Alex Roberts (game designer)

Alex Roberts is a Canadian tabletop role-playing game designer. Her games typically lack a gamemaster (GM) and include romantic themes.

Career
Roberts was the host of the role-playing games podcast "Backstory" on the One Shot Podcast Network from 2016 to 2019.

Roberts made Star Crossed, published by Bully Pulpit Games in 2019, a game about forbidden romantic pairings; it was funded via a Kickstarter campaign. The game won the 2019 Diana Jones Award. The use of a Jenga tower as a game mechanic to heighten tension was inspired by the horror role-playing game Dread.

She designed For the Queen, published by Evil Hat Productions in 2019, a GM-less storytelling card game that initiated the genre of games called "Descended from the Queen." Brittany N. Arde at the University of Cincinnati used Roberts' For the Queen in a psychological study on the influence of storytelling games on team building. Emily St. James, for Vox, stated in 2020 that "Roberts is one of the RPG creators whose work most excites me right now, and For the Queen is her best game"; in 2022, she called Roberts "one of the best RPG designers working right now".

She created the two player play-by-post game Our Time on Earth in 2021. Roberts also did design work for Till the Last Gasp (2023), a 2-player dueling game published by Critical Role's imprint Darrington Press. Linda Codega, for Io9 described Till the Last Gasp as a blend of Will Hindmarch's tactical, mathematical design approach with Alex Roberts' "established" experience "designing immersive two-player games". In 2024, Darrington Press will publish the second edition of For the Queen.

Personal life
Roberts is working towards finishing "a master's degree in counseling".