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Michael O’Brien is Vice President of Chaosium Inc., the publisher of acclaimed and award-winning roleplaying games, board games, fiction and comics that was founded in 1975 by visionary game designer Greg Stafford. O’Brien’s role encompasses creative development, community outreach and commissioning new board games and fiction.
A long-time creative force for the roleplaying game RuneQuest and Greg Stafford’s mythic fantasy setting Glorantha, O’Brien’s RPG works have been professionally published in six languages. Among his extensive writing and editing credits, O’Brien was associate editor of the magazine Tales of the Reaching Moon (1989 – 2002), and a contributor to the Diana Jones Award winning Guide to Glorantha (2015).
In 2014, O’Brien returned to Australia after a decade in the Middle East, where a senior leadership role in higher education took him to places as far afield as the UAE, Sultanate of Oman, Qatar, India and Somalia. He also founded and was managing editor of one of the first academic presses in the Arabian Gulf region.
In 2014-15 O’Brien co-produced and co-presented the 52-part podcast series Shenandoah Down Under aka Confederate Pirates Down Under Save the Whales, a light-hearted but historically faithful recounting of the ill-fated round-world voyage of the CSS Shenandoah, the last Confederate Cruiser.
Michael O’Brien is now based in his home town of Melbourne, Australia. His current Chaosium projects include launching an organized play program for the iconic roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu, design work for the new Chaosium edition of RuneQuest, developing two new boardgames in collaboration with Dr Reiner Knizia, and relaunching the Chaosium fiction line.
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