After a career as a newspaper reporter, she was employed by TSR, Inc. for several years as head of the Role Playing Game Association and editor of the Polyhedron magazine.
Rabe began a career as a novelist for TSR and Wizards of the Coast, and over the last 30 years has produced over three dozen books and scores of short stories, at first in the genres of game-related fantasy and science fiction and later as an author of mystery novels.
Jean Rabe was born in Ottawa, Illinois, and learned to play games at an early age—checkers, chess, and euchre by the age of 7, and board wargames in high school.
[10][11][12][13] Before Christmas 1985, reporter Rabe was dispatched to Fort Campbell, Kentucky to cover President Reagan's visit consoling family members after a tragic crash at Gander, Newfoundland took the lives of 256 servicemen and crew.
[23] When Wizards of the Coast purchased TSR, they published the rest of Rabe's Dragons of a New Age trilogy before bringing back Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman as the main authors of Dragonlance.
[26] Rabe was the business manager and later the editor of the bimonthly SFWA Bulletin, published by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
[27] In June 2013, Rabe resigned the post in the course of a controversy about alleged sexism in SFWA Bulletin articles written by, among others, Mike Resnick and Barry N.