Terry K. Amthor | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 18, 1958 Chicago, IL |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | University of Virginia, B.S., Architecture |
| Occupation(s) | Game designer, Author |
| Website | www.eidolonstudio.com |
Terry K. Amthor is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games, but also has experience in the printing and publishing industry & graphic design, and Apple computers.
Terry Kevin Amthor was born in Chicago, IL, before moving soon afterwards to Manitowoc, WI, and at the age of 6 to Bethel Park, PA. He attended Bethel Park Senior High School; while there participating in the award-winning marching band, symphonic band, and orchestra, playing the alto saxophone, clarinet, and bassoon. He was also fiction editor of the school literary magazine Vernissage, and member of the ironically-named physics enthusiasts club, the Flat Earth Society. He attended the University of Virginia School of Architecture in 1976. It was at UVa that he first discovered D&D through a gaming group led by Pete Fenlon, set in Middle-earth. This association led to a major change in Amthor's career path. While at UVa, he took a number of classes in architectural history, focusing on Greek, Roman, and Pre-columbian architecture. He also took graduate classes in advanced mathematics and art history. Amthor went on to graduate from the University in 1980, maintaining his close associations with the Fenlon group throughout his college years.
Though Iron Crown Enterprises was founded in 1980, initially it could afford few full-time employees. From 1980-1982, Terry Amthor worked at UVa's Fiske-Kimball Fine Arts Library Fiske-Kimball Fine Arts Library and what was known then as the Sci-Tech Library Engineering and Science Library, serving in the bibliography departments of both libraries, and also contributing to the initial conversion of the Library of Congress conversion from a card catalog to an online catalog (OCLC).
Amthor's first published work was a Star Wars parody, "Raker Wars" for the University of Virginia weekly paper, the Declaration. Notation of it was recorded in the University Archives. [1].
Terry K. Amthor was one of the original founders of Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) in 1980, along with Pete Fenlon, S. Coleman Charlton, Richard H. Britton, Bruce Shelley, Bruce Neidlinger, Kurt Fischer, Heike Kubasch, and Olivia Johnston.[2]: 133 Amthor wrote Court of Ardor (1983), an early Middle-earth campaign game book published by ICE as a Rolemaster supplement. It was the only supplement set outside of 'known' Middle-earth.[3] Amthor was a major contributor to the original Rolemaster system, mainly to Spell Law, with Olivia Johnston. Amthor wrote the first approved Middle-earth solo adventure book Spy in Isengard. He collaborated with Kevin Barrett in the creation of Space Master (1985), the science-fiction version of Rolemaster, which also had a second edition in 1988.[2]: 136 While at ICE, Amthor also wrote many game supplements for Rolemaster, MERP, and Space Master, including some under the pseudonym A. Brooke Lindsay.[citation needed] The second edition of Rolemaster (1989) was supported by Amthor's Shadow World campaign setting, which combined the older Loremaster background into a larger whole.[2]: 136 He also wrote an article for White Wolf Magazine,[4] Queer as a Three-sided Die, about being gay and a gamer.[5]
After leaving ICE full-time, Amthor co-founded Metropolis Ltd in order to produce the English-language version of the controversial Swedish modern-horror game Kult. In 1992–1994, Amthor edited, co-authored and art-directed several books for the line. He also wrote one module for D&D: Thief's Challenge II: Beacon Point.[6]
In 1992 Amthor founded Eidolon Studio, writing Shadow World supplements under license from ICE. He published the third edition of his Shadow World Master Atlas (2001) through Eidolon.[2]: 142 He continues to write and produce PRG supplements for the current incarnation of Iron Crown Enterprises (Mjolnir, LLC). Mjolnir published the Shadow World Master Atlas Fourth Edition (2003), Amthor's 224-page overview of the Shadow World.[2]: 142 Shadow World Player Guide: The World (2010) by Amthor was a brand-new introduction to the Shadow World, and was published by Guild Companion Publications.[2]: 144 He published his first fantasy novel, Loremaster Legacy, (set in the Shadow World environment) in 2013.
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