Ree Soesbee

Ree Soesbee is an American game designer of collectible card games, role-playing games, and massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), as well as a writer of primarily fantasy novels.

After Soesbee's mother died when she was 6, a relative gave her a copy of the 1983red box edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Her father, believing that the game led to demon worship, hid it away. She became fascinated by the game as a result, and a pattern ensued where her father would hide it and she would find it and play it. At the same time, she and her father watched episodes of Star Trek. These two factors early in her life helped to develop an interest in both science fiction and in role-playing games.

She continued to play role-playing games through her childhood and early adulthood, including Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, and Paranoia.

Soesbee completed her MA in English Literature at UNC-Chapel Hill in North Carolina, writing her thesis on "Celtic Myths, Gawain and the Green Knight".

While she was working on her doctoral thesis about Edo period literature, she started to write short fiction stories based on the Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game. She submitted some of them to the game's publisher, Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG), and she was subsequently asked to write a sourcebook for the game, Way of the Crane. She completed that as freelance work while still working on her thesis. AEG then asked her to join their staff to work on more sourcebooks as well as the Legend of the Five Rings collectible card game (CCG) that was being developed. She made the decision to leave school without finishing her thesis.

One of her first projects at AEG was to help her roomate Kevin Millard design the CCG Warlock.She was also a contributor to The Way of Kolinar, a sourcebook for the Star Trek: The Next Generation Role-playing Game.

In 2000, AEG decided to publish a series of seven Clan War novels based on Legend of Five Rings, and Soesbee was asked to write two of them, The Crane (2000) and The Dragon (2001). Tom Findlay of The Sun-Herald gave The Dragon a positive review. This was followed by the five-book Four Winds Saga series, and she again wrote two of them, Wind of Honour (2002) and Wind of Truth (2003).

She is a lead designer and lore writer for Guild Wars 2.

Soesbee has written more than fourteen books as a primary author.Her latest work (Guild Wars: Sea of Sorrows) was released in 2013. Soesbee is the author of the backstory for Guild Wars 2, which appeared in the Ultimate Guild Wars Guide, published by PC Gamer.She has also written extensively for RPGs and tabletop games, including systems such as Warcraft, d20, White Wolf Publishing, and Star Trek.

Her book Crown of Thieves, part of the Dragonlance series of novels, appeared on a 2005 recommended list of books about elves for young readers, in the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

In her spare time the author enjoys creating music, calligraphy, and practicing her Japanese.