Tracy Raye Hickman (born November 26, 1955)[1] is an American fantasy author and designer of games and virtual reality (VR) experiences.

He also designed and created role playing game material while working for TSR and has cowritten novels with his wife, Laura Hickman.

[3] Hickman had many jobs before joining TSR, Inc. (the publisher of Dungeons & Dragons) in 1982, including working as a supermarket stocker, a movie projectionist, a theater manager, a glass worker, a television assistant director, and a drill press operator in a genealogy center.

[10]: 15  In 1981, Tracy entered into a business arrangement to produce an arcade immersion game,[5] but his associate disappeared, leaving the Hickmans with $30,000 in debt.

[10]: 16  Harold Johnson was the first to join the project and brought it to upper management, and talked Hickman into expanding further upon his idea of only a trilogy of three adventures.

[1] Jean Black, the managing editor of TSR's book department, assigned Hickman and Weis to write first the novel Dragons of Autumn Twilight and then continue with the rest of the Dragonlance Chronicles series.

[14] In March 2019, Hickman and Weis were contracted by Wizards of the Coast, the new publisher of Dungeons and Dragons, to write another installment of the Dragonlance series.

Wizards of the Coast then put a stop to the project, and Hickman and Weis responded by suing the publisher for breach of contract[18] on October 16, 2020,[14] requesting $10 million in compensation.

[10]: 29 Tracy and Laura Hickman have been publishing game designs together for over 30 years,[2] including the popular and innovative Dungeons & Dragons Ravenloft module in 1983.

[24] For the Starshield Project, Hickman and Weis produced the Del Rey Books-published novels Sentinels (later retitled Mantle of Kendis-Dai) and Nightsword.

[6] In the late 1990s, Larry Elmore asked Weis and Hickman to write novels for his fantasy world of Loerem, and they agreed to produce the Sovereign Stone trilogy.

[10]: 351  With encouragement from Peter Adkison, Wizards of the Coast published a new trilogy of Dragonlance novels by Weis and Hickman called War of Souls, beginning with Dragons of a Fallen Sun (2000).

[25] Hickman was inducted into the Origins Hall of Fame in 2002,[2] recognized in part for "one game line turned literary sensation: Dragonlance".

[26] Tracy and Laura Hickman wrote the adventure Out in the Black (2006) for the Serenity Role Playing Game for Margaret Weis Productions.

Written with his son Curtis Hickman and illustrated by online comic artist Howard Tayler, the book calls itself "the cure for the common game".

[27] The Hickmans have hosted "Killer Breakfasts", popular role-playing game experiences, at Gen Con conventions in various locations.

[3] While primarily known for his work in epic fantasy, Hickman once wrote a Batman novel for DC Comics titled Wayne of Gotham (June 2012).

[37] In August 2008, it was announced that Hickman would travel to the International Space Station, where his digitized DNA and samples of his writing would be stored in a capsule as part of "Operation Immortality", sponsored by NCSoft.

"[38] On March 15, 2013,[39] Hickman joined Richard Garriott's team as lead story designer for Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues.

[40] Shroud of the Avatar[41] is the "spiritual successor" to Garriott's previous work in the fantasy role-playing genre, the Ultima series of video games.

[42] On March 16, 2016, Hickman announced that he had become the Director of Story Development at The Void,[43] a virtual reality gaming experience franchise, working with his son Curtis in designing interactive adventures.

[45] He has stated that he likes writing in the fantasy genre because it "is about ethical and moral choices—the questions of good and evil" and because it reflects "the story of all of us on our journey through mortality and our seeking to return home to Christ".