# Jean Wells - Maker: Game designer - Date: 1955–2012 - Houses: TSR, Inc. - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/jean-wells/ > TSR's first woman designer, who launched Dragon's long-running "Sage Advice" column and wrote Palace of the Silver Princess, the module TSR famously destroyed on the day of its release. **Why it matters:** Wells broke into a design department of men at the height of the D&D boom, and her short career touched some of the most widely played products of the era. Her story is a reminder of how narrow the early hobby's doors were, and of who pushed through them. ## Quick answers **Who was Jean Wells?** TSR's first woman designer, who launched Dragon's long-running "Sage Advice" column and wrote Palace of the Silver Princess, the module TSR famously destroyed on the day of its release. **When was Jean Wells born?** Jean Wells was born in 1955 in Jacksonville, Florida and died in 2012. **What is Jean Wells known for?** Jean Wells is best known for Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set and The Keep on the Borderlands. **Why does Jean Wells matter to fantasy and games?** Wells broke into a design department of men at the height of the D&D boom, and her short career touched some of the most widely played products of the era. Her story is a reminder of how narrow the early hobby's doors were, and of who pushed through them. ## Life Jean Wells was born on July 25, 1955, in Jacksonville, Florida. She had little game design experience when she answered a job advertisement in *The Dragon* ([The Strategic Review & Dragon](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/dragon-magazine/)), TSR's house magazine. [Gary Gygax](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/gary-gygax/) hired her in January 1979, and she joined the company's design department in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, as its first woman designer, at a moment when D&D was on the verge of becoming a national craze. In 1981 she married Corey Koebernick, another TSR employee. After leaving the company she settled in Beloit, Wisconsin, raised two sons, and did not return to professional game work. She died on January 25, 2012, aged 56, the morning after being admitted to hospital. (Some reference lists give her year of death as 2014; contemporary accounts date it to January 2012.) ## Work Wells learned on the job. Her first task was editing *White Plume Mountain*, Lawrence Schick's puzzle-filled dungeon for [Advanced Dungeons & Dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/advanced-dungeons-and-dragons/). She went on to edit Gygax's [The Keep on the Borderlands](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-keep-on-the-borderlands/), the introductory adventure that was packed into printings of the [Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dnd-basic-set/) from 1979 onward and became, by circulation, one of the most widely played modules ever made. She also contributed artwork, including interior illustrations for *Lost Tamoachan* and pieces added to a later printing of the *Monster Manual*. Her most visible contribution was a column. In *The Dragon* #31 (November 1979) she launched "Sage Advice," in which a TSR staffer answered readers' rules questions. Wells brought humor to the job, and the column became a fixture: "Sage Advice" continued in the magazine for decades and later moved online, and its name remains synonymous with official D&D rules clarifications. As a designer, she wrote B3 *Palace of the Silver Princess*, a beginner's adventure for the Basic Set line. Her version deliberately left some areas undeveloped for the Dungeon Master to fill in; as she later explained, she wanted to show players that there was more to a dungeon than just the building. The module was printed with an orange cover, but TSR management ordered the entire run destroyed on the day of release. The reason is still debated. Some accounts point to several illustrations considered too sexual, including one of a bound woman; others, including [Frank Mentzer](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/frank-mentzer/), have argued that the real offense was a set of caricatures of TSR executives by artist Erol Otus. [Tom Moldvay](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/tom-moldvay/) then rewrote the adventure almost entirely for a green-covered edition published in 1981, which credits both authors. Wells also found herself frustrated inside the company. According to later accounts, her proposals for new adventures and games went unused while she was given secretarial work instead of design assignments, and she left TSR. ## Legacy For years Wells was remembered chiefly through a collector's legend. The few orange copies of *Palace of the Silver Princess* that escaped destruction became some of the most valuable items in D&D collecting: one sold for $300 at Gen Con in 1984, and a copy in very fine condition fetched $3,050 in 2008, then a record for any TSR module. Wizards of the Coast later made the original version available as a free download, allowing players to see what she had written. Her larger legacy is as a pioneer. When she joined TSR, the design staff and the hobby's public face were almost entirely male, and she worked there during the years when TSR's products reached their widest audience. Women who came to TSR in the following years, among them the editor and novelist [Margaret Weis](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/margaret-weis/), and contemporaries such as [Jennell Jaquays](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/jennell-jaquays/) elsewhere in the industry, broadened a field she had helped open. Her story forms part of the museum's tour [The Women Who Built Fantasy & RPGs](https://www.lanternhall.org/tours/women-who-built-fantasy/). ## Facts - Wells was born on July 25, 1955, in Jacksonville, Florida, and joined [TSR, Inc.](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/tsr/) in January 1979 after answering an advertisement in *The Dragon*. - Her first assignment was editing Lawrence Schick's module *White Plume Mountain*. - She edited [Gary Gygax](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/gary-gygax/)'s [The Keep on the Borderlands](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-keep-on-the-borderlands/), which was packed into the D&D Basic Set for years. - She wrote the first "Sage Advice" rules column, in *The Dragon* #31, November 1979. - TSR destroyed the entire first printing of her module B3 *Palace of the Silver Princess*, reportedly 5,000–10,000 copies, over objections to its artwork. - By 2008 a surviving copy of the recalled "orange" printing sold for $3,050, then a record for a TSR module. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Wells) - [Wikipedia: Palace of the Silver Princess](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_the_Silver_Princess) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.