Rolston was a "Basic Role-Playing" writer for Chaosium. Rolston had also done work for Chaosium's "Stormbringer" and "Superworld" lines. When Rolston was a new hire at West End Games in 1983, he became the fourth creator on "Paranoia" and was responsible for turning Greg Costikyan's dry rules into a highly atmospheric game, the results of which were published at GenCon in 1984. Rolston wrote a complete manuscript for a magic system for Games Workshop to use in their "Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay" RPG, but they rejected it; Rolston's manuscript thus circulated on the internet for years. Rolston left West End Games when Scott Palter decided to move the company from New York to rural Honesdale, Pennsylvania in 1988. Chaosium stopped writing material for "RuneQuest" at Avalon Hill in 1989, but "RuneQuest" returned in 1992 with Rolston as editor. Rolston's first publication as part of the ""RuneQuest" Renaissance" was "Tales of the Reaching Moon" contributor Michael O'Brien's "Sun County" (1992). In 1994, Avalon Hill dropped Rolston from their regular staff, relegating him to freelancer status; his last two manuscripts, "Strangers in Prax" and "Lords of Terror" saw print that year but afterward Rolston moved on to work for a multimedia company.