Kenneth Hite (born September 15, 1965) is a writer and
role-playing game
A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, or abbreviated as RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of player character, characters in a fictional Setting (narrative), setting. Players take responsibility for acting out ...
designer. Hite is the author of ''
Trail of Cthulhu'' and ''
Night's Black Agents'' role-playing games, and lead designer of the 5th edition of ''
Vampire: the Masquerade''.
Education
Hite holds an M.A. in
International Relations
International relations (IR, and also referred to as international studies, international politics, or international affairs) is an academic discipline. In a broader sense, the study of IR, in addition to multilateral relations, concerns al ...
from the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
and a bachelor's degree in
Cartography
Cartography (; from , 'papyrus, sheet of paper, map'; and , 'write') is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an imagined reality) can ...
from
East Central University
East Central University (ECU or East Central) is a public university in Ada, Oklahoma. It is part of Oklahoma's Regional University System. Beyond its flagship campus in Ada, the university has courses available in McAlester, Shawnee, and Duran ...
.
Career
Kenneth Hite has been designing games part-time since 1981 and full-time since 1995. Some of his early design work was featured in the ''
Nephilim
The Nephilim (; ''Nəfīlīm'') are mysterious beings or humans in the Bible traditionally understood as being of great size and strength, or alternatively beings of great power and authority. The origins of the Nephilim are disputed. Some, ...
'' role-playing game for
Chaosium
Chaosium Inc. ( ) is a publisher of tabletop role-playing games established by Greg Stafford (game designer), Greg Stafford in 1975. Chaosium's major titles include ''Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game), Call of Cthulhu'', based on the horror fic ...
before the game line was ended in 1997.
After establishing a freelance career, Hite came to
Last Unicorn Games and joined the developers working on the "Icon system" for their line of licensed ''Star Trek'' role-playing games; to quickly get ''
Star Trek: The Next Generation Role-playing Game'' ready for
GenCon
Gen Con is the largest tabletop game convention in North America by both attendance and number of events. It features traditional pen-and-paper, board, and card games, including role-playing games, miniatures wargames, live action role-playing ...
31, Hite was one of the freelancers flown to
Los Angeles
Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
for two weeks. After ''Icon'' was completed, Hite was made the line developer for the ''
Star Trek: The Original Series'' role-playing game, and by 1999 he was a full-time employee of Last Unicorn Games.
In February 2001
Decipher, Inc.
Decipher, Inc. is an American gaming company headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, US. The company began with three puzzles marketed as "Decipher," subsequently marketing party games and ''Pente'' sets. After 1994, Decipher produced collectible ...
offered to hire the remaining staff of Last Unicorn after the company was purchased by
Wizards of the Coast
Wizards of the Coast LLC (WotC or Wizards) is an American game Publishing, publisher, most of which are based on fantasy and List of science fiction themes, science-fiction themes, and formerly an operator of retail game stores. In 1999, toy ...
. Hite joined Decipher but eventually left and became part of the staff of
Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games (SJGames) is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and (until 2019) the gaming magazine ''Pyramid''.
History
Founded in 1980, six years after the cr ...
,
where he wrote ''GURPS WWII: Weird War II'' for the
Generic Universal RolePlaying System.
He later worked on the fourth edition of ''
RuneQuest
''RuneQuest'' (commonly abbreviated as RQ) is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game originally designed by Steve Perrin, Ray Turney, Steve Henderson (game designer), Steve Henderson, and Warren James, and set in Greg Stafford (game designer), Gre ...
''.
He also did work on some ''
Unknown Armies'' sourcebooks, and on its second edition.
He wrote the "Suppressed Transmission" column for ''
Pyramid
A pyramid () is a structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be of any polygon shape, such as trian ...
'' magazine.
The column has been collected into the volumes ''Suppressed Transmission: The First Broadcast'' and ''Suppressed Transmission 2: The Second Broadcast''. He also wrote the "Out of the Box" column,
initially for the GamingReport, and later for IndiePressRevolution. He also contributed a guest comic strip for ''
Dork Tower
''Dork Tower'' is an online comics, comic created, written and drawn by John Kovalic. It chronicles the lives of a group of geeks living in the fictional town of Mud Bay, Wisconsin. Mud Bay's design is strongly influenced by the writer's home, a ...
'' in 200
Hite is also one of many contributors to the book ''Gamemastering Secrets'', which won the 2002 Origins Award for ''Best Game Aid or Accessory''. In 2008, Atomic Overmind Press published some ''Cthulhu'' books Hite worked on,
and he wrote ''Where the Deep Ones Are'' (2008), ''The Antarctic Express'' (2009), "Cliffourd the Big Red God" (2011), and "Goodnight Azathoth" (2015) in the Mini Mythos series for
Atlas Games as parodies of children's books with entities from the Cthulhu mythos.
His essay, “Cthulhu’s Polymorphous Perversity”, appears in ''Cthulhurotica'', published by Dagan Books in December 2010. Hite produced a series of Lovecraftian gaming PDFs released by
Ronin Arts.
In February 2008,
Pelgrane Press
Pelgrane Press Ltd is a British role-playing game (pen and paper), role-playing game publishing company based in London and founded in 1999. It is co-owned by Simon J Rogers and Cat Tobin. It currently produces GUMSHOE System RPGs, ''13th Age'', ...
published Hite's ''
Trail of Cthulhu'', a role-playing game using the
GUMSHOE System developed by
Robin Laws.
Hite won two silver
ENnies
The ENNIE Awards (previously stylized as ENnie Awards) are awards for role-playing game (RPG) products (including game-related accessories, publications, and art) and their creators. The awards were created in 2001 by Russ Morrissey of EN Worl ...
in 2008 for his work on ''Trail of Cthulhu'': Best Writing and Best Rules (shared with Robin Laws). Hite has since added to the ''Trail of Cthulhu'' line with ''Shadows Over Filmland'', ''Rough Magicks'', ''Bookhounds of London'', and ''Mythos Expeditions''.
Hite's second
GUMSHOE System game, ''
Night's Black Agents'', was released in 2012; players take the role of burned spies in the underworld of contemporary Europe who are suddenly confronted by the existence of vampires. Later that year, he joined the staff of Pelgrane Press full-time, and began a series of monthly books of gaming material under the title ''Ken Writes About Stuff'', which concluded in 2016 after three "volumes". The series alternated between examinations of creatures in H. P. Lovecraft's fiction and mythos, the Hideous Creatures series, and books exploring other role-playing gaming topics including optional GUMSHOE rules expansions, historical magic systems, and campaign settings. In 2015, he and
Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan released a collaborative, improvisational campaign ''
The Dracula Dossier'' for ''Night's Black Agents''. This campaign proposes that
Bram Stoker
Abraham Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912), better known by his pen name Bram Stoker, was an Irish novelist who wrote the 1897 Gothic horror novel ''Dracula''. The book is widely considered a milestone in Vampire fiction, and one of t ...
's 1897 novel ''
Dracula
''Dracula'' is an 1897 Gothic fiction, Gothic horror fiction, horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. The narrative is Epistolary novel, related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist and opens ...
'' was in fact the after-action report of a British Intelligence attempt to recruit a vampire. The published work includes the "unredacted" first draft of that novel, as annotated by three generations of
MI6
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
agents. Hite subsequently authored the ''
Fall of Delta Green'' RPG for Pelgrane as part of the
Delta Green Kickstarter.
In addition to his work for Pelgrane, Hite has collaborated with
Dennis Detwiller,
Greg Stolze
Greg Stolze (born 1970) is an American game designer, writer and novelist, whose work has mainly focused on writing for role-playing games and related intellectual properties.
Career
Stolze began his career writing role playing games professional ...
and
Shane Ivey on the second edition of the ''
Wild Talents'' RPG and the supplement ''Grim War''. He wrote ''Day after Ragnarok'', a genre-bending post-apocalyptic setting published by
Atomic Overmind Press, and collaborated in
Bubblegumshoe with
Emily Care Boss and
Lisa J. Steele, for
Evil Hat Productions
Evil Hat Productions is a company that produces role-playing games and other tabletop games. They are best known for the free indie RPG system ''Fate'', '' Blades in the Dark'', and '' Thirsty Sword Lesbians'', all of which have won multiple awa ...
. In addition, he developed and designed the latest edition of the Vampire RPG.
Hite and fellow author and game designer
Robin Laws have released a podcast titled ''Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff'' each week since August 2012. Development of ''
Vampire: The Masquerade''
's 5th edition was led by Hite; the edition was released in early 2018.
Personal life
Hite lives in Chicago with his wife Sheila.
Works
In his current employment with
Pelgrane Press
Pelgrane Press Ltd is a British role-playing game (pen and paper), role-playing game publishing company based in London and founded in 1999. It is co-owned by Simon J Rogers and Cat Tobin. It currently produces GUMSHOE System RPGs, ''13th Age'', ...
, Hite has contributed extensively to the
GUMSHOE System, as author of
''
Trail of Cthulhu'', and the supplements ''Shadows Over Filmland'', ''Rough Magicks'', ''
Bookhounds of London'', and ''Mythos Expeditions'';
also the RPG
''
Night's Black Agents'' and its major campaign ''
The Dracula Dossier''.
Previously, Hite wrote or contributed to several
GURPS
The ''Generic Universal Role Playing System'', or ''GURPS'', is a tabletop role-playing game system published by Steve Jackson Games. The system is designed to run any genre using the same core mechanics. The core rules were first written by St ...
supplements, including:
* ''GURPS Alternate Earths'',
* ''GURPS Alternate Earths II'',
* ''
GURPS Cabal'',
* ''
GURPS Horror'' (Third Edition incorporating ''Nightmares of Mine'' material in 2002, also Fourth Edition in 2011),
* ''
GURPS Infinite Worlds'' (Winner of the 2005
Origins Award
The Origins Awards are American awards for outstanding work in the gaming industry. They are presented by the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) at the Origins Game Fair on an annual basis for games released in the preceding year. For example, t ...
for ''Role-Playing Game Supplement of the Year''
),
* ''GURPS WWII: Weird War II'',
* and ''GURPS Y2K''.
In addition, he worked on the
Decipher
DECIPHER is a web-based resource and database of genomic variation data from analysis of patient DNA. It documents submicroscopic Chromosome abnormality, chromosome abnormalities (Deletion (genetics), microdeletions and Gene duplication, duplic ...
/
Last Unicorn ''Star Trek'' RPGs
* ''Star Trek RPG Player's Guide'' (with
Mathew Colville,
Steven S. Long and
Don Mappin) (2002),
* ''Starfleet Operations Manual'' (2003),
* ''All Our yesterdays'' (with
Steve Kenson,
James Kiley,
S. John Ross and
Steven S. Long) (2000),
* and ''Planetary Adventures'' (1999).
He has also contributed to the
Nephilim
The Nephilim (; ''Nəfīlīm'') are mysterious beings or humans in the Bible traditionally understood as being of great size and strength, or alternatively beings of great power and authority. The origins of the Nephilim are disputed. Some, ...
games
* ''
Secret Societies
A secret society is an organization about which the activities, events, inner functioning, or membership are concealed. The society may or may not attempt to conceal its existence. The term usually excludes covert groups, such as intelligence a ...
'' (1995),
* ''Major Arcana'' (1997),
* and ''Gamemaster's Companion'' (with
Shannon Appel,
Adrian Czajkowski, and
Ross Isaacs) (1996);
as well as to supplements for other role-playing games like:
* ''Adventures Into Darkness'' (for ''
Hero System
The ''Hero System'' is a generic role-playing game system that was developed from the superhero RPG '' Champions''. After ''Champions'' fourth edition was released in 1989, a stripped-down version of its ruleset with no superhero or other genr ...
'' and ''
Mutants & Masterminds''),
* ''
Mage: The Sorcerer's Crusade'' (for ''
Mage: The Ascension''),
* ''Crusade Lore'' (for ''
Mage: The Sorcerer's Crusade'') (with
Phil Brucato and
Wayne Peacock) (1998),
* ''Cainite Heresy'' (for ''
Vampire: The Dark Ages''),
* ''Nightmares of Mine'' (for ''
Rolemaster
''Rolemaster'' (originally ''Role Master'') is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game published by Iron Crown Enterprises in 1980. The game system has undergone several revisions and editions since then.
Description
''Rolemaster'' is a fantasy ...
'') (with
John Curtis
John Ream Curtis (born May 10, 1960) is an American politician serving since 2025 as the junior United States senator from Utah. A member of the Republican Party, Curtis served from 2017 to 2025 as the U.S. representative for Utah's 3rd congre ...
) (1999),
* ''Back East: The South'' (for ''
Deadlands''),
* ''Dubious Shards'' (which includes an adventure for ''
Delta Green''),
* ''Secrets of the Ruined Temple'' (for ''
Mage: The Awakening''),
* ''
Day after Ragnarok'' (for
Savage Worlds and
Hero System
The ''Hero System'' is a generic role-playing game system that was developed from the superhero RPG '' Champions''. After ''Champions'' fourth edition was released in 1989, a stripped-down version of its ruleset with no superhero or other genr ...
),
* ''
Wild Talents RPG'' (with
Dennis Detwiller,
Greg Stolze
Greg Stolze (born 1970) is an American game designer, writer and novelist, whose work has mainly focused on writing for role-playing games and related intellectual properties.
Career
Stolze began his career writing role playing games professional ...
and
Shane Ivey) (2010),
* and ''
Grim War'' (for ''
Wild Talents RPG'') (with
Greg Stolze
Greg Stolze (born 1970) is an American game designer, writer and novelist, whose work has mainly focused on writing for role-playing games and related intellectual properties.
Career
Stolze began his career writing role playing games professional ...
) (2010).
Books by Hite:
* ''The Complete Idiot's Guide to U.S. History, Graphic Illustrated'' (with
Sheperd Hendrix) (2009)
* ''The Antarctic Express'' (with
Christina Rodriguez) (2009)
* ''Cthulhu 101'' (with
John Kovalic) (2009)
* ''Where the Deep Ones Are'' (with
Andy Hopp) (2008)
* ''Cliffourd the Big Red God'' (with
Andy Hopp) (2011)
* ''Tour de Lovecraft: The Tales'' (2008)
* ''The Nazi Occult'' (with
Darren Tan) (2013)
* ''The Cthulhu Wars: The United States' Battles Against the Mythos'' (with
Kennon Bauman) (2016)
References
External links
Kenneth Hite's LiveJournalKenneth Hite at the Pen & Paper RPG DatabaseInterview at Flames Rising(July 2009)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hite, Kenneth
1965 births
Chaosium game designers
White Wolf game designers
Atlas Games people
GURPS writers
Living people
American role-playing designers
East Central University alumni
University of Chicago alumni
H. P. Lovecraft scholars