Paul Tevis is a tabletop role-playing game designer and podcaster. He designed the game A Penny for My Thoughts, which won an Indie RPG Award, and hosted the podcast Have Games, Will Travel, which won an ENNIE Award.
Have Games, Will Travel won an Ennie for "Best Podcast" in 2007, the first year that the category existed. [1]
A Penny for My Thoughts won the 2009 Indie RPG Awards for Most Innovative Game. [2]
Tevis began his career in gaming as a "Man in Black" for Steve Jackson Games, demoing games from their catalog at conventions. He also worked for Atlas Games in a similar capacity.
Tevis' original podcast, Have Games, Will Travel discussed games, game design, and gamer subculture. It ran for more than one hundred episodes beginning in July 2005. A typical show featured Tevis' reviews of several games. The final episode was released January 1, 2010.
From October 2006 to October 2009, Tevis co-hosted the podcast The Voice with Brennan Taylor of Indie Press Revolution. The Voice was a house organ of IPR, presenting updates on new products available and featuring reviews, interviews, and game design advice.
Tevis released his own game, A Penny for My Thoughts, in the summer of 2009 through Evil Hat Productions. [3]
Keith Baker is an American game designer and fantasy novel author. In addition to working with Wizards of the Coast on the creation of Eberron, he has also contributed material for Goodman Games, Paizo Publishing and Green Ronin Publishing. In 2014, Baker and Jennifer Ellis co-founded the indie tabletop game company Twogether Studios.
Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd. is a games publisher located in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, United States and founded in 2004 after Margaret Weis and Don Perrin, the two founders of Sovereign Press, divorced.
An indie role-playing game is a role-playing game published by individuals or small press publishers, in contrast to games published by large corporations. Indie tabletop role-playing game designers participate in various game distribution networks, development communities, and gaming conventions, both in person and online. Indie game designer committees grant annual awards for excellence.
The ENNIE Awards are awards for role-playing game (RPG) products and their creators. The awards were created in 2001 by Russ Morrissey of EN World in partnership with Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D Third Edition News. The ceremony has been hosted at Gen Con in Indianapolis since 2002. Since 2018, EN World is no longer associated with the awards.
Evil Hat Productions is a company that produces role-playing games and other tabletop games. They are best known for the free indie RPG system Fate, Blades in the Dark, and Thirsty Sword Lesbians, all of which have won multiple awards.
The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game is a licensed role-playing game based on The Dresden Files and using the Fate system. It was released in late 2010 in two hardcover volumes: Your Story with the rules information and Our World with setting information, and won numerous awards at all of the Origins Awards, the ENnies, and the Golden Geek Awards.
Wolfgang Baur is an American game designer, best known for his work with Dragon magazine. He designs role-playing games and is known for his work at Wizards of the Coast. Baur is also the founder of Open Design LLC, later known as Kobold Press.
Owen K.C. Stephens is a game designer who has worked on a number of products for the Starfinder, Pathfinder and Star Wars Roleplaying Game and other games.
Dungeons & Dragons retro-clones are fantasy role-playing games that emulate earlier editions of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) no longer supported by Wizards of the Coast. They are made possible by the release of later editions' rules in a System Reference Document under the terms of the Open Game License, which allow the use of much of the proprietary terminology of D&D that might otherwise collectively constitute copyright infringement. However, per the license, these games lack the brand names Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, and all the other trademarks associated with those brands.
Dread is a indie horror role-playing game published by The Impossible Dream in 2006. The game is unusual in that it uses a Jenga tower for action resolution.
Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) is a tabletop role-playing game design framework developed by Meguey Baker and Vincent Baker for the 2010 game Apocalypse World and later adapted for hundreds of other indie role-playing games.
Emily Care Boss is an indie roleplaying game designer, theorist and publisher. She was a foundational member of The Forge, an early leader in the indie role-playing game movement and is considered the creator of the American Freeform genre of roleplaying games, which combine indie RPG principles and mechanics with Nordic freeform and American chamber live action role-playing techniques. She has been referred to as the "Dean" of the North American school of structured freeform game design.
Cam Banks is a game designer known for his work on the Cortex System line of roleplaying games as lead designer for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, and the Big Damn Heroes Handbook supplement to the Serenity Role Playing Game, among other titles. He is the Cortex Creative Director for Fandom Tabletop, the publishers of Cortex Prime.
A Penny for My Thoughts is a role-playing game by Paul Tevis, published by Evil Hat Productions in 2009.
Cathriona "Cat" Tobin is a game designer and publisher based in West Cork, Ireland. She co-owns the London-based Pelgrane Press with Simon J Rogers and is a significant contributor to the roleplaying game industry in the UK.
Avery Alder is a Canadian tabletop role-playing game designer. She designs games with themes of LGBTQ self-discovery, community building, and post-apocalyptic survival. In collaboration with Benjamin Rosenbaum, Alder invented the Belonging Outside Belonging system, which became a template for future designers' games. Her work is a topic of scholarship in the history of game design.
Visigoths vs. Mall Goths is an urban fantasy tabletop role-playing game with LGBTQ dating sim elements by Lucian Kahn, with art by Robin Eisenberg. The ancient Visigoths have time traveled to 1990s Los Angeles and are battling mall goths for control of the mall. The game's tone is silly and the setting has many puns. The game was inspired by 1990s movies The Craft, Empire Records, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Clueless. It was nominated for the ENNIE Awards and the Indie Game Developer Network awards.
One Shot Podcast Network is a network of podcast series about tabletop role-playing games, with many shows dedicated to actual play, interviews, and discussion. It was founded by James D'Amato to showcase a wide variety of games and systems, including indie role-playing games, as an alternative to actual play shows that focus exclusively on Dungeons & Dragons.
The Gauntlet is a publisher/producer of tabletop role-playing games and podcasts. Their publications include Trophy RPG and Brindlewood Bay. In addition to game books, they publish a monthly game zine called Codex to encourage experimentation in indie role-playing games and OSR. Their games and podcasts have won multiple ENNIE Awards. As of November 2024, The Gauntlet has raised over one million dollars USD on Kickstarter and BackerKit combined.
Grant Howitt is a tabletop role-playing game designer, publisher, and journalist. He won six ENNIE Awards for his game Heart: The City Beneath. His game Honey Heist, which inspired an online trend of self-published games with one-page rulesets, has been featured on Critical Role, The Adventure Zone, and Friends at the Table. Through his publishing company Rowan, Rook and Decard, Howitt is a co-designer on Kieron Gillen's DIE: The Roleplaying Game.