Stephen L. Kling, Jr., Founder and President of THGC Publishing
Stephen L. Kling, Jr. earned his B.S. degree from the University of Missouri at Columbia and his M.S. and J. D. degrees from St Louis University. A practicing attorney and lifelong student of history, he founded The Historical Game Company, LLC in 2014 to publish historical games often on little known events. As the company expanded to book publishing in 2015, it established a more comprehensive business name of THGC Publishing.
Prior to forming his own company, Mr. Kling was engaged to do development work and consulting for other historical game companies. He has also designed games for museums in connection with special exhibits. His games designs are meant to be low to moderate complexity with lots of historical theming and playable in 90 minutes or less. The intent is to allow players to explore and learn about tactics, problem solving and history. Most games provide both players with equal chances of winning. The games always contain a further reading section to hopefully stimulate interest in the underlying history.
For his first book, he co-authored and edited The Great Northern War Compendium in 2015, a two-volume work with 42 other authors from eleven different countries. In 2017, he co-authored and edited The Battle of St. Louis, the Attack on Cahokia, and the American Revolution in the West with Kristine Sjostrom from Seville, Spain. That book was made into an award-winning documentary (more information on this website under House of Thunder). In 2021, he released Cavalry in the Wilderness a groundbreaking book covering little known cavalry units in the western theater of the American Revolutionary War. In 2022 he released The American Revolutionary War in West, which he co-authored and edited with several authors from the US and Spain which had been held for release in conjunction with the opening of a major new museum exhibit based on that book. Mr. Kling was a co-curator of that exhibit. The same year he released James Colbert and His Chickasaw Legacy, covering the life of loyalist James Colbert who is the ancestor of many present day Chickasaw tribal members. Mr. Kling is a frequent speaker on his book topics and on historical game design.
In the last half of 2022 and for 2023, Mr. Kling has focused on publishing historical wargames, many of which were designed over the last two decades and especially during the lockdowns of Covid. For his game topics, he sometimes takes requests or receives encouragement from historical groups, museums, professors and foreign gaming groups. For example, most recently, the Wargame Board Game Community Thailand has provided encouragement for a game on the first siege of Ayutthaya in 1548 and provided site and museum pictures. Many professors and other experts have been kind enough to correspond with Mr. Kling on fine points of the history being covered in a game design.
Mr. Kling also has published several articles on the history and purpose of Missouri’s land planning and zoning laws in the Journal of the Missouri Bar, and in 2001, he received the Excellence in Planning Award and the Dwight F. Davis Planning Award for his writings from the American Planning Association.