Oeva Jean Wells Koebernick (July 25, 1955 – January 25, 2012) was an American writer, artist, and editor in the field of role-playing games.
Her career at TSR stalled after she wrote a controversial Dungeons & Dragons adventure module that was withdrawn on the eve of publication and subsequently rewritten.
[3] She was fascinated by the game, and once back on campus, she quickly ordered her own set of the rules, and joined a local group called the "D&D Gang of Statesmen Complex".
After some back-and-forth correspondence with Gary Gygax during the fall of 1978, she flew to TSR headquarters in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in January 1979 for a three-day visit.
In addition, she also contributed interior art for the adventure module Lost Tamaochan, as well as artwork to the fourth printing of the original Monster Manual, including drawings of an eye of the deep, a giant Sumatran rat, and violet fungi.
She was also the editor of Gary Gygax's module B2 Keep on the Borderlands, her bestselling piece of design work, since it was included in later printings of the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set,[7] which sold over one million copies.
"[9] During the editorial process, Wells wanted to replace artwork by Erol Otus that had transformed her "ubues"—new three-headed monsters—into hermaphrodites whose heads were caricatures of TSR staffers and management.
Following the Silver Princess incident, Wells wanted to write another module, but in her words, "nobody would touch my game ideas with a ten-foot pole.
[2] The piece of work Wells was best known for, the orange version of Palace of the Silver Princess, is an extremely rare item, since most copies were destroyed before its release.
One copy rated in VF/SW condition was sold at auction in March 2008 for $3050, making it the highest price paid for a single non-unique D&D module.