Ken 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, AD&D, and D&D. Rolston was a Basic Role-Playing writer for Chaosium. Rolston had also done work for Chaosium's Stormbringer and Superworld lines. When Rolston was a new hire at West End Games in 1983, he became the fourth creator on Paranoia and was responsible for turning Greg Costikyan's dry rules into a highly atmospheric game, 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 their Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay RPG, but they rejected it; Rolston's manuscript thus circulated on the internet for years. Rolston left West End Games when Scott Palter decided to move the company from New York to rural Honesdale, Pennsylvania in 1988. Chaosium stopped writing material for RuneQuest at Avalon Hill in 1989, but RuneQuest returned in 1992 with Rolston as editor. Rolston's first publication as part of the "RuneQuest Renaissance" was Tales of the Reaching Moon contributor Michael O'Brien's Sun County. In 1994, Avalon Hill dropped Rolston from their regular staff, relegating him to freelancer status; his last two manuscripts, Strangers in Prax and Lords of Terror saw print that year but afterward Rolston moved on to work for a multimedia company. Ken 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 their newest edition of Paranoia, which was Kickstarted in 2014, in order to "hit all the right notes for both veteran players and newbies alike."
Rolston was the lead designer for Bethesda's role-playing game, ', its expansions, and was also lead designer for '. He was lead designer for two Big Huge Games projects, both of which were canceled in 2009. Rolston went on to be the lead creative visionary for , a single player RPG designed by Big Huge Games, a Baltimore subsidiary of 38 Studios. The game was created for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC platforms and is set in the world of Amalur. An MMORPG codenamed "Project Copernicus", was being developed by Big Huge Games parent studio 38 Studios, until the company ceased operations in May 2012. The game would have been set in the world of Amalur and was planned to feature inter connectivity with future Amalur projects.
