Keith Baker (game designer)


Keith Baker is a game designer and fantasy novel author. In addition to working with Wizards of the Coast on the creation of Eberron, he has also contributed material for Goodman Games, Paizo Publishing and Green Ronin Publishing.

Personal life

Baker lives in Portland, Oregon. He has a tattoo of the Greater Mark of Making on his right arm.

Career

Prior to working in the role-playing game industry, he worked in the video game industry with Magnet Interactive Studios and a Colorado company, VR1.
In 2002, Keith Baker was a freelancer best known for his thematic work at Atlas Games. His Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting of Eberron was chosen as the winner among the 11,000 submissions to the Wizards of the Coast Fantasy Setting Search in 2002. Baker produced the Eberron Campaign Setting alongside James Wyatt and Bill Slavicsek, the first of many background books focused on the setting.
For the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, Baker was a designer on the Eberron Campaign Guide and a consultant on the Eberron Player's Guide.
In 2017, Baker joined the podcast Manifest Zone which explores the world of Eberron including lore and official products. His co-hosts are Wayne Chang and Kristian Serrano.
For the 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, Baker was the lead designer of Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron which was an official Wizards of the Coast supplement published as a PDF on the Dungeon Masters Guild. The Dungeon Masters Guild, owned by OneBookShelf, is an online store that hosts official Wizards of the Coast products and acts as "a platform for players to publish lore, maps, character designs and adventures based on Dungeons & Dragons intellectual property". Utilizing the Dungeon Masters Guild, Baker published two non-official Eberron themed adventures in 2018 and a non-official 5th edition Eberron supplement in 2019. Baker plans on releasing a new sourcebook, on the planes of Eberron, in late 2019 on the Dungeon Masters Guild.
Baker was also one of the lead designers of the first hardcover 5th edition Eberron sourcebook: .
Baker has been a role-playing game designer across multiple systems besides Dungeons & Dragons, including systems such as Pathfinder, 13th Age and Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana.
Essays by Baker on role-playing design and other game features have been published in the Kobold Guides series - including Adventures, Complete Kobold Guide to Game Design, The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding, and Kobold Guide to Gamemastering.

Twogether Studios

In 2014, Baker co-founded a new an indie tabletop game studio with his wife, Jennifer Ellis. In April 2015, Twogether Studios launched their first game, Phoenix: Dawn Command, on Kickstarter and raised $67,284. Phoenix: Dawn Command is a card-based roleplaying game where players become "more powerful each time they fall in battle".
In October 2016, Twogether Studios launched their second game, Illimat, on Kickstarter and raised $418,628. This set collection game was designed in partnership with the band The Decemberists and illustrated by Carson Ellis. Steve Haske, for Inverse, wrote: "Last year, the band’s Chris Funk got in touch with Portland-based Twogether Studios, in order to bring Illimat into the real world via a Kickstarter campaign. With game designer Keith Baker, the two designed a relatively simple game played with cards, a few tokens, and a rotating box — the Illimat itself, that changes the 'seasons' of the gameplay — so appropriate to The Decemberists’s old-world aesthetic that it has a fascinating sense of authenticity".
Twogether Studios has launched two more successfully funded card games on Kickstarter: Action Cats! and Action Pups!. Both games feature photos of pets that Kickstarter backers submitted.
In September 2019, it was announced that Twogether Studios are working with the McElroy family to create a cooperative storytelling card game adaptation of The Adventure Zone called TAZ: Bureau of Balance.

Awards

Baker has won an Origins Award twice, first in 2004 for Best Roleplaying Game Supplement as part of the team for the Eberron campaign setting, then alone in 2005 for Traditional Card Game of the Year for Gloom, published by Atlas Games.
Baker was part of the design team for the Pathfinder campaign supplement The Inner Sea World Guide which won 2011 ENnie for Best Art, Interior - Gold Winner and for Best Setting - Gold Winner. The book was also nominated for: 2011 ENnie for Product of the Year, 2011 Golden Geek Best RPG Artwork/Presentation, and 2011 Golden Geek Best RPG Supplement Nominee.
Two of the Kobold Guides anthologies Baker has contributed to have won ENnie awards: Complete Kobold Guide to Game Design and The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding.
Baker contributed design to the 13th Age Core Book which won the 2014 ENnie for Best Rules - Silver Winner and was nominated for 2013 Golden Geek Best RPG Artwork/Presentation Nominee, 2013 Golden Geek RPG of the Year Nominee, 2014 ENnie for Best Game.

Selected role-playing game credits

Eberron

Accessories

The Dreaming Dark trilogy

Short stories

He appears in a cameo in the comic book The Order of the Stick: Start of Darkness by Rich Burlew.