He was also the fiction editor of the school literary magazine Vernissage[2] and a member of the ironically named physics and science enthusiasts club the Flat Earth Society.

At UVA, he first discovered Dungeons & Dragons through a gaming group led by Pete Fenlon, who was running a campaign set in Middle-earth.

Amthor went on to graduate in 1980 with a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Design, while maintaining his close associations with the Fenlon group throughout his college years.

[4]: 133  [5] Amthor wrote Court of Ardor (1983),[6] an early Middle-earth campaign game book published by ICE as a Rolemaster supplement.

[9] In the early '80s he also wrote a multi-issue mystery story set in Spacemaster for Alarums and Excursions under another, even more fanciful, pseudonym, "Preston Eisenhower IV", which he also used as editor of the ICE's irregular tabloid, the IQ, or Iron Crown Quarterly.

While superficially similar to standard fantasy (e.g., Elves, wizards), it has a complex history featuring numerous factions, good and evil, vying for control.

[15] After leaving ICE full-time in 1992, Amthor co-founded Metropolis Ltd. in order to produce the English-language version of the controversial Swedish modern-horror game Kult.

[17] Amthor says that it was initially difficult to get inspired about a generic adventure, and that he finds it much easier to write Shadow World and Space Master material.

[4]: 142  He continued to write and produce RPG supplements for the current incarnation of Iron Crown Enterprises, Guild Companion Publications, until his death in 2021.