Ken St. Andre: The Trollgodfather of Role-Playing Games

Ken St. Andre is an American game designer best known for creating the fantasy role-playing game Tunnels & Trolls. He is also known for his work on other games like Wasteland and Monsters! Monsters! St. Andre's career has spanned decades, and he has been a major influence in the development of the role-playing game industry.

American writer and game designer

Ken St. Andre
St. Andre (right) at his residence in Phoenix, Arizona, with friend Bernard Assaf (left), 2020
Born	Kenneth Eugene St. Andre (1947-04-28) April 28, 1947 (age 77) Ogden, Utah, U.S.
Nickname	"Ken", "Trollgod", "Trollgodfather"
Occupation	Game designer, writer
Period	1975–present
Genre	Role-playing games, fantasy
Spouse	Catherine (div. 2012)
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Kenneth Eugene St. Andre (born April 28, 1947 ) 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. 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 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.

Ken St. Andre married once and has two children. He currently lives in Sun City, Arizona.

Game design

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. ^: 35 St. Andre ultimately called his game Tunnels & Trolls, and printed 100 copies of the first edition in 1975. ^: 35 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. ^: 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. ^: 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 ^: 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. 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". 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. ^: 36

A picture of Ken St. Andrew at GenCon Indianapolis 2014 — St. Andre at Gen Con Indy 2014

His third game, Monsters! Monsters!, was published by Metagaming Concepts in 1976; Flying Buffalo acquired the rights to publish a second printing in 1979, ^: 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. 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.

He designed Chaosium's first licensed role-playing game, Stormbringer, in 1981, ^: 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. ^: 39 He rejoined Danforth and Stackpole as part of the design team of Wasteland 2, released in 2014.

Awards and honors

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.

In June 2018, The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design inducted St. Andre into its Hall of Fame.

Personal life

St. Andre currently lives in Sun City. He previously lived in Phoenix, Arizona. 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.