Ajit George

Ajit George is an Indian-American tabletop role-playing game writer and nonprofit executive.

George is known in the gaming industry for his role as co-lead designer/author (with F. Wesley Schneider) of the Dungeons & Dragons adventure anthology Journeys through the Radiant Citadel (2022) which was nominated for the 2023 Nebula Award for Best Game Writing, and 2023 ENNIE Awards for Best Adventure and Best Product. In 2022, George was awarded the Diana Jones Award, an annual award for "Excellence in Gaming."

George is the Chief Operating Officer of Shanti Bhavan Children's Project based in Bangalore, India. The school, which was the focus of the 2017 Netflix documentary series Daughters of Destiny: The Journey of Shanti Bhavan, provides free education to socially disadvantaged children from the age of four until they graduate from college.

Early years George, the oldest son of Mariam and Abraham M. George, grew up in New Jersey, United States. The family was well-off and George attended good schools. George felt isolated at school, and used role-playing games to help him, saying, "as a brown kid growing up in a deeply white set of schools and communities, I felt alienated constantly and really, really had a hard time with it. It was very, very painful for me growing up. And role playing games were one of the few refuges along with books that I could find that gave me my own space and my own voice and to experiment."

Career

Shanti Bhavan Children's Project When George was 22, his father Abraham decided to return to India to create a residential school for children of the Dalit caste, India's poorest caste.

In January 2024, George became the Chief Operating Officer for Shanti Bhavan. He oversees all domestic and international fundraising, volunteer and teacher recruitment, media relations, strategic partnerships, and the mentorship program at Shanti Bhavan Children's Project.

George is a board member of the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media, a postgraduate school of journalism and media, founded in 2001 and based in Bangalore, India.

Writing and game design George returned to the world of role-playing games, and found that little had changed in the field since his childhood, with almost no creative representation by people of color. George approached several publishing companies about increasing creative diversity. George and F. Wesley Schneider became co-lead designers and writers for Journeys through the Radiant Citadel (2022), The committee of the Diana Jones Award in 2022 highlighted that George "has been the first writer of Indian origin to write Indian-inspired material for a number of games, including Dungeons & Dragon's Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft". Journeys through the Radiant Citadel was nominated for the 2023 Nebula Award for Best Game Writing, the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming, Thorny Games, and Monte Cook Games.

Along with being a writer, George is a diversity consultant, speaker, and activist in the gaming community. In 2016, George helped Gen Con expand its Industry Insider Speakers program. In 2019, he created a POC training and mentorship program that connects game industry experts with POC professionals new to the industry. George also organized and led the first POC networking event at Big Bad Con in 2019.

Awards and nominations Year Award Category Work Result

2021

2022

George presented at TEDxUNC in 2014, and at TEDxCollegeofWilliam&Mary in 2016. George presented Nebula Awards' first-ever award for "Outstanding Game Writing" in 2019.