Green Ronin Publishing

• 1. Introduction

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  Green Ronin Publishing opened its doors in Seattle, Washington, in July 2000 with a game called Ork! That same year, on the 10th of August 2000, the company released Death in Freeport on the exact same day that Wizards of the Coast published the Dungeons and Dragons third edition Player's Handbook. The timing was not a coincidence. What drove a small Seattle startup to shadow one of the biggest releases in tabletop gaming history? How did a company born from a failed earlier venture grow into a multiple award-winning publisher? And what connected a Canadian rock band's album to a role-playing game that Green Ronin would put out that very same year?

• 2. Before Green Ronin

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  In early 1996, Chris Pramas secured the rights to a game called The Whispering Vault from its creator, Mike Nystul, who was leaving the game industry. Pramas brought in his brother Jason and their friend Neal Darcy, and the three of them launched a company called Ronin Publishing. That initial effort produced two supplements: The Book of Hunts in 1997 for The Whispering Vault, and a second supplement called Blood of the Valiant for the game Feng Shui. Ronin Publishing did not last. When Chris Pramas took a job at Wizards of the Coast in 1998, the company folded. His time at Wizards of the Coast would prove pivotal, because it gave him a close view of what would become a landmark shift in the role-playing game industry.

• 3. The d20 Gamble

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  Pramas founded Green Ronin Publishing with his wife Nicole Lindroos in 2000, and the company's first d20 release was timed with unusual precision. Death in Freeport appeared on the 10th of August 2000, the same day the D&D third edition Player's Handbook hit shelves. Pramas's association with Wizards of the Coast gave him early knowledge of the d20 license, and he used that advantage to position Green Ronin as a compatible publisher from the very first day the new edition existed. By 2001 the company had moved beyond adventure modules set in Freeport and into sourcebooks and broader d20 material. Then in March 2002, Pramas was laid off from Wizards of the Coast. Rather than search for another employer, he went full-time with Green Ronin and doubled the company's output that same year.

• 4. Rock Music Meets the Table

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  Toren Atkinson, a member of the Canadian rock band The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, had contributed artwork to both Ork! and Death in Freeport. That connection led somewhere unexpected. Atkinson approached Pramas and asked him to publish a role-playing game built around the band's 2000 album Spaceship Zero Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. Green Ronin agreed, and Spaceship Zero appeared in 2002 as the company's first original role-playing game. That same year, Pramas commissioned designer Steve Kenson to create Mutants and Masterminds, a d20-based superhero game, drawing on Kenson's previous freelance work on superhero role-playing games. Two original games in a single year, one rooted in a rock album and one in a genre Kenson already knew well, marked a clear broadening of what Green Ronin intended to be.

• 5. Building the Team

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  Hal Mangold came to Green Ronin in 2003, bringing experience as a graphic designer, art director, and brand manager for Deadlands at Pinnacle Entertainment Group. When he joined as a partner that year, the company also formally established itself as a limited liability company. Mangold had actually been doing layout and design for Green Ronin on a freelance basis since shortly after its founding, handling the visual output for the majority of the company's print publications. Two notable exceptions were Ork!, which Nicole Lindroos had laid out herself, and the Mutants and Masterminds line, which was handled by a studio called Super Unicorn. With Mangold as an official partner, Green Ronin had a more stable creative foundation as it moved toward some of its most high-profile licensed work.

• 6. Licensed Worlds and Awards

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  Green Ronin's award record began accumulating early: the company won the Silver ENnie Award for Best Publisher in 2003 and again in 2004, then took Gold for Best Publisher and Silver for Fan's Choice for Best Publisher in 2005, followed by Gold for Fan's Choice for Best Publisher in 2006. That recognition came alongside an expanding catalog of licensed properties. Green Ronin wrote the second edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, published by Black Industries. The company also produced A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying, the Dragon Age roleplaying game, and DC Adventures, a licensed game built around DC Comics characters. On the 3rd of May 2010, Green Ronin announced a DC Adventures game set to debut in August. Just nine days later, the company announced a third edition of Mutants and Masterminds for that same fall, with Chris Pramas confirming that the two games would share a common ruleset. The Freeport setting, which the company described as home to thousands of campaigns since 2000, returned via a Kickstarter campaign in 2013 to fund a redesigned and enlarged version for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.