Avellone is an alumnus of the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia. He studied at the College of William & Mary, graduating with a major in English and a minor in fine arts, focused on architecture. Working initially as a freelancer in the two years after college, Avellone wrote campaigns for Dungeons & Dragons-inspired fantasyrole-playing games. After entering the video game industry through the company Interplay in 1995, he briefly worked on the development of the 1997 title '. In 1997 he took over the development of Descent to Undermountain, which he later called a disappointment. Avellone contributed to the 1998 game Fallout 2 and continued to work on its franchise. Interplay acquired the rights to produce a role-playing video game set in the Planescapecampaign setting of Dungeons & Dragons with the development led by Avellone. The game, ' was released in 1999 and received critical acclaim for its narrative, where it has been cited as one of the best-written games of all time. Avellone worked on all the games of the Icewind Dale series, which were released from 2000 to 2002. As a designer, Avellone contributed to the fantasy titles ', Champions of Norrath and led the design of the canceled Fallout title Van Buren, after which he resigned from Interplay and co-founded Obsidian Entertainment. For the company, Avellone worked on the role-playing games ' and Neverwinter Nights 2 and on the action role-playing gameAlpha Protocol. He also worked as a senior designer on '. He worked as the project director and lead creative designer on Dead Money, Old World Blues and Lonesome RoadFallout: New Vegas downloadable content. Avellone worked as a narrative designer on Pillars of Eternity prior to leaving Obsidian Entertainment in June 2015. Since then, Avellone has worked as a freelancer on games such as Pillars of Eternity, ', Prey, ', ', and Into the Breach. In June 2020, Avellone was accused by three people of using his status for sexual misconduct and harassment towards women during industry conventions. Following these accusations, Techland announced that they and Avellone agreed to end his work on Dying Light 2. Gato Studios also removed Avellone from The Waylanders. Paradox Interactive said that while Avellone had worked on an early version of , much of his work had since been overwritten.
