The Man They Keep Misspelling

The Irish name Sean is pronounced “Shawn,” and Reynolds has spent thirty years watching people get it wrong. Forum posts, convention badges, even published credits—the phonetic spelling shows up everywhere. It’s a small thing. But it tells you something about how a career spent inside other people’s systems can make even your name disappear.

Sean K. Reynolds has contributed to over two hundred published RPG books. He helped build the 3rd Edition D&D Monster Manual. He co-designed the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting that won the Origins Award. He was a core developer on Pathfinder during its commercial peak. He co-authored what became the industry’s standard safety framework for sensitive content at the gaming table.

And his only original game system—the one he designed, developed, laid out, and published entirely by himself—was eventually released for free because it couldn’t sustain a market.

That tension defines the career. Reynolds is one of the most accomplished developers in RPG history. Whether he is a great designer depends entirely on how you draw the line between those two words.