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Carl Sanford Joslyn "Sandy" Petersen (born September 16, 1955) is an American game designer. He worked at Chaosium, contributing to the development of RuneQuest and creating the acclaimed and influential horror role-playing game Call of Cthulhu. He later joined id Software where he worked on the development of the Doom franchise and Quake. As part of Ensemble Studios, Petersen subsequently contributed to the Age of Empires franchise.

Petersen was born in St. Louis, Missouri and developed a love for dinosaurs at age 3. He studied zoology at Brigham Young University and later attended the University of California, Berkeley, majoring in entomology.^[1]

Petersen is a practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but sees no conflict between his faith and his design of games involving Satanic elements. While working on Doom, he said to John Romero, "I have no problems with the demons in the game. They're just cartoons. And, anyway, they're the bad guys."^[2]

Petersen became a full-time staff member at Chaosium in 1982.^[3][4] His interest for role-playing games and H. P. Lovecraft were fused when he became principal author of Chaosium's game Call of Cthulhu, published 1981,^[5] and many scenarios and background pieces thereafter.^[6]

He authored several critically acclaimed RuneQuest supplements for Avalon Hill and Games Workshop.^[6] Petersen served as co-designer for West End Games's Ghostbusters role-playing game.^[6]

Petersen worked some time for video game company MicroProse, where he is credited for work on Sid Meier's Pirates! and Sword of the Samurai.^[6] Between 1989 and 1992 he worked on more MicroProse video games including Darklands, Hyperspeed, and Lightspeed. Petersen was laid off in 1992 and was jobless for five months. He considered that period as one of the worst times of his life.^[7]

Petersen was hired by id Software in August 1993. During his interview, John Romero introduced him to DoomEd and simply asked him to build a level. Romero was ultimately happy with the results, so Petersen was brought on to production for Doom. The level from Petersen's interview eventually became "E2M6".^[8] He was a fast level designer and produced all maps for the third episode of Doom, Inferno. Petersen designed 17 levels for Doom II, a little over half of the 32 total. An 18th, "Dead Simple", was redesigned by American McGee before release.^[9]

Petersen was then involved with The Ultimate Doom in 1995 as well as the R&D phase for Quake. At the time, Quake was based on an id staff D&D campaign. Petersen was enthusiastic about the project, though he had not been a player in the original campaign as it was before his arrival at the company.^[10] With id Software's designers waiting for the Quake engine to be ready for its design team, the studio sent Petersen to work temporarily at Rogue Entertainment, which was licensing the Doom engine to develop Strife.^[11] Romero also credits Petersen with coming up with the title for the Hexen expansion Deathkings of the Dark Citadel. When Quake was reformulated as a first-person shooter in late 1995, id removed Petersen from the Strife team to focus on the game. The revised Quake storyline is credited to Petersen, along with seven levels.^[12]

Petersen left id Software for Ensemble Studios in June 1997.^[13] There, he worked as a game designer on several of their Age of Empires titles, including Rise of Rome, Age of Kings, and The Conquerors.^[6] During this time, he was a frequent poster on the HeavenGames forums under the username ES_Sandyman. He ran a popular series of threads, "Ask Sandyman", where forum members could ask him about anything they wanted.^[14]

Petersen was the executive producer for the 2011 film The Whisperer in Darkness. It was produced by H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society Motion Pictures in the style of a 1930s black and white horror film.

In April 2011,^[15] he served as the publisher of horror magazine Arcane: Penny Dreadfuls for the 21st Century.^[16]

Petersen took a professorship at The Guildhall at SMU in 2009 following the closure of Ensemble Studios, where he taught several courses on game design.^[17]

Petersen worked at Barking Lizards Technologies as their creative director, after leaving The Guildhall, and worked on their iOS release Osiris Legends.^[18]

In mid-2013, Petersen led a successful Kickstarter campaign by his company, Green Eye Games, to produce the boardgame Cthulhu Wars. Over US$1,400,000 was raised achieving over 3,500% of the initial target. This success allowed the creation of more figures (60), map expansions and additional scenario options.^[19] Green Eye Games also produced the unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign for Cthulhu World Combat (iOS, Android, Windows, PSN, Xbox Live).^[20][21][22]

In June 2015, it was announced that Petersen and Greg Stafford returned to Chaosium Inc.^[23] Petersen retired from the board in 2019, but continues to do occasional freelance work for the company.^[24]

Petersen runs a website, Petersen Games,^[25] where he had sold various tabletop games, often based on his work with Call of Cthulhu. As part of his ongoing work with Call of Cthulhu content he has published sourcebooks for Dungeons and Dragons 5e, Pathfinder, and Pathfinder 2e. Those books adapt the Cthulhu mythos for those systems to allow for several mythos-based player character options, many monsters, new insanity rules, and much more. He can also be regularly seen on his YouTube channel, "Sandy of Cthulhu," where he speaks on subjects such as boardgames, roleplay adventures, his own personal works, his time with Id Software, tips on gameplay, advice on game design, authors, Lovecraftian horror, movies, and his love of fiction in general.

• Call of Cthulhu (1981)
• Ghostbusters (1986)

Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition

Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for 5e (2019, ISBN 978-0-9995390-4-0)

Pathfinder

Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for Pathfinder - 1st Edition (2016, ISBN 978-0-9995390-0-2)

Pathfinder 2nd Edition

Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for Pathfinder 2nd Edition (2021, ISBN 9781950982288)

• Cthulhu Wars (2015)
• Theomachy (2016)
• Orcs Must Die! (2016)
• Castle Dicenstein (2017)
• Evil High Priest (2018)
• The Gods War (2018)
• Hyperspace (2019)
• Planet Apocalypse (2020)

• The Whisperer In Darkness (2011)

• Appelcline, Shannon (2011). Designers & Dragons. Mongoose Publishing. ISBN 978-1-907702-58-7.
• Kushner, David (2003). Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture. Random House. ISBN 0375505245.
• Petersen, Sandy (2007). "Up Front". In Lowder, James (ed.). Hobby Games: The 100 Best. Green Ronin Publishing. ISBN 978-1-932442-96-0.
• Romero, John (2023). DOOM Guy: Life in First Person. Abrams Press. ISBN 978-1419758119.

• Official website
• Ask Sandy Series @ Age of Kings Heaven (1999-2001)
• GameSpy interview (2002)
• yog-sothoth.com interview
• "Pen & Paper: Roleplaying Game Credits for Sandy Petersen". Archived from the original on 2008-05-21.
• MobyGames biography
• The Guildhall @ SMU Homepage
• (in Italian) An interview in Italian language on RiLL.it (2011)