From the Quincy Journalist to Dungeons & Dragons: Jean Rabe’s Remarkable Leap From Newsroom to Fantasy Worlds
Before her death in 2026, Jean Rabe built a remarkable career that took her from the Quincy Herald-Whig to Dungeons & Dragons, Dragonlance and beyond.
Jean Rabe’s career took a path few journalists could have predicted.
Jean Rabe, who died in January 2026 at age 68, built a career that took her from local journalism in Quincy at the Quincy Herald-Whig to some of the most recognizable worlds in fantasy gaming.
That early chapter of her life makes what came next all the more remarkable. Rabe moved from covering real people and real events to helping build fictional worlds populated by dragons, warriors, magic and sprawling histories. Along the way, she became a prolific author, editor and game writer whose work reached readers and players around the world.
Rabe was born in Ottawa, Illinois, in 1957 and studied journalism at Northern Illinois University. After college, she entered the newspaper business and worked as a reporter and bureau chief for the Quincy Herald-Whig before later joining the Evansville Courier & Press in Indiana.
Her journalism career exposed her to serious reporting assignments and the discipline of working under deadline. She covered labor issues, prison conditions and environmental concerns, among other subjects. She also reported on major national events, including President Ronald Reagan’s visit to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, following the 1985 military air disaster in Gander, Newfoundland.
At the same time, Rabe had a long-standing interest in games. She had grown up playing traditional games and later became interested in war games and role-playing games. While attending Northern Illinois University, she encountered Dungeons & Dragons at a gaming convention during the early years of the hobby.
That interest eventually changed the course of her professional life.
In 1987, Rabe left traditional journalism and joined TSR, the company that published Dungeons & Dragons. She was hired to work with the Role Playing Game Association Network, better known as the RPGA, and later became editor of Polyhedron, the organization’s magazine.
Her newsroom experience translated surprisingly well into the gaming world. She already understood how to write clearly, manage deadlines, edit complicated material and tell stories in ways that held a reader’s attention. Instead of reporting on local government, courts or public affairs, she was now helping develop adventures, game material and fictional settings.
Rabe’s work soon expanded far beyond administration and editing. She began writing material for Dungeons & Dragons and other game systems, including Gamma World, and contributed to several of the best-known fantasy settings ever published.
Among them were Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance.
Her role in Dragonlance became especially significant. Rabe was selected to write a major new phase of the setting following earlier bestselling books in the series. Her Dragons of a New Age trilogy began with The Dawning of a New Age and continued with The Day of the Tempest and The Eve of the Maelstrom.
For fans of Dragonlance, these books represented a major transition in the fictional world of Krynn. Rabe was not merely contributing a side story. She was helping move one of fantasy gaming’s most established settings into a new era.
She later continued writing within the Dragonlance universe and produced additional novels and stories tied to the franchise.
Her work was not limited to one fantasy setting. Over the course of her career, Rabe wrote and edited material connected to Star Wars, BattleTech, Forgotten Realms, Gamma World and other established properties. She also wrote dozens of books and short stories and collaborated with other well-known authors.
That range is part of what makes her career so unusual. She began as a journalist, became an editor in the gaming industry, moved into fantasy and science fiction, and later wrote mystery fiction as well.
Rabe eventually created the Piper Blackwell mystery series, adding another genre to a career already defined by reinvention.
In 2020, the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers recognized her long career by naming her a Grandmaster, an honor reflecting the breadth and durability of her work in licensed fiction.
Rabe died in January 2026 at age 68, leaving behind a body of work that stretched across journalism, gaming, fantasy, science fiction and mystery.
Her connection to Quincy came early in that journey, before the dragons and fictional worlds that would later define much of her career. She worked here as a journalist, learning the craft of reporting and storytelling in a local newsroom before taking those skills into an industry that was still finding its footing.
That transformation is what makes her story so compelling.
She did not leave storytelling behind when she left journalism. She changed the kind of stories she told.
The deadlines remained. The research remained. The need to understand an audience remained. What changed was the canvas.
Instead of documenting the world as it was, she began helping create worlds that existed only in imagination.
For Quincy, Jean Rabe’s story is a reminder that careers rarely unfold in straight lines. A reporter working local assignments can end up helping shape one of the most famous fantasy franchises in the world.
And before Jean Rabe became known to generations of gamers and fantasy readers, part of her story was being written right here in Quincy.
