Frank Mentzer

Frank Mentzer is a game designer who founded the Role-Playing Games Association (RPGA).

Education
Mentzer attended college at West Virginia Wesleyan College, majoring in mathematics and physics, while also performing folk music. He attended graduate school at Northeastern University.

Career
Besides performing at concerts, Mentzer became a manager of a pinball arcade. Sometime in the mid-1970s, he learned how to play the new Dungeons & Dragons game. Despite having no editorial experience, Mentzer eventually came to work for TSR as an editor in 1980.

In that same year, Mentzer won a "best DM" contest, and this inspired him to found the RPGA.

Mentzer was later the editor for the third version of the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, known as the "red box".

After Gary Gygax left TSR, Mentzer followed him, and the two joined with Kim Mohan to form New Infinities Productions.