John Scott Tynes (born 1971) is an American writer best known for his work on role-playing games such as Unknown Armies , Delta Green , Puppetland , and for his company, Tynes Cowan Corporation. Under its imprint, Pagan Publishing, Tynes Cowan Corp. produces third-party books for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game under license from Chaosium as well as fiction and non-fiction books under its imprint, Armitage House.
John Tynes founded Pagan Publishing in 1990 at the age of 19 in Columbia, Missouri, with a volunteer staff. [1] : 244 Tynes founded Pagan's The Unspeakable Oath magazine. [2] Dennis Detwiller reached out to Tynes after seeing an issue of The Unspeakable Oath, and then began volunteering with Pagan. [1] : 244 Tynes designed the board game Creatures & Cultists . [2] Tynes began working at Wizards of the Coast in May 1994, when Jonathan Tweet was the new role-playing game department lead. [1] : 245 Tynes was the first content lead on the Magic: The Gathering trading card game. [2] Tynes decided to move Pagan Publishing to Seattle that year, and the company became incorporated, and after the move many of the projects Tynes envisioned for the company materialized. [1] : 245 Tynes resigned from his position at Wizards of the Coast in June 1995, disliking their new corporate branding ideals, and he moved on to work at Daedalus Games. [1] : 246 Daedalus hired Tynes to work as their role-playing game line editor. [1] : 256 Tynes, Detwiller and Adam Scott Glancy developed the Delta Green (1996) supplement to Call of Cthulhu , and they expanded their setting in 1999 with Delta Green: Countdown . [1] : 246–247 Tynes continued to work for Daedalus Games until they ceased production in 1997. [1] : 248
Tynes met Greg Stolze when they worked on the supplement "Wildest Dreams" (1993) for Over the Edge . [1] : 255 Tynes had been developing the background for the role-playing game that would become Unknown Armies since 1994, and Stolze helped write the mechanics for the game. [1] : 255 Tynes took Unknown Armies to Archon Games even though Atlas Games had expressed interest, until Tynes and Stolze learned that founder Lisa Manns was shutting Archon down and she returned the game rights to them; they sought a new publisher, and so Atlas Games published the game in January 1999. [1] : 255 Atlas hired Tynes in 1999 as the line editor to work on Unknown Armies. [1] : 255
Tynes designed Puppetland (1999) for Hogshead Publishing. [1] : 306 Tynes and Robin Laws wrote a new version of the Feng Shui role-playing game for Atlas Games, published in 1999. [1] : 256 Tynes was the original line editor for Feng Shui. [2] Tynes wrote the adventure "Three Days to Kill" (2000) which Atlas published using their Penumbra d20 brand, and the adventure was the first printed d20 product to ever go on sale. [1] : 257–258 Tynes designed the board game The Hills Rise Wild! [2]
Tynes told his partners on January 1, 2001, that he was leaving the role-playing game industry, expecting to be fully out of the field by 2002, and Adam Scott Glancy became the new Pagan president. [1] : 248 Wizards of the Coast contacted Tynes with an offer to write background material for their Call of Cthulhu version using the d20 System, so he accepted and with the help of writers from Pagan he was able to produce the material by his 2002 deadline. [1] : 248
Following the end of Unknown Armies in 2003, [3] Tynes withdrew from the tabletop gaming industry in order to pursue other interests, particularly film [4] and video games. [5] He was the producer of Pirates of the Burning Sea , a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Flying Lab Software, [2] and published in 2008 by Sony Online Entertainment. After its launch, he joined Microsoft Game Studios to work on various Xbox Live Arcade titles including South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play! , [6] Toy Soldiers , [7] and Full House Poker [8] as a producer and game designer.
Tynes has written about games for Salon , The Escapist, Pyramid , X360 UK, and The Stranger . [2]
Delta Green is a contemporary era setting for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game created by Adam Scott Glancy, Dennis Detwiller, and John Scott Tynes, a.k.a. the Delta Green Partnership, of the Seattle gaming house Pagan Publishing. The setting first appeared in a 1992 RPG scenario and revolves around a secretive organization tasked with protecting the United States from paranormal and alien threats. Delta Green combines the classic 1920s Cthulhu Mythos of H.P. Lovecraft with modern conspiracy fiction.
Atlas Games is a company which publishes role-playing games, board games and card games. Its founder and current president is John Nephew.
Godlike: Superhero Roleplaying in a World on Fire, 1936-1946 is an alternate history World War II era superhero role-playing game, created by Dennis Detwiller and Greg Stolze. Godlike was originally produced by Dennis Detwiller and John Scott Tynes of Pagan Publishing, and published by Hawthorn Hobgoblynn Press. It is currently published by Arc Dream Publishing. Godlike is the first game released using the One-Roll Engine (O.R.E.) gaming system, a dice pool system where matched die results determine success.
Kenneth Hite is a writer and role-playing game designer. Hite is the author of Trail of Cthulhu and Night's Black Agents role-playing games, and lead designer of the 5th edition of Vampire: the Masquerade.
Greg Stolze is an American game designer, writer and novelist, whose work has mainly focused on writing for role-playing games and related intellectual properties.
Arc Dream Publishing is a small role-playing game publishing company founded in 2002 by Pagan Publishing veteran Dennis Detwiller and editor Shane Ivey after their first roleplaying game Godlike: Superhero Roleplaying in a World on Fire, 1936-1946 was published by Hobgoblynn Press.
Pagan Publishing is a role-playing game publishing company founded by John Scott Tynes in 1990. It began by publishing a Call of Cthulhu role-playing game fanzine, The Unspeakable Oath. In 1994, the company moved from Columbia, Missouri to Seattle, Washington where it incorporated. The staff at this time included John Tynes as editor-in-chief, John H. Crowe III as business manager, Dennis Detwiller as art director, and Brian Appleton and Chris Klepac as editors. Tynes, Detwiller, and Adam Scott Glancy released the Delta Green modern Call of Cthulhu campaign setting in 1996. Pagan has released multiple other Call of Cthulhu products, including a foray into card games with Creatures & Cultists and miniature games with The Hills Rise Wild!.
Dennis Detwiller is an American video game designer for Hothead Games and a role-playing game designer, writer and artist.
Adam Scott Glancy is an author and game designer known for co-developing Delta Green, as well as penning game settings, source books, short fiction, and essays related to the H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos.
John A. Nephew is an American game designer, who has worked primarily on role-playing games.
Jeff Tidball is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.
Blair E. Reynolds is a fantasy artist and writer whose work has appeared in various tabletop role-playing games and periodicals.
John H. Crowe III is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.
Shane Ivey is an American game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.
Geoffrey C. Grabowski is a role-playing game designer and writer, known primarily as line developer for the 1st edition of the Exalted RPG for White Wolf games from 2001 through 2006. He was described as the "guiding force" of the first edition.
The Unspeakable Oath is a game magazine that was published by Pagan Publishing from 1990 to 2001, and later by Arc Dream Publishing starting in 2010.
The Golden Dawn is a Horror Fiction supplement published under license by Pagan Publishing in 1996 for Chaosium's horror role-playing game Call of Cthulhu.
Delta Green: Countdown is a 1999 role-playing game supplement published by Pagan Publishing for Call of Cthulhu.