Richard Channing Garfield (born June 26, 1963) is an American mathematician, inventor, and game designer. Garfield created Magic: The Gathering, which is considered to be the first collectible card game (CCG). Magic debuted in 1993, and its success spawned many imitations.
Garfield oversaw the successful growth of Magic and followed it with other game designs. Included in these are MetaZoo, Keyforge, Netrunner, BattleTech Collectible Card Game, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, Star Wars Trading Card Game, The Great Dalmuti, Artifact, and board games including RoboRally, King of Tokyo, and Bunny Kingdom. He also created a variation of the card game Hearts called Complex Hearts. Garfield first became passionate about games when he played the roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons,
Early life, family and education
Garfield was born in Philadelphia and spent his childhood in many locations throughout the world as a result of his father's work in architecture. His family eventually settled in Oregon when he was twelve. Garfield is the great-great-grandson of U.S. President James A. Garfield and his grand-uncle Samuel Fay invented the paper clip. He is also the nephew of Fay Jones, who, already an established artist, illustrated one Magic card for him.
While Garfield always had an interest in puzzles and games, his passion was kick-started when he was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons. Garfield designed his first game when he was 13.
In 1985, Garfield received a Bachelor of Science degree in computational mathematics. After college, he joined Bell Laboratories, but soon after decided to continue his education and attended the University of Pennsylvania, studying combinatorial mathematics for his PhD. Shortly thereafter, he became a Visiting Professor of mathematics at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.
Game design career
Precursors and development of Magic: the Gathering
While searching for a publisher for RoboRally, which he designed in 1985, Peter Adkison of Wizards of the Coast expressed interest in a fast-playing game with minimal equipment, something that would be popular at a game convention. Adkison asked if Garfield could develop a game with lower production costs than RoboRally, with the idea of making such a game more portable and easy to bring to conventions; Garfield thought of an idea that came from combining a card game with collecting baseball cards and spent a week creating a full game from that rough idea.
Wizards of the Coast
Magic: The Gathering launched in 1993. Playtesters began independently developing expansion packs, which were then passed to Garfield for his final edit. More recently, he has created the board games Pecking Order (2006) and Rocketville (2006). The latter was published by Avalon Hill, a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast. He has shifted more of his attention to video games, having worked on the design and development of Schizoid and Spectromancer as part of Three Donkeys LLC.
GameQbator Labs & MetaZoo
In late 2024, Garfield was announced as the lead game designer for GameQbator Labs, a startup that acquired the intellectual property rights to the trading card game MetaZoo following its bankruptcy. Garfield and his team completely overhauled the game's mechanics for a revamped relaunch in 2025.
Games designed
thumb|right|A game of Treasure Hunter in progress
A partial list of games designed by Garfield:
Card games:
- Turbo Hearts (1989)
- The Great Dalmuti (1995)
- Dilbert: Corporate Shuffle (1997)
- Twitch (1998)
- Ghooost! (2013)
- SpyNet (2016)
- Mindbug (2021)
- Creature Feature (2022)
Collectible card games:
- Magic: The Gathering (1993)
- Vampire: The Eternal Struggle (1994)
- Netrunner (1996)
- BattleTech (1996)
- Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1998)
- Xena: Warrior Princess (1998)
- C-23 (1998)
- Star Wars Trading Card Game (2002)
- MetaZoo (2025 relaunch)
Board games:
- RoboRally (1994)
- Filthy Rich (1998)
- Pecking Order (2006)
- Rocketville (2006)
- Stonehenge (2007)
- King of Tokyo (2011) and spinoffs:
- King of New York (2014)
- King of Monster Island (2022)
- King of Tokyo Duel (2024)
- Treasure Hunter (2015)
- Bunny Kingdom (2017)
- The Hunger (2021)
- Founders of Reyvick (2024)
- Magical Athlete (2025)
Other games:
- Spectromancer (2008), online card game
- Schizoid (2008), console action game
- Kard Combat (2011), iOS Game
- SolForge (2012), online digital card game
- Artifact (2018), digital trading card game
- KeyForge (2018), unique deck game
- Half Truth (2019), trivia board game co-created with Ken Jennings
- Carnival of Monsters (2019), Kickstarted (failed) and eventually released through AMIGO Games
- Roguebook (2021), roguelike deck-building game
- Dungeons, Dice & Danger (2022), roll-and-write game
- Chaos Agents (2024), an auto-battler royale released through Garfield’s game lab, Popularium
- Vanguard Exiles (2025), a two-player, competitive auto-battler game released on Steam