Carl Sanford Joslyn "Sandy" Petersen was born on September 16, 1955. He is an American game designer who worked at Chaosium, helping create the game RuneQuest and developing the well-known and influential horror role-playing game Call of Cthulhu. Later, he joined id Software and worked on the Doom game series and Quake. After that, he was part of Ensemble Studios and helped develop the Age of Empires game series.

Biography

Petersen was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and became interested in dinosaurs at age 3. He studied zoology at Brigham Young University and later studied entomology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Petersen is an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He believes there is no problem between his faith and his work designing games that include characters related to Satan. While working on the game Doom, he told John Romero, "I have no problems with the demons in the game. They are just cartoon characters. And, anyway, they are the bad guys."

Work

Petersen became a full-time employee at Chaosium in 1982. His interest in role-playing games and the works of H. P. Lovecraft combined when he became the main writer for Chaosium’s game Call of Cthulhu, which was published in 1981. He also created many game scenarios and background materials after that.

He wrote several highly praised supplements for RuneQuest for Avalon Hill and Games Workshop. Petersen worked as a co-designer for West End Games’ Ghostbusters role-playing game.

Petersen worked at video game company MicroProse, where he helped create Sid Meier’s Pirates!, Civilization, and Sword of the Samurai. Between 1989 and 1993, he worked on other MicroProse games, including Darklands, Hyperspeed, and Lightspeed. Petersen lost his job in 1993 and did not have a job for five months. He described this time as one of the hardest periods in his life.

Petersen was hired by id Software in August 1993. During his interview, John Romero showed him a game design tool called DoomEd and asked him to create a level. Romero was satisfied with the result, so Petersen joined the team working on Doom. The level he created during the interview became “E2M6.” He was a fast level designer and created all the maps for the third episode of Doom, called Inferno. Petersen designed 17 levels for Doom II, which is about half of the 32 total levels in the game. An 18th level, “Dead Simple,” was redesigned by American McGee before the game was released.

Petersen was involved in The Ultimate Doom in 1995 and the early development of Quake. At the time, Quake was based on a role-playing game campaign created by id Software employees. Petersen was excited about the project, even though he had not played in the original campaign because it was made before he joined the company. While waiting for the Quake game engine to be ready, Petersen worked temporarily at Rogue Entertainment, where they used the Doom engine to create Strife. Romero also says Petersen came up with the name for the Hexen expansion Deathkings of the Dark Citadel. When Quake was changed to be a first-person shooter in late 1995, id Software moved Petersen from the Strife team to focus on Quake. Petersen helped write the revised Quake storyline and designed seven levels for the game.

Petersen left id Software to work at Ensemble Studios in June 1997. There, he designed games for several Age of Empires titles, including Rise of Rome, Age of Kings, and The Conquerors. During this time, he often posted on the HeavenGames forums using the username ES_Sandyman. He started a popular series of threads called “Ask Sandyman,” where forum members could ask him questions about anything they wanted.

Petersen was the executive producer for the 2011 film The Whisperer in Darkness. The film was made by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society Motion Pictures and was styled like a 1930s black-and-white horror movie.

In April 2011, he was the publisher of the horror magazine Arcane: Penny Dreadfuls for the 21st Century.

Petersen became a professor at The Guildhall at SMU in 2009 after Ensemble Studios closed. He taught several courses on game design.

Petersen worked at Barking Lizards Technologies as their creative director after leaving The Guildhall. He helped develop their iOS game Osiris Legends.

In mid-2013, Petersen led a successful Kickstarter campaign by his company, Green Eye Games, to create the board game Cthulhu Wars. Over $1,400,000 was raised, which was more than 3,500% of the original goal. This allowed the creation of more figures, map expansions, and additional scenarios. Green Eye Games also launched a Kickstarter campaign for Cthulhu World Combat for iOS, Android, Windows, PSN, and Xbox Live, but the campaign was not successful.

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

Petersen runs a website called Petersen Games, where he sells 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 books for Dungeons and Dragons 5e, Pathfinder, and Pathfinder 2e. These books adapt the Cthulhu mythos for those systems, offering new character options, monsters, and rules. Petersen also regularly appears on his YouTube channel, “Sandy of Cthulhu,” where he discusses topics like board games, roleplay adventures, his own work, his time at id Software, gameplay tips, game design advice, authors, Lovecraftian horror, movies, and his love of fiction.

Credits

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

• 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)