Lester W. Smith

Lester W. Smith is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.

Lester Smith began his game-design career in 1984 with Mind Duel, a science-fiction board game submission to Space Gamer magazine. In 1985, he joined the staff at Game Designers' Workshop. Marc Miller, Frank Chadwick, Lester Smith, and Timothy Brown of GDW designed the new game Traveller: 2300 (1986) as an expansion of the original Traveller role-playing game. He designed the Temple of the Beastmen board game. Smith's game Dark conspiracy (1991) for GDW used the new "house system" created for the second edition of Twilight: 2000. Smith designed the Minion Hunter board game. Smith later left GDW to work for TSR. He was hired by TSR in 1991, and contributed to the AD&D and Amazing Engine role-playing game lines. Smith and Wolfgang Baur co-designed the Planes of Chaos boxed set. He designed the Origins Award-winning Dragon Dice. Smith then worked for Imperium Games. Smith later worked for Ken Whitman's Archangel Entertainment, and then joined Don Perrin in the design of the Sovereign Stone roleplaying game. He has also done work for FASA, Flying Buffalo, West End Games, and others, acquiring two other Origins Awards in the process. Timothy Brown, James Ward, Smith, John Danovich, and Sean Everette founded the d20 company Fast Forward Entertainment.

Smith works as an educational writer and technologist for a Houghton Mifflin design house and is president of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.

Smith now works as an educational writer for Houghton Mifflin company, and he is also the president of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.