Tom Dowd

Thomas John "Tom" Dowd (October 20, 1925 – October 27, 2002) was an American recording engineer and producer for Atlantic Records. He was credited with innovating the multitrack recording method. Dowd worked on a veritable "who's who" of recordings that encompassed blues, jazz, pop, rock and soul records.

Career

Early years

Born in Manhattan, Dowd grew up playing piano, tuba, violin, and string bass. His mother was an opera singer and his father was a concertmaster.

Dowd graduated from Stuyvesant High School in June 1942 at the age of 16. He continued his musical education at City College of New York. Dowd also played in a band at New York's Columbia University, where he became a conductor. He was also employed at the physics laboratory of Columbia University.

Military work

At age 18, Dowd was drafted into the military with the rank of sergeant. He continued his work in physics at Columbia University. He worked on the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb. The purpose of the work was unclear until 1945. Dowd planned to obtain a degree in nuclear physics when he completed his work on the Manhattan Project. However, because his work was top secret, the university did not recognize it, and Dowd decided not to continue, since the university's curriculum would not have been able to further his physics education. His research for the military was more advanced than academic courses at that time.

Tom Dowd (game designer)

Thomas A. Dowd is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.

Career

Thomas Dowd was one of the writers who supported Fantasy Games Unlimited's role-playing game, Villains and Vigilantes. The Shadowrun 2nd Edition rules from FASA, by Dowd with Paul Hume and Bob Charrette, won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Rules of 1992. In 1990, Dowd met Peter Adkison, who was trying to figure out how the gaming industry worked, and Dowd told Adkison to go to the Gama Trade Show. After Jonathan Tweet left White Wolf Publishing for Lion Rampant, Mark Rein-Hagen turned to Dowd for his new game about vampires. Dowd refined the dice pool system from Shadowrun for White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade (1991). Dowd worked with Rein-Hagen to adapt the core mechanics from his previous game success to use d10 instead of d6 for calculating probability.

References

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