Wolfgang Baur (born 1968)[1] is an American game designer, best known for his work with Dragon magazine. He designs role-playing games and also is known for his work at Wizards of the Coast.
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Wolfgang Baur was born in a suburb of Chicago, and later attended the University of Illinois and then Cornell University for graduate studies in biochemistry and molecular biology to pursue an academic career in research.[2] When he ran out of funding in 1991, Baur took a temporary job as assistant editor to Barbara Young at Dungeon magazine: "By the time my scholarship was reinstated, I didn't want to go back... I'd been writing for Dungeon Adventures and Iron Crown, but this was an opportunity to work in a field I loved."[2]
Baur was involved in many projects at TSR as either designer or editor, including Dungeon and Dragon magazines, the Planescape (Planes of Law, Planes of Chaos), Al-Qadim (Secrets of the Lamp, Assassin Mountain), and Birthright settings (Warlock of the Stonecrowns), editing the Star*Drive setting, Dataware', and Doom of Daggerdale.[2] Baur also worked for ICE on books such as Treasures of Middle-earth.[2] Baur also worked on the Dark•Matter setting for the Alternity science fiction role-playing game.[2]
Currently, he is the "Kobold-in-chief" for Open Design LLC, and editor-in-chief of its quarterly periodical Kobold Quarterly.[3] He won the eighth annual Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming in 2008.[4] Kobold Quarterly and Open Design won five ENnie Awards in 2009.
Baur maintains several RPG and writing related interests beyond his magazine. For instance, he is a member of the Alliterates (a group of local and national authors),[5] and serves as a judge for the RPG Superstar competitions, as part of a three-judge panel of respected figures from the field.[6]
Wolfgang has appeared in the following newspaper and magazine articles, websites and podcasts.