Ken St. Andre | |
---|---|
![]() St. Andre (right) at his residence in Phoenix, Arizona, with friend Bernard Assaf (left), 2020 | |
Born | Kenneth Eugene St. Andre April 28, 1947 Ogden, Utah, U.S. |
Nickname | "Ken", "Trollgod", "Trollgodfather" |
Occupation | Game designer, writer |
Period | 1975–present |
Genre | Role-playing games, fantasy |
Spouse | Catherine (div. 2012) |
![]() |
Kenneth Eugene St. Andre (born April 28, 1947 [1] ) is an American fantasy game designer and author, best known for creating the fantasy role-playing game, Tunnels & Trolls (T&T), and the computer role-playing game, Wasteland .
In 1975, St. Andre wrote rules for a fantasy role-playing game he called Tunnels & Trolls (T&T) as a rebellion against the recently published Dungeons & Dragons which he felt was heavily dependent on the use of miniatures, with which he had no experience. [2] In the following decades he published several editions of, and adventures for, T&T, including rules and adventures for a monsters-as-heroes variation named Monsters! Monsters! (M!M!).
St. Andre maintained a 40+ year long professional partnership with Rick Loomis, founder of game publisher Flying Buffalo, which published various Tunnels & Trolls editions and products starting in 1975 and until Flying Buffalo's sale in 2021. He continues to write fiction and gaming materials published under the Trollhalla Press Unlimited [3] imprint, for items produced with his game design partner and artist Steve Crompton, and under the Trollgodfather Press imprint, for everything else St. Andre publishes.
St. Andre has been an active member of The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America since 1989. In June 2018, The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design inducted St. Andre into its Hall of Fame. [4]
Ken St. Andre married once and has two children. He currently lives in Sun City, Arizona. [5]
Ken St. Andre first saw the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game in April 1975, and after concluding that the rules did not make sense, he designed his own simpler game. [6] : 35 St. Andre ultimately called his game Tunnels & Trolls , and printed 100 copies of the first edition in 1975. [6] : 35 [7] He asked Rick Loomis of Flying Buffalo to sell 40 copies of Tunnels & Trolls at Origins in July 1975. When those copies sold out, Flying Buffalo acquired the publishing rights to the game and published St. Andre's second edition of T&T in December 1975. [6] : 35–36 In addition to writing the game rules, Ken was one of the creators of solitaire adventures which allowed players to experience the game without a game master or judge. St. Andre has written many modules and stand alone adventures for Tunnels & Trolls, including the gamebooks Deathtrap Equalizer Dungeon and Naked Doom in 1977 after Loomis's own Buffalo Castle . [6] : 36
Flying Buffalo published several editions of T&T throughout the years, all written by St. Andre, including 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 5.5th [6] : 41 editions between 1975 and 2005. Fiery Dragon Productions published a 30th anniversary 7th edition and 7.5th editions in 2005 and 2008, respectively, skipping an official 6th edition due to controversy surrounding a fan-made, self-proclaimed 6th edition. [8] St. Andre collaborated with an independent French publisher on an 8th edition in 2012. In 2015 Flying Buffalo released a Kickstarter-funded Deluxe Edition of T&T, authored by St. Andre, Steve Crompton, Elizabeth Danforth and James "Bear" Peters, known as "The Fellowship of the Troll". [9] As of 2024, Deluxe T&T stands as the latest edition of T&T published.
St. Andre designed Starfaring , published by Flying Buffalo in 1976 as the first science fiction role-playing game ever published. [6] : 36
His third game, Monsters! Monsters! , was published by Metagaming Concepts in 1976; Flying Buffalo acquired the rights to publish a second printing in 1979, [6] : 36 although St. Andre maintained ownership of the game.
Following the death of Rick Loomis in 2019, St. Andre released a 2nd edition of Monsters! Monsters! with expanded rules along with an updated The Toughest Dungeon in the World adventure module, both published by Trollhalla Press Unlimited in 2020. [10] St. Andre's aim was to separate M!M! from its parent game, Tunnels & Trolls. After the sale of Flying Buffalo and Tunnels & Trolls to Webbed Sphere in 2021, St. Andre moved the stories and characters still under his control to a new world named Zimrala with the release of Ken St. Andre's Monsterary of Zimrala in 2022. In 2023 he published an expanded 2.7th edition of Monsters! Monsters!, which moved the setting firmly into Zimrala. [11] [12]
He designed Chaosium's first licensed role-playing game, Stormbringer , in 1981, [6] : 85 and helped create its 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions.
With Liz Danforth and Michael Stackpole, St. Andre designed the post-apocalyptic computer role-playing game Wasteland , a game published by Interplay in 1988. [6] : 39 He rejoined Danforth and Stackpole as part of the design team of Wasteland 2, released in 2014.
In 1986, Ken was the first editor for a fan club newsletter based around the Adventure Construction Set video game, one of the rare cases of a professional designer leading gamer activities for another designer's game.
St. Andre was chosen by vote as a "famous game designer" to be featured as the king of spades in Flying Buffalo's 2014 Famous Game Designers Playing Card Deck. [13] [14]
In June 2018, The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design inducted St. Andre into its Hall of Fame. [15]
St. Andre currently lives in Sun City. [16] He previously lived in Phoenix, Arizona. [5] He has two children, a daughter, Jillian, and a son, James. On August 27, 2010, St. Andre retired after 36 years of service to the city of Phoenix as a public librarian. [17] [18]
Tunnels & Trolls is a fantasy role-playing game designed by Ken St. Andre and first published in 1975 by Flying Buffalo. The second modern role-playing game published, it was written by Ken St. Andre to be a more accessible alternative to Dungeons & Dragons and is suitable for solitaire, group, and play-by-mail gameplay.
Michael Austin Stackpole is an American science fiction and fantasy author best known for his Star Wars and BattleTech books. He was born in Wausau, Wisconsin, but raised in Vermont. He has a BA in history from the University of Vermont. From 1977 on, he worked as a designer of role-playing games for various gaming companies, and wrote dozens of magazine articles with limited distribution within the industry. He lives in Scottsdale, Arizona.
David Lance Arneson was an American game designer best known for co-developing the first published role-playing game (RPG), Dungeons & Dragons, with Gary Gygax, in the early 1970s. Arneson's early work was fundamental to the role-playing game (RPG) genre, pioneering devices now considered to be archetypical, such as cooperative play to develop a storyline instead of individual competitive play to "win" and adventuring in dungeon, town, and wilderness settings as presented by a neutral judge who doubles as the voice and consciousness of all characters aside from the player characters.
Flying Buffalo Inc. (FBI) is a game company with a line of role playing games, card games, and other gaming materials. The company's founder, Rick Loomis, began game publishing with Nuclear Destruction, a play-by-mail game which started the professional PBM industry in the United States. Loomis added games and players while introducing computer moderation and soon incorporated into the company Flying Buffalo Inc. The company published games in other genres, including card games such as Nuclear War and a role playing game called Tunnels & Trolls, a game similar to Dungeons & Dragons. Flying Buffalo acquired its 10,000th customer account number in 1980 and reached its largest size of 21 employees in 1983.
Empire of the Petal Throne is a fantasy role-playing game designed by M. A. R. Barker, based on his Tékumel fictional universe. It was self-published in 1974, then published by TSR, Inc. in 1975. It was one of the first tabletop role-playing games, along with Dungeons & Dragons, and was the first published RPG game setting. Over the subsequent thirty years, several new games were published based on the Tékumel setting; however, to date, none have met with commercial success. While published as fantasy, the game is sometimes classified as science fantasy or, debatably, as science fiction.
Buffalo Castle is a gamebook first published by Flying Buffalo in 1976 (ISBN 0-940244-01-2). Using the Tunnels & Trolls role-playing system, Buffalo Castle consists of 150 paragraphs in A4 format.
James Michael Ward III was an American game designer and fantasy author who worked for TSR, Inc. for more than 20 years, most notably on the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. He wrote various books relating to Dungeons & Dragons, including guidebooks such as Deities & Demigods, and novels including Pool of Radiance, based on the computer game of the same name.
Catalyst is a series of fantasy role-playing game supplements created by Flying Buffalo as a series of game aides that could be used with any medieval fantasy-themed role-playing game system. The first supplement, Grimtooth's Traps, was released in 1981. Numerous other Catalyst books were produced, including the Citybook series, seven Traps books, Treasure Vault, and the Lejentia campaign setting. The latest, City of the Gods Map Pack was produced in 2011.
Starfaring was the first science fiction role-playing game (RPG) published, released by Flying Buffalo in August 1976. Although it was the first to market, it didn't attract an audience, and was soon superseded by the much more popular Traveller published the following year.
Ulrich Kiesow was one of the co-founders of Fantasy Productions (FanPro) in 1983, together with Werner Fuchs and Hans Joachim Alpers. He was the translator of the first German language editions of both Tunnels & Trolls, which was the first German language RPG rule book, and Dungeons & Dragons.
Elizabeth T. Danforth is an illustrator, editor, writer, and scenario designer for role-playing games and video games. She has worked in the game industry continuously since the mid 1970s.
Steven S. Crompton is a Canadian-born artist, author and designer who has worked in the role-playing and comic genres since 1981. In the gaming industry he is best known as the artist for the Grimtooth's Traps books as well as other Catalyst role-playing game supplements, Tunnels & Trolls and the Nuclear War card game.
Rick Loomis was an American game designer, most notable as the founder of game publisher Flying Buffalo, which he managed until his death.
Thieves' World is a role-playing game supplement published by Chaosium in 1981, based on the Thieves' World series of novels. It was notable for including rules and statistics allowing for its use with nine different fantasy and science-fiction RPG gaming systems.
Monsters! Monsters! is a role-playing game first published by Metagaming Concepts in 1976.
Character race is a descriptor used to describe the various sapient species and beings that make up the setting in modern fantasy and science fiction. In many tabletop role-playing games and video games, players may choose to be one of these creatures when creating their player character (PC) or encounter them as a non-player character (NPC). "People" is to be taken in the broader sense, and may encompass ethnic groups, species, nationality or social groups.
The Toughest Dungeon in the World is a 1980 role-playing game solo adventure for Tunnels & Trolls.
Trajan's Treacherous Trap is a play-by-mail game that was published by Flying Buffalo in 1979.
MetaArcade was a Seattle, Washington area-based independent game production company founded in 2016 by David Reid, focused on interactive fiction adventures for mobile platforms.
Ken St. Andre is an American fantasy game designer and author, best known for creating the fantasy role-playing game, Tunnels & Trolls (T&T), and the computer role-playing game, Wasteland.