State of Play V: Speakers' Bios

  ALLEN VARNEY
Contributing Writer
The Escapist
Game Designer
2004 edition of the Paranoia roll-playing game
 

Profile

Allen Varney has been a professional game designer since 1984. He now writes for the weekly online gaming magazine The Escapist. His many articles include several about Asia, including Gamer Nation (South Korea),  Red Blindness (China), My Hindu Shooter (India), and The Korean Invasion (about Korean online games being introduced to America).

In 2003, the University of Texas McCombs Business School ran Varney's large-scale business ethics simulation, Executive Challenge, for 100+ second-year MBA students over three days. The Wall Street Journal covered the event. E-learning firm Enspire Learning now runs an online version of the Executive Challenge for dozens of leading organizations, including Applied Materials, Pitney Bowes, Eli Lilly, and several business schools.

Varney has contributed to computer games from Sony Online Entertainment, Origin, Interplay, and others. The ludography of his 23-year career in tabletop paper gaming includes three boardgames, two dozen roleplaying supplements, seven books, and the 2004 edition of the classic satiric roleplaying game PARANOIA.

Varney is currently based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he is prototyping a browser-based passive online game of his own design.

Web Presence

Software Design and Documentation
  • Galaxy Real (Orion Spur Online Games). Massively multiplayer browser-based strategy game of colonizing the Milky Way below the speed of light. In progress.
  • Tinseltown (Crazy Badgers). Satirical social-climbing card game. Design and art. In progress.
  • Executive Challenge (University of Texas McCombs Business School Plus Program/Enspire Learning). Multiplayer business ethics/leadership simulation for 350 second-year MBA students. Sponsored by Dell Corporation and H-E-B Grocery Company. Staged October 2003 in paper-and-token version. Multiplayer computer version by Enspire Learning developed October 2004-date. Design and ongoing content creation.
  • Star Wars: Galaxies (Sony Online Entertainment, launched June 2003). Massively multiplayer online game. Mission design and character dialogue.
  • ATMA: The Light of Mythic India, first-person roleplaying/puzzle game set in ancient India using the Unreal Warfare engine (4D Games, in progress). Complete storyline, major design contributions, character descriptions, dialogue, promotional copy.
  • Lobby: A Game of Congressional Power Politics, satirical online browser-based multiplayer game (GameWorld Technologies, cancelled 2000). Design, programming, and graphics in GameWire, proprietary Java-based visual toolset.
  • Guardians: Agents of Justice, turn-based superhero strategy game (Microprose, cancelled 1998). Text contributions.
  • Junction Point, massively multiplayer fantasy roleplaying game, changed in midstream (arrgh) to single-player science-fiction roleplaying game (Looking Glass Technologies, cancelled 1997). Principal design.
  • Magic: The Gathering Battlemage (Acclaim, 1997). Minor text contributions.
  • MadMaze II, online text adventure game for Prodigy (cancelled 1992). Plot and script.
  • The Two Towers (Interplay, 1992) and Return of the King (Interplay,cancelled 1994), computer roleplaying games. Design and pseudocode scripting of "Ithilien" and "Paths of the Dead" sections.
  • Castles Campaign Disk #1, expansion for Castles simulation/strategy game (Interplay, 1992). Text contributions.
  • Tangled Tales, 2400 AD, Space Rogue, and Windwalker, computer roleplaying games (Origin Systems, Inc., 1989). Documentation and text contributions.
Pulications
  • Ultra-Violet. Techno-fantasy novel. In progress.
  • Cast of Fate (TSR, 1996). First (and only) novel in the Dragon Dice series.
  • Piercing a Veil (FASA). Novel in the Earthdawn series. Unpublished in English; published in German translation, 1998.
  • Galactic Challenge (TSR, 1995). "Endless Quest" book based on the Amazing Engine roleplaying setting The Galactos Barrier.
  • Knight of the Living Dead (TSR, 1989). Third in the "Catacombs" series of illustrated trade paperback adventure gamebooks.
  • The Willow Sourcebook (Tor Books, 1988). Licensed tie-in for the George Lucas film "Willow"(1988).
  • The Vanishing City (TSR, 1987). Fifteenth in the "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" adventure gamebook series. Translated into Danish (Den Forsvunde By, Copenhagen: Borgen, 1989) and Portuguese (A Cidade Desaparecida, Publicacoes Europa-America, Lda., 1992).
  • Through Six Dimensions (TSR, Inc., 1987). Fourth in the "Marvel Super Heroes" licensed series of adventure gamebooks, featuring the comic book superhero Doctor Strange. Reprinted in Great Britain (London: Puffin Books, 1988).