Troy Denning

Troy Denning
Troy Denning at the 2007 Lucca Games
Born	1958 (age 58–59) United States
Occupation	Writer, game designer
Genre	role-playing games, fantasy
Spouse	Andria

Troy Denning (born 1958) is a fantasy and science fiction author and game designer who has written more than two dozen novels.

Denning grew up in the mountain town of Idaho Springs, Colorado. An avid reader of science fiction and fantasy, he began writing himself at the age of fourteen in 80-page spiral-bound notebooks, and began to collect the usual quantity of rejection slips. Around his eighteenth birthday, he received a rejection slip from editor Ben Bova, but one with a signature and a handwritten note thanking him for the submission. Heartened, Denning continued to write as he attended Beloit College, where he also played on their Division III football team.

Denning joined TSR as a game designer in 1981, and was promoted a year later to Manager of Designers, before he moved to the book department. Denning then worked for two years managing the Pacesetter game company. Denning designed the adventure board game Chill: Black Morn Manor (1985) for Pacesetter. When Mayfair Games picked up ownership of the horror game Chill from Pacesetter, Denning also moved to Mayfair at that time; Denning worked with Mayfair staffers David Ladyman, Jeff Leason and Louis Prosperi, to create a second edition of Chill (1990). After his stint at Mayfair Games, Denning went freelance.

Denning wrote the third novel in TSRs "Avatar Trilogy", Waterdeep (1989), which he wrote under the house pseudonym Richard Awlinson; the book became a New York Times bestselling novel. He wrote the novel with Scott Ciencin, and the choice of the surname Awlinson was an inside joke which sounds like "all in one".