François Froideval

François Marcela-Froideval was born in 1958 and started writing around the age of 15. He studied law and literature, and started getting involved in mind games, war games and role-playing in France in the late 1970s with the Jeux Descartes club. He became an advisor, director and collector, and also contributed to the conception of the magazine Jeux de Stratégie. He worked for the magazine as a journalist and also created a dozen or so card games. He also founded the Federation of Strategic and Tactical Simulation Games, of which he is the president. On top of that, he founded the magazine Casus Belli, where he was editor-in-chief right up until he left for the USA in 1982. In the States, he became assistant to the president of the TSR (publisher of Dungeons and Dragons), and co-wrote, with Gary Gygax, several rulebooks for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Monster Manual II, and Oriental Adventures. In 1986, when he returned to France, he managed the distribution and translation of TSR products in France until 1989. Next, he went to work as an advisor for Infogrames video game publishing, and he also worked with Cyro Interactive, for whom he produced Dragon Lore, then Deo Gratias and then finally the strategy game Chroniques de la lune noire. All in all he created about 20 games, and multiple role-play scenarios. Alongside artist Olivier Ledroit, he wrote his first comics script in 1989, Chroniques de la lune noire (Europe Comics 2017, The Black Moon Chronicles), the first album of the new publishing house Zenda. A number of other series followed, and Froideval soon produced the sequel of Black Moon Chronicles with publisher Dargaud, first with Olivier Ledroit, and then Cyril Pontet. In November 2001 the first book of the series Les arcanes de la lune noire (Dargaud; The Black Moon Arcana, Europe Comics) was released, once again in collaboration with Ledroit. In parallel, Froideval continued to come up with new series, all while pursuing existing ones. A whole new arc of Black Moon Chronicles began in 2012, with Fabrice Angleraud doing the illustrations. Volume 17 was released in 2015 (2018 Europe Comics). Froideval now spends his time working with young artists on future comic books or series.