Tom Fontaine

Tom Fontaine was a Magic playtester, designer and developer.

Biography

In the late 1980s, Tom was one of the playtesters from the University of Pennsylvania that Richard Garfield tagged to help get the Alpha card set (and game rules) ready for public consumption. He also provided card texts for Alpha. He devised the notion of naming each generic creature with an evocative adjective. "Tom sent me a message with about two dozen names," said Richard Garfield. "Samite Healer, Drudge Skeletons, Scathe Zombies, Scryb Sprites, Sengir Vampire -- I used most of them. That kicked the `adjective thing' into gear."

Playtesting

• Alpha

Designing

• Revised Edition
• Fourth Edition

Developing

• Revised Edition
• Fourth Edition