Alex Ward

Alex Ward is author of The Weight of a Torch and has contributed several short stories to the Arcanist Blog. He is a freelance software designer with 18 years of experience, and runs Cthonic Studios, LLC, where he publishes TTRPG supplements full-time.

Who is Alex?

Alex was raised in the middle of Oklahoma, where he attended the University of Oklahoma where he graduated with a BA in Anthropology and Classics. After school, he went into software development and has had an eclectic career covering a wide variety of disciplines from social media, to database administration, to healthcare, and finally to authentication consulting. He now lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and three cats doing freelance development work.

In addition to his work in the Arcanist, Alex has been published in the Storytelling Collective’s Written in Blood vol. 1 story collection, as well as over a dozen tabletop RPG products on itch.io and DrivethruRPG. You can find more of his writing at Cthonicstudios.com.

For Alex, stories are the core of human interaction. They are how we understand the world and the people within it. He was introduced to tabletop games at a formative age, and was fascinated with the possibility and freedom found within. From there, after years of running games and ravenously devouring fantasy and horror, he cultivated the urge for storytelling.

How can we understand ourselves, and each other? What stories can we tell together? What do they say about the world? About us?

These are the questions that drive his writing. That and a tendency to go off on wild world-building tangents.

Find out more: Cthonic Studio.