Sean K. Reynolds

Sean K. Reynolds
Reynolds in 2012
Born	Chula Vista, California
Occupation	Writer, game designer
Nationality	American
Genre	Role-playing games

Sean K. Reynolds is an American professional game designer, who has worked on and co-written a number of Dungeons & Dragons supplements for Wizards of the Coast, as well as material for other companies.

Early life and inspiration

Sean Reynolds was born in Chula Vista, California, and grew up there.^[1] He was introduced to the Dungeons & Dragons game (with the red Basic Set and the blue Expert Set) in 1980 by his cousin, and soon began playing the AD&D game.^[1]

TSR and Wizards of the Coast

Reynolds began working for Time Warner Interactive in 1994, to develop their America Online and websites.^[1] Reynolds first entered the role-playing game industry in 1995, when he was hired by TSR as their online coordinator,^[1] beating out Bruce Cordell for the same position.^[2] According to Reynolds, "I had two goals: to get TSR a website, and to change the company's then-restrictive online policy to something more reasonable."^[1] When TSR was bought out by Wizards of the Coast, Reynolds moved to Washington and worked on Wizards' pre-existing website.^[1]

Reynolds considers one of his greatest achievements of this time to be the fact that he got TSR/Wotc to relax its "draconian" online policy—enforcement of which in the past was the cause of much bad blood between the company and fans.^[2] Wizards of the Coast had a much more open online policy, so Reynolds applied for a job in the company's R&D division as a game designer. He designed such products as The Scarlet Brotherhood for AD&D, Beyond Science: A Guide to FX for the Alternity game, and The Green Goblin's Guide to Crime for the Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game.^[1] Reynolds also did some design work such as writing RPGA adventures and contributing to Children of the Night: Ghosts.^{[citation needed]}

By 1998, Reynolds had left his web position and was working full-time for WotC as a designer as part of "Team Greyhawk," the creative team tasked with revitalizing TSR/WotC's oldest campaign setting.

Reynolds also contributed to the 3rd edition D&D Monster Manual, introducing some new creatures such as the krenshar.^[1]

After Wizards of the Coast

Reynolds was laid off from WotC in 2002,^{[citation needed]} and afterwards formed his own self-publishing company, "Sean K Reynolds Games."^{[citation needed]} He continued to freelance in the d20 industry while working as an IP developer at Upper Deck.^{[citation needed]} Reynolds was let go from Upper Deck in 2008 and contacted Erik Mona at Paizo Publishing looking to do freelance work, and learned there was a job opportunity due to developer Mike McArtor leaving.^[3] In July 2008, Paizo hired Reynolds as a developer on the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.^{[citation needed]} Jason Bulmahn has described him as a "critical part of the design team".^[4] In March 2014, Sean left Paizo to move to Indiana^[5] and in May 2014 he announced that he was returning to Seattle and Wizards of the Coast for a contract position managing their third-party licensing.^[6]

Publications

Books he has worked on for the d20-based 3rd edition include the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, Savage Species, and Ghostwalk (co-written with Monte Cook).

The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting won the Origins Award for Best Role-Playing Game Supplement of 2001.^[7] It made the Amazon.ca bestseller list at number 47 in September 2002.^[8] Reynolds identified the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting as his favorite individual product that he had worked on as of 2009, stating that it "was a huge amount of work but was so worth it because it is a great product".^[9] In May 2003 his book Races of Faerûn (co-authored with Matt Forbeck, James Jacobs, and Eric L. Boyd) landed on the same bestseller list at number 42.^[10]

References

External links

• Personal homepage
• "Sean K. Reynolds :: Pen & Paper RPG Database". Archived from the original on 2005-02-21.

This page was last edited on 3 February 2024, at 19:35