Talk:Ryan Dancey

Ryan Dancey here - I'd like to request some changes to this article

Hello Wikipedians!

Since this article was created it now appears in brief next to Google searches for my name and comes up in various other kinds of research people may be doing about me. So I'd like to improve this article to be more accurate.

I'm told that editing one's own wikipedia page is frowned on, and that the best approach is to discuss the suggestions for changes here in Talk. So I'm Talking.  :)

Let's start at the top. The article begins "Ryan S. Dancey is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games."

Both of the parts of this statement are not really quite accurate.

I have done game design but I don't consider myself primarily a game designer, but rather a gaming industry executive. My professional career has been spent primarily organizing companies and teams to make games, and developing marketing and community support programs for games.

I have worked on roleplaying games but my career in RPGs only lasted for 3 years a full time focus. Prior to the '98-Y2K period where I worked on D&D, I spent several years making collectible card games, and from 2007 to the present I've been working with massively multiplayer online games.

Ok, on to the next section:

"Ryan Dancey was the owner of a distributor called Ismoedia, Inc., which was helping to fund Legend of the Five Rings (1995), and he joined in on the project."

Not much of this is accurate.

Isomedia (notice the spelling) was founded in 1992 and I was one of five co-cofounders. Isomedia was never a distributor but we did operate RPG International, a direct-response (i.e. mail order and phone order) retail operation for hobby gaming - among several other projects including creating a regional internet service provider and developing a microfiche replacement system for long-term data archiving. Isomedia formed a joint venture with Alderac Entertainment Group in 1995 to create the Legend of the Five Rings collectible card game. I was the primary lead at Isomedia working on the game and was responsible for the decision to create the joint venture and to green-light the project.

"At the end of 1998 the Five Rings group was dissolved as a separate entity, and Dancey became the business head of the roleplaying department at Wizards of the Coast, where he conceived of a third edition of Dungeons & Dragons"

It would be very incorrect to say I "conceived" of the third edition of D&D. Work on what became 3rd Edition had begun at TSR before my involvement. After the acquisition in '97, and during my time focused on integrating Five Rings Publishing Group with Wizards of the Coast, Peter Adkison continued to press the development of a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons. When I became the head of the business unit for tabletop RPGs late in '98, work had progressed to the point of having drafted playtest rules for the new edition and feedback from internal testers was being incorporated into the design. I was charged, on my assumption of the leadership of the team, with developing and executing a plan to revive the tabletop RPG business, and to make the release of a new edition of D&D a centerpiece of that plan.

My initial title when I became the leader of the tabletop RPG team was Dungeons & Dragons Brand Manager. In 1999 I was promoted to the title of Vice President and I was responsible for the tabletop roleplaying game brand & business unit. I remained a VP until my exit.

"Dancey championed Wizards of the Coast's purchased of Last Unicorn Games in 2000, as he saw in them a smaller and more efficient RPG R&D force that he wanted to bring in to compete with Wizards' own RPG staff."

Buying Last Unicorn Games was a multi-pronged strategy. They had the Star Trek license and had been doing good work in the RPG category with that license. They also had a disk-based game using mechanics licensed from Fantasy Flight Games for a Star Trek starship tactical combat game which we really liked. They also had been responsible for the Dune collectible card game which I green-lit at Five Rings Publishing Group and which was brought to market by Wizards of the Coast after the acquisition. Their work on the CCG was being continued with a tabletop RPG that we thought had a lot of potential as well. Last Unicorn's experience working with licensors meant that they had already built a process for submitting materials for outside review and approval and they were based in LA, close to Hollywood and thus conveniently located for lots of potential business meetings. We thought that we could use Last Unicorn to produce a steady stream of licensed RPGs using the D20 system while keeping the team in Seattle focused on Dungeons & Dragons and Star Wars. There was no intention to set the two groups up as competition for each other; they were constituted to do different kinds of work.

"Dancey largely conceived of the Open Gaming License and d20 Trademark License, based on his belief that the true strength of D&D was in its gaming community."

Actually, my belief was in the strength of the D&D Brand. I was convinced that we could license the rules for D&D and create a unifying force to push the industry toward consolidation around the D20 game system while simultaneously succeeding at reviving D&D because the Dungeons & Dragons brand was the more valuable part of the business - not the rules. We relied on the theory of network externalities to sell this concept to the rest of the company. By strengthening the D&D player network by both making a new version of D&D and by getting lots of other designers to produce games and materials compatible with the D20 game system inside the new edition of D&D, we felt we would derive a synergistic effect that would be beneficial to the business as a whole. In my opinion, that's exactly what happened.

"Dancey later moved back to "consultant" status, and was among those laid off by Wizards toward the end of 2002."

At the end of 2000 I decided that my time at the company was going to end. There were going to be significant layoffs and the RPG category was going to be downsized. My direct superior had assigned me away from the RPG team and asked that I assist the sales team on a project to improve our data analysis with the major book distributor that Wizards of the Coast was partnered with. Rather than remain at the company I decided I wanted to create a new startup to develop tools that other companies could use to replicate the success Wizards of the Coast had with its organized play programs. I transitioned out of the company early in 2001, retaining a short-term consulting relationship to help with the release of the D&D Master Tools project and tie up some loose ends.

My startup company, OrganizedPlay, operated full time from 2001 to 2003. We developed tools to support collectible card game tournaments used by several game publishers. We licensed the Living City RPGA Campaign from Wizards of the Coast and built tools to support a "Living" style tabletop RPG system as a prototype for other companies. However we were not able to survive in the post-9/11 recession and the end of the dot-com bubble, and I had essentially wound up the affairs of OrganizedPlay by the end of 2004.

From 2004 to 2007 I worked primarily as a consultant, helping companies create business plans and develop products targeting the hobby gaming market. I also became involved with a Las Vegas based entertainment company headed by Christian Moore, who was the former founder and CEO of Last Unicorn Games.

In 2007 I was recruited to become the Chief Marketing Officer of CCP, hf, an Icelandic video game developer that has offices in Atlanta and Shanghai. I worked at CCP until 2010 when I left the company and started work on my current business, Goblinworks, producing a next-generation fantasy sandbox massively multiplayer roleplaying game.

From 1995 to the present most of my work has been focused on creating great games and great gaming experiences. A partial list of my professional credits includes:

Co-creation - Legend of the Five Rings intellectual property, and design work on the base set and first 5 expansions of the collectible card game of the same name

Design - Battle of Beiden Pass, an introductory product designed to teach players the Legend of the Five Rings system

Executive in charge of production:

Star Trek Collectible Dice Game

Dune Collectible Card Game

Doomtown, the Deadlands Collectible Card Game

Legend of the Burning Sands intellectual property and Collectible Card Game

Rage: Snake Eyes Collectible Card Game

BattleTech: Commander's Edition Collectible Card Game

Pokemon Jr. Adventure Game

Dark*Matter campaign setting for Alternity

2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons products from 1998 to 2000

3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons from 2000 to 2001

I co-wrote the Hero Builder's Guidebook

I wrote, co-wrote, or edited a number of scenarios for Living City and created the Ruins of Ravens Bluff campaign materials under license from Wizards of the Coast.

I was involved in the creation and initial production of Anachronism the Collectible Card Game from TriKing Games as a consultant

As CMO at CCP Games I oversaw the worldwide sales & marketing teams responsible for the EVE Online MMO, the DUST 514 MMOFPS and the unreleased World of Darkness MMO

As CEO of Goblinworks I wrote the initial design plan for Pathfinder Online and I am responsible for all facets of the game's development and marketing.

I don't know how much biographical information is useful, but here is mine.

I was born in Seattle, Washington October 18 1968. I attended (but did not graduate) Washington State University from '87-88. I am married to Delaina Dancey and I have one child, a daughter named Teela Lorelei Dancey (named after the character in Larry Niven's Ringworld and one of Lazarus Long's clones from Time Enough for Love).

I tend to list my name as "Ryan Scott Dancey" or "Ryan S. Dancey" on professional credits.

Rsdancey (talk) 03:41, 4 March 2014 (UTC) Ryan Scott Dancey