44.

But in only a few months, one of the others, Jake Jaquet, had departed and the other focused on the business side, leaving Mohan managing the entire editorial aspect of the magazine. He was promoted to Assistant Editor and then to Editor-in-Chief, with his first issue being Dragon #49 in May 1981. His work was complicated and ranged from planning to production, including reading manuscripts and sometimes even setting type, but Mohan was proud of Dragon never missing a deadline under him. But while Dragon grew and evolved significantly in that time, becoming the most popular gaming magazines, Mohan regretted the loss of amateur submissions: "I've never wanted to discourage amateur writers from submitting, but we just don't have as much time for personal feedback and nurturing of new talent as we used to. We've become somewhat impersonal, and that bothers me — but there's nothing I can do about it." On the other hand, he noted "I like to get letters from our readers. I always read them, even if I can't print or answer all of them. What our readers think is a very important factor in what kind of magazine we make." He reminisced in 2000, "People still come up to me to tell me they enjoyed the magazine way back then, so I must have done a few things right." It was a role that lasted for seven years, ending with Dragon #114 in October 1986.

Meanwhile, he also worked as a manager on the Strategy & Tactics and Amazing Stories magazines during their ownership by TSR. In 1985, Mohan worked as editor and "general handyman" for Unearthed Arcana 1st edition and Saga of Old City for Greyhawk Adventurers, the first novel by Gary Gygax. Kim observed, "The extra projects are extra work, naturally, but they were also very fulfilling." He worked on several Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks, including authoring the Wilderness Survival Guide in 1986. He later joked his idea of the wilderness was everything between the front door and the car door.

By 1987, however, Mohan had followed Gygax to New Infinities Productions as a designer and author, producing the Cyborg Commando RPG and co-authoring its three novels with Pamela O'Neill. It closed the following year. Mohan would also write Tobin's Spirit Guide for West End Games' Ghostbusters RPG in 1989.

Mohan returned to TSR as an editor and developer, editing Spelljammer: AD&D Adventures in Space in 1989, the Battlesystem miniatures rules in 1992, Amazing Stories from 1992 to 2001 (for which he was nominated for "Best Editor" or "Best Magazine or Fanzine" in the Locus Awards), Dragon again from 1993 to 1995, Dungeon magazine with Barbara G. Young in 1994 to 1995, and the Alternity RPG. For D&D in the late 1990s, he edited Jakandor, Island of War in 1998, Guide to Hell in 1999, and, in the Forgotten Realms, Four from Cormyr in 1997 and Secrets of the Magister in 2000.

With Wizards of the Coast's takeover TSR in 1997, Mohan and the rest made the move. Mohan became Lead Editor of Wizards of the Coast's RPG R&D team, which worked on developing the 3 edition of Dungeons & Dragons in its first half. He was later promoted to Managing Editor and was succeeded as Leader Editor by Julia Martin. Mohan also worked as Playtest Coordinator, finding groups through the RPGA and distributing playtest materials in late 1998 and 1999. In an interview about this, he said "Above all, I've learned that the greatest fantasy roleplaying game in the world has the best fans, the most imaginative players, and the most energetic DMs. Almost all of the groups we solicited to help us took the opportunity and the responsibility of playtesting very seriously. They've been just as pumped as we've all been here at Wizards about the prospect of making the best game in the world even better." Describing the new edition itself, Mohan said in an interview "The original AD&D books will always rank as a masterpiece in the history of hobby gaming, but even so, those books were pretty hard to absorb. The new books are at the other end of the spectrum—not dumbed down, but written, edited, and presented in a way that makes the information easy to understand and easy to retain." and "The complexity in this version of the game comes from the incredible number of choices that it presents to the players." He was confident about the approach, saying "Everyone who worked on the game design is highly talented, and they all cared deeply about improving the game instead of damaging it." and "I think I can safely speak for all the editors on the project when I say that we didn't shy away from making any changes we thought were necessary to make the rules easier to learn, exciting to read, and easy to reference."

In the following years as Managing Editor, Mohan personally edited many sourcebooks and adventures for core D&D, Forgotten Realms, and other settings, in 3, 3.5, 4, and 5 editions.

Mohan retired as Managing Editor in June 2013. He gave a farewell interview in a podcast with Jeremy Crawford, Christopher Perkins, and Rodney Thompson and shared stories of his tenure. He mentioned his most favorite of recent works was Ed Greenwood Presents Elminster's Forgotten Realms. Nevertheless, he would continue to edit D&D sourcebooks, up until Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage in 2018.

He passed away on the morning of December 12, 2022, as reported by his wife Pamela.

Interests
In his youth, Kim grew up as a keen reader of science fiction and fantasy and sometimes played war-games. In the mid-1980s, he was a self-described "computerphile" with a hobby of writing programs and tinkering with the Commodore 64 and was a stamp collector.

Writing in 1985, Kim admitted, "I suppose I shouldn't say this, but I'm not much of a D&D® game player. This helps me keep my objectivity, which is all to the good. When I look at a manuscript, my judgment isn't influenced by my experience as a player or DM. I see everything as an editor." He added, "I was very interested in playing the D&D game when I first heard of it, but by the time I found people to play with, the game was my job—and after working with it all day, I didn't want it to be my hobby, too. This helps keep the game fresh for me." Nevertheless, he learned it along the way and observed first-hand how it had evolved, and by the time of developing 3 he "had a really good idea what the game was about before I started doing the work!"

Trivia
In his capacity as Amazing Stories editor, Kim Mohan was an interviewee, alongside Harlan Ellison and Larry Niven, in the History Channel special In Search of History: The Truth About Science Fiction in 1999.

With his name, Kim was often assumed to be a woman, which would surprise people who met him at conventions.

Fellow TSR editor Anne Gray NcCready and Kim Mohan both hailed from Williams Bay, Wisconsin. Her father was one of his teachers and his sister was her babysitter as a child. But they barely knew each other at the time.

Dragon

 * Dragon #30: "The Game's the Thing: ...And I Used to Think GenCon Stood for General Confusion" (1979)
 * Dragon #39: "Women Want Equality, and why not?" with Jean Wells (1980)
 * Dragon #44: "Food Fight" with Bryce Knorr (1980)
 * Dragon #45: "The right write way to get published." (1981)
 * Dragon #55: "New gaming accessories: Useful, durable, original", "Da story of “Da Letter...”" (1981)
 * Dragon #72: "True Story of File 13: Now it can be told" (1983)
 * Dragon #78: "Spells Can be Psionic, Too: How and why magic resembles mental powers" (1983)
 * Dragon #85: "Here's to Your Health: Second thoughts on first aid in the AD&D game" (1984)
 * Dragon #102: "Is the press doing its best?" (1985)
 * Dragon #103: "Arcana update, part 1: Repairs, reasons, and even more new rules" (1985)
 * Dragon #107: "Room for improvement? Examining the issue of increasing ability scores" (1986)
 * Dragon #112: "Dawn of a new age: What we’ve done and what's to come" (1986)
 * Dragon #200: "DRAGON® Magazine: Past and present" with Roger E. Moore and Dale Donovan (1993)
 * Dragon #274: "Playtesting Confidential" (2000)
 * Dragon #360: "How Did We Get into This, and What Are We Going to Do Now that We’re Here?" (2007)
 * Dragon #400: "The Great Dragonchess Playtest" (2011)

Sourcebooks

 * Wilderness Survival Guide (November 1986)

As Editor

 * Best of Dragon (1980, 1981, 1983, 1985, 1986)
 * Spelljammer: AD&D Adventures in Space (October 1989)
 * Four from Cormyr (November 1997)
 * Guide to Hell (November 1999)
 * Secrets of the Magister (February 2000)
 * "The Alchemist's Eyrie" (December 2000)
 * "One Last Riddle" (February 2001) and "Something's Cooking" (April 2001)
 * Races of the Wild (February 2005)
 * Sandstorm (March 2005)
 * Races of the Dragon (January 2006)
 * Dragons of Faerûn (August 2006)
 * Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide (August 2008)
 * Forgotten Realms Player's Guide (September 2008)
 * Gates of Neverdeath (2011)
 * Forge of the Dawn Titan (September 2011)
 * Web of the Spider Queen (2012)
 * Council of Spiders (2012)
 * War of Everlasting Darkness (2012)
 * Ed Greenwood Presents Elminster's Forgotten Realms (October 2012)
 * Search for the Diamond Staff (2013)
 * Storm over Neverwinter (2013)
 * Storm King's Thunder (September 2016)
 * Tales from the Yawning Portal (April 2017)
 * Xanathar's Guide to Everything (November 2017)
 * Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes (May 2018)
 * Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (September 2018)
 * Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage (November 2018)