Designers & Dragons: The Column

I'll state even more strongly here that these table of contents are very tentative. I probably won't start work on the '90s proper until early January, when I turn the '70s and '80s books in to Evil Hat. I've done my best to know what's going to be in the last two books so that I can connect them up correctly with the first two books, but things might of course change …

The 1990s

1. The Storytelling Small Press (1990-1992)
   1. 1990: White Wolf
   2. 1990: Atlas Games
   3. 1990: Pagan Publishing
   4. 1990: AEG
   5. 1991: Phage Press
   6. 1992: Dream Pod 9
2. The Other Half of the Story (1992)
   1. 1992: Wizards of the Coast
3. A New Generation (1993-1996)
   1. 1993: Metropolis
   2. 1994: Hogshead Publishing
   3. 1994: Last Unicorn Games
   4. 1994: Kenzer & Company
   5. 1995: Grey Ghost Games
   6. 1996: Imperium Games
4. Prelude to d20 (1996-1999)
   1. 1996: Holistic Design
   2. 1996: Pinnacle Entertainment Group
   3. 1997: Fantasy Flight Games
   4. 1997: Guardians of Order
   5. 1997: Eden Studios
   6. 1998: Green Knight Publishing
   7. 1998: Margaret Weis Publishing
5. Appendices
   1. Appendix 1: Timeline of the '90s
   2. Appendix 2: 10 Things You May Not Know About Roleplaying in the '90s
   3. Appendix 3: Bibliography & Thanks

The '90s may end up being the book that's the least changed from its previous iteration. It was already well-defined with 18 publishers and it's already a dense book at 111,000 words. Just updating all of those publishers(and adding in the new appendices) is likely going to bring me right up to my target of 120,000.

With that said, there are two additions.

One is the White Wolf article. As I explained last month, I decided to push the start date for White Wolf up to the date of the merger of White Wolf Magazine and Lion Rampant as White Wolf Game Studio. That allows them to head the '90s book, and that was truly the decade that they ruled. (White Wolf is already in my 111,000 word count — which is fortunate as they're the second longest article in the '90s, after Wizards of the Coast.)

The other new article currently planned is Metropolis Ltd., which came about thanks to suggestions from The Designers & Dragons FB Page. I liked it because it fills in a chronological gap (1993) and it highlights the beginning of the trend of translating European RPGs, which wandered through the '90s.

If anyone has more suggestions for a 1999 game company, I'm happy to hear them. The problem is, of course, that the closer you got to 2000, the more likely a new game company was going to be crushed in the face of the d20 boom, and 1999 is pretty darned close.

The 2000s

1. The D20 Spark (2000)
   1. 2000: Necromancer Games
   2. 2000: Green Ronin Publishing
   3. 2000: Troll Lord Games
2. Indie Ideas (2000)
   1. 2000: Issaries
   2. 2000: Pelgrane
3. The D20 Explosion (2001)
   1. 2001: Goodman Games
   2. 2001: Privateer Press
   3. 2001: Mongoose Publishing
4. Indie Apprenticeship (2001-2002)
   1. 2001: Adept Press
   2. 2001: Memonto Mori Theatricks
   3. 2001: Lumpley Games
   4. 2002: Luke Crane
5. The Third Half of the Story (2002)
   1. 2002: Paizo Publishing
6. Indie Revolution (2003-2006)
   1. 2004: [1996]: Galileo Games
   2. 2004: Atomic Sock Monkey
   3. 2004: Wicked Dead Brewing Company / John Wick Presents
   4. 2006: Bully Pulpit Games
   5. 2006: Evil Hat Productions
7. The Newest Generation (2006-2009)
   1. 2006: Open Design
   2. 2006: Cubicle 7 Entertainment
8. Legacy Publishers (An '00s Trend)
   1. 2001: Fan Pro LLC
   2. 2003: Arc Dream Publishing
   3. 2005: RedBrick
   4. 2007: Catalyst Game Labs
9. Appendices
   1. Appendix 1: Timeline of the '90s
   2. Appendix 2: 10 Things You May Not Know About Roleplaying in the '90s
   3. Appendix 3: Bibliography & Thanks

The '00s is going to be the opposite of the '90s book as it's going to have the most updates. Right now I only have 65,500 words written for this 120,000 word book. I've also got no less than 11(!) new articles planned: 7 of the articles in the "Indie Revolution" section; Open Design (which will come from my web article here); and 3 of the articles for the "Legacy Publishers" section. Whew! I'm planning to start work on this all pretty early in the year so that I don't have three easy months of working on the '90s followed by three insane months of working on the '00s.

As should be obvious from the listing, there's going to be a lot of new focus on indies. I think it's very appropriate because I feel like two strong trends interweaved through the decade: the boom (and bust) of d20 companies; and the emergence of indie companies. I would have liked to have more on indies in the previous edition but my own inexperience with the category kept me from doing so. Fortunately I learned a lot while writing up Adept Press (one of the last two articles that I prepared for the original book), and I'm now going to have Evil Hat to help me with the details if I need it.

The latest addition to this book's outline went in just a few weeks ago. That's RedBrick, who appears in the Legacy Publisher section. Until a few months ago I'd always thought of them as an interesting publisher that could do a lot of what Catalyst has done — bringing back classic game systems — but they hadn't really fulfilled that potential. Instead they've been holding on to properties like Blue Planet and Fading Suns without doing a lot for them. Then they reinvented themselves as FASA Games. It was when one of the online RPG sellers announced that they had some of "FASA"'s first books in that I decided to add them to my table of contents, because it suggested that "FASA" might have more luck than RedBrick did with their impressive set of properties.

This raised a whole separate question of what to do with companies like the new FASA and the new TSR, since I've traditionally kept all of a company name under one article, even when they changed hands, as Hero, ICE, and West End did. In this case, the new FASA (and TSR) were just a step too far removed. They didn't share most of the properties with the originators of their names and they didn't share most of the owners, so they got separated out. If the new FASA Games were to end up with the properties now held by Catalyst, I might change my tune ...

I should also note that this is the first table of contents that doesn't follow a straight chronological ordering. The final section, "Legacy Publishers", covers an orthogonal set of companies that didn't fit in with the larger trends of d20 or indie publishing. I decided that setting them apart worked out better than trying to shoehorn them into individual sections, and I think I'm going to do something similar with the "Old Guard" section from the '80s book.

Even moreso than anything else, this table of contents is very likely to change, as it's got so much new material and I haven't even started my research on most of the companies. In fact, it changed while I was working on this article and decided that I liked some things in a different order. I wouldn't be surprised if one or more of those indie companies don't make it into my final list or if one or more get added.

And if there's anything you think I should add, particularly any companies from 2007, 2008, or 2009 that you think are already having a big impact, let me know!