Ken Rolston began working as a professional games designer in 1982. Rolston spent twelve years as an award-winning designer of tabletop role-playing games. His credits include games and supplements for
Paranoia,
RuneQuest,
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay,
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and
Dungeons & Dragons. Ken Rolston worked as a writer on
Basic Role-Playing for
Chaosium. Rolston also worked on the
Stormbringer and
Superworld lines for Chaosium. Rolston joined the
Paranoia team as its fourth creator soon after he was hired at
West End Games in 1983, and he was responsible for adding atmosphere to the rules written by
Greg Costikyan, the results of which were published at
GenCon in 1984. Rolston wrote a complete manuscript for a magic system for
Games Workshop to use in
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, but they rejected it; the manuscript by Rolston spent years circulating on the internet instead. Rolston left West End Games when
Scott Palter decided to move the company from New York to rural Honesdale, Pennsylvania in 1988. Chaosium stopped producing material for
RuneQuest through
Avalon Hill in 1989, but they returned to
RuneQuest in 1992 with Rolston as editor. Rolston started the "
RuneQuest Renaissance" with his first publication in the line being
Sun County (1992) from
Tales of the Reaching Moon contributor
Michael O'Brien . Avalon Hill dropped Rolston as a staff member in 1994, keeping him on as a freelancer; his last two books
Strangers in Prax and
Lords of Terror were published that year, and he went on afterwards to work at a multimedia company. Rolston also was winner of the H. G. Wells Award for Best Role-playing Game, Paranoia, 1985, and served as role-playing director for West End Games, Games Workshop, and Avalon Hill Game Company. In 2016, Rolston joined Mongoose Games to assist in editing a new edition of Paranoia, which was Kickstarted in 2014, in order to "hit all the right notes for both veteran players and newbies alike." ==Video game industry==