I'm an American freelance writer and game designer, currently living in my longtime home of Austin, Texas. My published work includes six books, three boardgames, nearly two dozen roleplaying game supplements, contributions to several computer games, technical manuals, the fantasy novel Cast of Fate (TSR, 1996), and over 250 articles, reviews, columns, and stories. I have written over 50 articles for the weekly online gaming magazine The Escapist; you can see a current list of my Escapist articles at the social networking site The Great Games Experiment.

Austin e-learning company Enspire Learning produces the computer version of my multiplayer business ethics and leadership simulation, the Executive Challenge. The Wall Street Journal covered the Executive Challenge in its May 10, 2004 issue.

I wrote the current edition of the classic 1980s roleplaying game PARANOIA, published in August 2004 by Mongoose Publishing, and I edited and packaged the first two years of the game's support line. Some of the PARANOIA writers, who formed a group called the Traitor Recycling Studio, have joined me to create a new humor website called Ninjalistics.

If you are a student working on a research project, you can go straight to my Frequently Asked Questions list.

I haven't updated this antiquated site in over a year, since I was living the expatriate life in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia (February to August 2007). This site now serves only to archive my fiction, lots of articles, material for roleplaying games, much fan writing, and my letters from Africa and elsewhere. Someday I may well overhaul this site to a 21st-Century standard, but for now I'm busy with Ninjalistics.

How to become a game designer

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In response to numerous inquiries from students working on class projects, I have posted a list of answers to common questions about becoming a game designer.

My Escapist articles

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For a couple of years I was the most prolific non-staff contributor to The Escapist. After this weekly online gaming magazine launched in July 2005, I appeared in about half the first hundred issues, and I still write for the magazine occasionally. The complete list of my Escapist magazine articles includes links to the text versions of over 50 articles. Some good starting points:

• #3: "Gamer Nation": An entire country that makes your Counter-Strike clan look like wimps: South Korea.
• #5: "Lifegame 2020": If life is just a game, in 2020 we'll be playing 24/7.
• #14: "The Conquest of Origin": Origin created worlds. EA shipped games. EA won.
• #21: "Game Design in the Transfigured World": In the next two centuries, roleplaying ideas will transform society. Game designers can help.
• #34: "Attack of the Parasites": Casual portals all look alike -- and soon, so will their games.
• #40: "Wal-Mart Rules": One giant company controls your games -- but for how much longer?
• #49: "Red Blindness": China will soon be the #1 gaming market, and the US has no clue how or why.
• #66: "My Hindu Shooter": Making a non-violent first-person shooter turned out to be a bad idea.
• #68: "Red vs. Blue Makes Green": Rooster Teeth's machinima hit draws imitators -- including (eventually) Hollywood.
• #72: "StarForce Must Die": The gaming community is deleting the world's most hated copy protection -- but what about the attitude behind it?
• #75: "Boutique MMOGs": Under the radar, but bigger than EverQuest. (See also this blog post, "Your own MMOG?")
• #81: "Uwe Boll and the German Tax Code": Why people keep giving him money to make movies.
• #82: "Buzz Games": In prediction markets, you're not just the player, you're the product.
• #84: "Dunbar's Number": The number of players you hang out with is all in your mind.
• #88: "The French Democracy": A machinima smash raises questions about art -- and copyright.
• #99: "Biz Sims": When companies play games with themselves, it's all business.
• #101: "Blowing Up Galaxies": For Star Wars Galaxies players, Sony Online's SWG NGE was DOA. (See also this Escapist blog post, "Crying Freeman," about how blame for the entire "New Game Enhancements" fiasco fell on one hapless underling.)
• #103: "The Korean Invasion": Asian MMOGs find the West is hard to win.
• #109: "London in Oblivion": Game engines for architects? Architecture for gamers? Why not?

Noteworthy

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A roleplaying game played through blog entries.

"Anopheles" (aka "Horror World")

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A 1990 adventure for the Champions superhero roleplaying game, published in the alternate-worlds supplement Champions in 3-D under the lame title "Horror World." The superheroes visit a modern-day parallel world where Lovecraftian Cthulhoid monsters took over decades ago. Graphic horror in a superheroic mode.

Other gaming material on this site includes Earthdawn Legends, a full-length unpublished scenario collection for the Earthdawn fantasy roleplaying game; "Shaolin Heartbreak," a Feng Shui scenario; "Desire Box," a short Earthdawn adventure; material for Champions, Pendragon, AD&D, and Mage; many articles about card games like Magic: The Gathering; and most of my "Roleplaying Reviews" columns from Dragon.

I've written many magazine articles, including "Turkey's Underground Cities," on my trip to the huge real-world labyrinths of Derinkuyu and Kaymakli under central Cappadocia; a history of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos; "The New Improved Beast", a history of werewolves in legend, fiction, movies, and games; "Movie Munchies," about films that make you hungry; "Blast From the Past" columns from Collect! magazine; and articles that explain adventure gaming to non-gamers.

Ultra-Violet (Chapters 1-7) (HTML or 367K .PDF)

My novel in progress, a scramjet-paced fantasy about a boy who journeys up the colors of the rainbow, and each color is a different techno-magical land. Think Wizard of Oz for the 21st Century, times seven. People either love it or stare in sullen resentment, which is probably better than "ehh." I want to write a book that, for better or worse, nobody else in the world could have written. So far, I think, so good. I will post new sections here as I complete them. (Note: Though "Ultraviolet" is a term of use in the PARANOIA RPG I designed, this novel is not related to the game.)

"Chance Music"

A comic historical fantasy of the chance-derived aleatoric music experiments undertaken in the 1950s and '60s by modern music composers like John Cage. A young New York composer tries using a computer to generate notes randomly, and gets frustrated when it keeps churning out recognizable music. Written for the November 2003 Turkey City writers' workshop in Austin, Texas.

More stories: Including In the Swift Workshop, a science fiction novelette wherein science hero Todd Speed opens his long-abandoned laboratory (this story is "trembling on the edge of a major breakthrough in the field" -- Bruce Sterling); "Bollix at the Hamster Race", a Wodehousean SF comedy wherein a major software company decides to test a new Internet protocol by racing hamsters; "Craverlane Bend", an otherworldly fantasy and an allegory of the adventure gaming hobby; "Following the Elephant," a comedic fantasy novelette set in 14th-Century Thailand; and "Rational," a short parody of the work of a well-known Australian writer of hard science fiction.

"Our 21st Century Writers": Join our intrepid reporter in the year 2026 as he visits the leading science fiction writers of the day: first Heinlein Colony (note that I wrote this before Heinlein's death in 1988), then Varley Studios, and finally the greatest of them all. Satire for SF fans.

More fan writing: Including Live Shots from The Austin Chronicle; Thruput, a hoax review of a non-existent cyberpunk shared-world anthology; a tribute to novelist and game designer Aaron Allston; and "Rasputin."

My travel letters include "African Dispatches" (1998-99) from Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Namibia, and South Africa; and "Greetings From Seattle," from an extended 1995 business trip.

You can reach me at allenvarney [at] gmail.com.