Background
Heard was born in Nice, France on March 9, 1957 to his French mother and United States Navy officer father. "I grew up in France, England, Morocco, Washington, District of Columbia, and Dallas, all before I started school.
Heard was born in Nice, France on March 9, 1957 to his French mother and United States Navy officer father. "I grew up in France, England, Morocco, Washington, District of Columbia, and Dallas, all before I started school.
Returning to Nice for his education, he graduated from the lycée (high school) in 1977. "I got passionately interested in wargames when I was attending the Lycéest There were, of course, no French editions of these games at the time, so we all had to learn the American versions." Heard loved to travel, so he studied hotel management and worked as a concierge in both France and San Francisco.
I speak French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and a little German," he said. primarily in Avalon Hill games like Kriegspiel, Luftwaffe, Third Reich, and Panzer Leader—the classics. While living in San Francisco Heard discovered the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Secretariat, and when he returned to Paris he joined his first regular Dungeons & Dragons (Doctorate&Doctorate) group. "I started writing articles on Doctorate&Doctorate and AD&Doctorate for a French gaming magazine, and there learned that TSR was looking for a translator to translate the games into French.
Well, I spoke and wrote both languages, and I knew the games, so I wrote a letter to Gary Gygax.
By a coincidence, he was just about to come to Paris on business, and so we set up a meeting. I must have done Oklahoma, because he offered me the job." TSR hired Heard in 1983.
After a few months of doing translation work in Nice, TSR moved the translating job to the home office in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, so Heard moved to the United States. After working for two years as a translator (which also included coordinating outside translators who turned the games into German, Italian, and Spanish), Heard transferred to TSR"s Games Division in July 1985 as an Acquisitions Editor, working with Jon Pickens.
When Pickens was promoted to Editor of Strategy & Tactics, Heard became Games Acquisitions Coordinator, in charge of contracting freelance writers.
Heard also did some game design, including adventure modules CM7, Tree of Life. M1, Into the Maelstrom. And co-authorship of DL12, Dragons of Faith.
In 2013, Heard decided to self-produce The World of Calidar, a completely new setting with no reference to a specific ruleset, but with some flavor similar to Mystara and the Princess Arkansas