The Man Who Introduced the World to the Hobby

Sean Patrick Fannon has never invented a mechanism. He has never designed a resolution system from scratch. He has never built an engine that other designers adopted and iterated upon.

What he has done, across thirty-four years and more roles than most designers hold in a lifetime, is connect things. Systems to settings. Publishers to audiences. Games to the people who might love them if someone just explained what they were. The hobby to the world outside it.

Born January 4, 1966, in Tennessee, raised in Georgia. West Point, 1984 to 1986. Before the game industry claimed him, he worked as a deputy sheriff, an airline agent, and an armored car driver. He started playing RPGs in 1977 with the original D&D boxed set and was, in his own telling, never quite right in the head after that.

His professional career began in 1988, writing freelance articles and reviews for small-press gaming magazines. It would eventually encompass Hero Games, West End Games, Interplay Productions, Pinnacle Entertainment Group, DriveThruRPG, Evil Beagle Games, GAMA, Hollywood consulting, video game design, and a charitable fundraising initiative that raised over $175,000 for Doctors Without Borders.