Curtiss Murphy
Curtiss Murphy is the namesake of Pucumir Thryss, a Jabba's Palace card whose name uses exactly the letters of his.[1] In 1998 he was a ranked Star Wars CCG tournament player in Virginia,[2] and he later said he had been a playtester for Decipher.[3]
Star Wars CCG
In May 1998 his staff home page at Appropriate Technologies, Inc. in Chesapeake, Virginia, called him "a very competitive player of the Star Wars collectible card game" and said that "through well more than 100 sanctioned games I have gotten myself into the top 30 players in the world (currently there are over 20,350 ranked players)".[2] On 1 April 1998 he posted the deck Ties in the Dark to Decipher's swccg-discussion list, writing that it had beaten SITDD "2 out of 3 times in sanctioned play".[4]
In a December 2015 episode of his podcast Game Design Zen, Murphy said that because Decipher was based in his home area on the east coast of Virginia, he got to know the company and became a playtester, helping "to improve the designs of their card game". He said that for an expansion with many characters who had no official names, Decipher "took some of the names of the senior play testers, made anagrams of them", and that Pucumir Thryss was his.[3] No Decipher source records why the card carries his name, and the fan anagram list leaves his relation to Decipher as "????".[1]
Career
Murphy studied at Virginia Tech.[5] In April 1998 he signed his posts as a senior software engineer at Appropriate Technologies, Inc.,[4] and by May 1998 he was the company's Director of Product Development.[2] He later worked on training games and game technology, writing the chapter "Believable Dead Reckoning for Networked Games" in Game Engine Gems 2 (2011), and in July 2015 he started the Game Design Zen podcast.[5] He became Vice President of Engineering at a major mobile game publisher,[6] MobilityWare in Irvine, California,[5] and taught game design at the Laguna College of Art and Design.[6][7] He is the author of the management book What Makes Great Managers Great.[6]
Anagrams
- Pucumir Thryss — Curtiss Murphy (relation marked ???? on the fan list)[1]
Miscellaneous decklists
| Date | Format | Title | Side |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 April 1998 | Premiere - Cloud City (from the card pool) | Ties in the Dark[4] | Dark |
Photographs
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Curtiss Murphy.
See also
- Squadron Members · Anagrams · Creators of SWCCG · Radio Free Decipher
- Miscellaneous Decklists · Decipher swccg-discussion list archive
- Corellian Engineering Corporation (fan site)
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Anagramed Decipherians at oocities.org (GeoCities mirror). Preserved copy: Internet Archive, 8 October 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 The Murphy Home Page, Appropriate Technologies, Inc. staff page (last revised 15 May 1998). Preserved copy: Internet Archive
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 015 : Failure, Taste, and the Closet Star Wars Geek – the Season 1 Finale, Game Design Zen podcast, Curtiss Murphy (15 December 2015), Zen Moment, 25:29–28:18 (show notes: "Star Wars – Pucumir Thryss – Anagram of me!"). Preserved copy: Internet Archive
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 swccg-discussion message #36982, Curtiss Murphy (1 April 1998). Preserved copy: Internet Archive
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Curtiss Murphy, LinkedIn profile, read 27 October 2026 (public view: "MobilityWare"; Education: "Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University"; "Irvine, California, United States"; Publications: "Believable Dead Reckoning for Networked Games", Game Engine Gems 2, March 1, 2011, and "Designing and developing effective training games for the US Navy", M&S Journal, Apr 2012; Projects: "The Game Design Zen Podcast", Jul 2015). Preserved copy: Internet Archive
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Curtiss Murphy, Scribe Media author page (author of What Makes Great Managers Great; "Vice President of Engineering", "Professor of Game Design at Laguna College of Art and Design"). Preserved copy: Internet Archive
- ↑ Curtiss Murphy, Laguna College of Art and Design faculty page ("Adjunct Faculty", Game Development Faculty). Preserved copy: Internet Archive