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 has been married twice and has two children from his first marriage to Catherine. He currently lives in Sun City, Arizona with his second wife, Maria Del Rocio Ulloa Lopez.

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

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. On July 1, 2024, St. Andre married Maria

Del Rocio Ulloa Lopez, a Mexican and American citizen.

See also

  • Ken St. Andre bibliography

References

  • Ken St. Andre's SFWA web page
  • Trollhallans - Facebook fan club and discussion group for Tunnels & Trolls, administered by St. Andre. Successor to now defunct Trollhalla.com website.
  • Delver's Tales - Ken's gaming blog
  • Atroll's Entertainment - Ken's all purpose blog
  • Atroll's Flash Fiction - Ken's Flash Fiction blog
  • Trollgodfather Press at RPG Geek