Come see us in Booth #201!

Green Ronin will be at Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio next week (June 18-22). You can find us in booth #201, so come on by and see us. As the show has gotten closer, I’ve been thinking of my and the company’s history with Origins. Green Ronin has been going since our founding in 2000, but the story starts a few years before that for me.

For its first 20 years, Origins moved around the country, landing in a different city each year. In 1995 I was two years into my freelance writing career and just starting my first company. Origins was in Philadelphia that year. This is a short bus ride from New York City, so I decided to go check it out. I had been going to Gen Con since 1989, but this was my first Origins. I scouted it out for my new company and hustled for freelance work. The following year Origins found a permanent home in Columbus and my old company exhibited there in 1996 and for the rest of the 90s. It became part of the rhythm of what we called the convention season back then. That was the period between May and September when most conventions happened (now there is no season, and it’s cons every month of the year). Origins and Gen Con were always our big shows and great places to sell new products hot off the presses. When I started Green Ronin, I planned our first release for Origins. 25 years ago, we debuted Ork! The Roleplaying Game. In 2001 we won an Origins Award for our second product, my d20 System adventure Death in Freeport. Many nominations followed, with wins for Black Sails Over Freeport (2004), Hobby Games: The 100 Best (2008), and Night’s Watch (2014).

I will admit that much of the aughts are a blur at this point, but we continued exhibiting at Origins as we transitioned out of d20 System and into more of our own systems, such as True20 Adventure Roleplaying, A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying, and Dragon Age. I generally found Origins to be a more social show than Gen Con, a better place for conversation and making contacts (a central meeting place, the Big Bar on 2, was also a help). We met many freelance writers, editors, and artists who later worked for us there. In 2012 Steve Kenson was a special guest at the show, and at the time Origins surprised GMs by having a guest show up in their games. So it was that Steve ended up playing in a Mutants & Masterminds event with a young Alex Thomas as the GM. Alex was mighty surprised to have the game’s designer show up to play, but he’s an excellent GM so Steve had a good time. This led directly to us hiring Alex for freelance work and eventually joining the company to work on the game he loves so much.

GAMA (the Game Manufacturer’s Association) is the organization that runs Origins. It has a professional staff but a volunteer board of directors from various segments of the industry. Both of my co-owners at Green Ronin, COO Nicole Lindroos and CCO Hal Mangold, served on the GAMA board for several years at different times. This was the very definition of a thankless task, but they thought they could do some good for the industry, especially in difficult times like the 2008 recession.

You will see all three of us at Origins next week. This is a great opportunity to pick up our latest Fantasy AGE release, the adventure series Lost Island of the Pirate Queen. We will also have print copies of the Technofantasy and Cthulhu Mythos supplements for the game. We will have print copies of all three issues of our Cthulhu Awakens zine, Dreadcrawls, which are useful for any Mythos RPG. And, of course, we will have copies of the 2nd edition of Ork! The Roleplaying game for its 25th anniversary. See you there!