# The Women Who Built Fantasy & RPGs *Writers, designers, programmers and publishers the histories often skip* - Tour: Tour - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/tours/women-who-built-fantasy/ > Fourteen stops honor the women who shaped fantasy and its games, from C. L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry in 1934 to Jennell Jaquays's dungeons, Roberta Williams's King's Quest, Rieko Kodama's Phantasy Star and the romantasy boom. **Why it matters:** Standard histories of fantasy and RPGs often center a small group of men. Women wrote many of the genre's defining books and designed, programmed and ran some of its most important games, and this tour puts that record in one place. Fantasy has always had women at its center, even when its histories did not. Their names were sometimes hidden behind initials and pen names, their games shipped under company names, and their work too often went uncredited. This tour brings some of them together. The first stops are writers. [C. L. Moore](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/c-l-moore/) published sword and sorcery in [Weird Tales](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/weird-tales/) in the 1930s. In the 1960s, [Susan Cooper](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/susan-cooper/), [Anne McCaffrey](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/anne-mccaffrey/) and [Ursula K. Le Guin](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/ursula-k-le-guin/) wrote [The Dark Is Rising](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-dark-is-rising/), [Dragonriders of Pern](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dragonriders-of-pern/) and [Earthsea](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/earthsea/), books that shaped how later fantasy handled myth, dragons and magic. The next stops belong to games. The tabletop hobby of the 1970s was mostly male, but [Jennell Jaquays](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/jennell-jaquays/) and [Jean Wells](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/jean-wells/) designed, edited and wrote some of its most important early material. [Margaret Weis](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/margaret-weis/) co-created [Dragonlance](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dragonlance-chronicles/)'s novels, and [Lorraine Williams](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/lorraine-williams/) ran [TSR, Inc.](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/tsr/) for more than a decade. In computers, [Roberta Williams](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/roberta-williams/) helped found [Sierra On-Line](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/sierra-on-line/) and designed [King's Quest](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/kings-quest/), [Rieko Kodama](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/rieko-kodama/) shaped [Phantasy Star](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/phantasy-star/) at [Sega](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/sega/), and [Rebecca Heineman](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/rebecca-heineman/) co-founded [Interplay Productions](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/interplay/) and designed the third [Bard's Tale](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-bards-tale/). The last stops return to books. [Robin Hobb](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/robin-hobb/), [J. K. Rowling](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/j-k-rowling/), [Susanna Clarke](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/susanna-clarke/), [Sarah J. Maas](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/sarah-j-maas/) and [Rebecca Yarros](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/rebecca-yarros/) have written some of the most widely read and admired fantasy of the past three decades, and the rise of [Romantasy](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/romantasy/) shows the genre's readership, and much of its authorship, shifting decisively. Taken together, the stops also show how often women worked across media. Jaquays moved from fanzines to tabletop modules to video games, Weis from editing to novels to publishing her own games, and Heineman from competitive play to programming, design and company-building. The tour is necessarily incomplete. Many more women worked as editors, artists, playtesters, producers and players, often with little credit. Let these fourteen stops stand for them, and follow the links at each exhibit to find others. ## Stops 1. [C. L. Moore](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/c-l-moore/) — Begin in the pulps. In 1934 a bank secretary in Indianapolis, writing as C. L. Moore, created Jirel of Joiry, sword and sorcery's first great woman warrior, only two years after Conan. Moore used her initials partly so her employers would not learn she wrote for the pulps. 2. [Susan Cooper](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/susan-cooper/) — Susan Cooper, who heard Tolkien and Lewis lecture at Oxford, began The Dark Is Rising sequence in 1965. The Grey King won the 1976 Newbery Medal, and the series brought Arthurian and Welsh legend into modern Britain. 3. [Anne McCaffrey](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/anne-mccaffrey/) — With 'Weyr Search' (1967), Anne McCaffrey became the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction. Her telepathic dragons of Pern reshaped how fantasy imagined dragons, as partners rather than monsters. 4. [Ursula K. Le Guin](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/ursula-k-le-guin/) — A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) sent a dark-skinned boy to a school for wizards and made true names and balance into the deepest magic in fantasy. Le Guin's influence on how fantasy thinks about magic is hard to overstate. 5. [Jennell Jaquays](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/jennell-jaquays/) — A student fanzine editor in 1976, Jennell Jaquays went on to design some of the most admired early adventures, among them Caverns of Thracia (1979). Her looping, many-pathed dungeons gave designers the term 'Jaquaying,' and she later worked in video games. 6. [Jean Wells](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/jean-wells/) — Jean Wells joined TSR in 1979 as its first woman designer, edited The Keep on the Borderlands and started the 'Sage Advice' column. Her module Palace of the Silver Princess was pulped on release over its artwork, one of TSR's most notorious episodes. 7. [Roberta Williams](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/roberta-williams/) — With her husband Ken, Roberta Williams founded the company that became Sierra On-Line. Her Mystery House (1980) is described as the first graphic adventure, and King's Quest (1984) let players steer an animated knight through a storybook kingdom, a landmark of the adventure game. 8. [Margaret Weis](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/margaret-weis/) — Hired by TSR as a book editor in 1983, Margaret Weis wrote the Dragonlance Chronicles with Tracy Hickman. The novels turned a game campaign into a best-selling trilogy and made game fiction a genre of its own. 9. [Lorraine Williams](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/lorraine-williams/) — Lorraine Williams took control of TSR from Gary Gygax in 1985 and ran it through the second edition of AD&D and a boom in campaign settings, before selling the struggling company to Wizards of the Coast in 1997. Her record is debated, but she ran D&D for a dozen years. 10. [Rieko Kodama](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/rieko-kodama/) — Credited in her early games as 'Phoenix Rie' because Sega did not then allow real names, Rieko Kodama was the main artist of Phantasy Star (1987), directed Phantasy Star IV and produced Skies of Arcadia. She received a Game Developers Choice Pioneer Award. 11. [Rebecca Heineman](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/rebecca-heineman/) — A national video game champion in 1980, Rebecca Heineman co-founded Interplay in 1983, designed The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate and Dragon Wars, and ported many games. She married fellow stop Jennell Jaquays. 12. [Robin Hobb](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/robin-hobb/) — After years as Megan Lindholm, Robin Hobb published Assassin's Apprentice in 1995. Her Farseer books traded battlefield spectacle for intimate first-person character study and grew into the sixteen-book Realm of the Elderlings. 13. [J. K. Rowling](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/j-k-rowling/) — Harry Potter (1997–2007) became the best-selling book series in history and brought a generation of young readers into fantasy. Her publisher suggested initials so boys would not be put off by a female author, the same choice C. L. Moore had made for different reasons. 14. [Fourth Wing](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/fourth-wing/) — End with the present. Sarah J. Maas's A Court of Thorns and Roses (2015) and Rebecca Yarros's Fourth Wing (2023) made romantasy the biggest phenomenon in 2020s publishing, written for and largely by women. ## Facts - Anne McCaffrey became the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction, in 1968, for the Pern novella 'Weyr Search.' - Jean Wells, TSR's first woman designer, wrote the first 'Sage Advice' rules column, in The Dragon #31 (November 1979). - Roberta Williams's Mystery House (1980) is described as the first graphic adventure game. - Rebecca Heineman won the national Space Invaders tournament in 1980, becoming the first champion of a national U.S. video game tournament. --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.