Raph Koster is a virtual world game designer. While studying for his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama, which he completed in 1995, whose thesis was a poetry collection entitled Housebuilding, he was awarded a string of awards for his LegendMUD project, one of the internet's longest-running Multi-User Dungeons and Dragons game.

He is Chief Creative Officer for his game Untold Legends, which was the third highest-selling Playstation Portable game of all time. His book publications include A Theory of Fun for Game Design (2004), "Declaring the Rights of Players" in The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology (Salen & Zimmermann, eds.) (2006), "Grand Theft Education" in Harper's Magazine (2006), and A Grammar of Gameplay (2006).