Evil Hat Productions Brings The World of Harry Dresden To Life With The Dresden Files Role Playing Game

Silver Spring, Maryland (January 26, 2010) - After 4 years in the making, Evil Hat Productions is not only pleased but proud to officially announce The Dresden Files Role Playing Game (RPG) will release at the Origins Game Fair, June 23, 2010. Fred Hicks, one of the founding partners of Evil Hat, said, "Stars and stones! This project has been a labor of love for a great many people for a few years now. The thought of sharing these books with people, getting them in their hands, and having people role playing in the Dresden-verse is making me all misty."

The Dresden Files RPG is based upon the wildly popular series of books by New York Times best selling author Jim Butcher. With eleven books published in the series, and Changes, the 12th book set to release on April 6, 2010, the Evil Hat crew had a wealth of characters and plot to draw from. "When Jim came to us a few years back, and asked us if we wanted to work on a role playing game based on his books, it took us about a millisecond to say 'yes!' He has been one of our biggest supporters on the project, and is just wonderful to work with" said Hicks.

Hicks went on to say, "We based The Dresden Files RPG on the 'Fate' game system we used on the award-winning Spirit of the Century. We took everything we learned from Spirit, and then updated, revised, play-tested, and fine-tuned it to produce an experience that closely matches the novels themselves. That experience is also defined by the wealth of background we were able to add to the game from Jim's amazing stories, including a comprehensive look at all the characters and creatures from the first ten books. We are sure that along with being a phenomenal game, it will also be a fantastic resource for fans of the books."

"Originally, we were planning to do this game in a single volume. As time went on and word count grew...so did the amount of flat-out awesome we knew we had on our hands. And so our game grew out of the confines of one book, into two gorgeous volumes," Hicks added.

The Dresden Files RPG: Volume 1 - Your Story and The Dresden Files RPG: Volume 2 - Our World will make their first appearance at the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio June 23, 2010.

"We wanted to release these books in a bit more of an intimate setting, so we chose to make our big 'coming out' at Origins. It's a small enough show that we feel like we will be able to spend more time with the fans, and thank the community that has been so supportive as we have been working on this. All plans point to physical copies of the books being available for the release event. But if Fate (ahem) intervenes and they do not arrive for the show floor, we will offer an 'instant content pre-order.' This will allow folks to walk away with full PDFs of the books right there, and have the books shipped directly to them," Hicks said.

Preorders may begin prior to Origins, depending on how the production timeline works out. Shortly after Origins, The Dresden Files RPG Volumes 1 & 2 will then go on sale both to Retailers and Consumers through the Evil Hat online store, as well as through Indie Press Revolution.

    * The Dresden Files RPG: Volume 1 -- Your Story ISBN 978-0-9771534-7-3. Price $TBD.
    * The Dresden Files RPG: Volume 2 -- Our World ISBN 978-0-9771534-8-0. Price $TBD.
    * Retailers, for more information on how to order Evil Hat's full line-up of titles, please visit http://www.evilhat.com/home/retailer-information/
    * For more information on Evil Hat Productions, visit: http://www.evilhat.com
    * For More information on The Dresden Files and Jim Butcher, visit: http://www.jim-butcher.com
    * Follow The Dresden Files RPG on Twitter @Dresdenfiles
    * Press contacts, please email feedback@evilhat.com

Following some upset and strident and argumentative conversation on the spoiler boards, I feel it is necessary to make this board wide policy clear. 

Following the closing of Touchy Topics, our patience as board moderators for argumentative behaviors is going to run real thin, real fast.

If you're getting emotional about any topic, then you need to walk away from the keys, or at least the topic itself.  The use of the word "emotional" here is a broad brush.  Dismissing others' points of view as irrelevant with what you believe are the logical facts of the situation is just as much an emotional response as telling people they're jerks, screaming, or any number of other behaviors which are NOT OKAY.

When you see an opinion here that you disagree with, turn away from the keys and try to make that opinion's case to yourself.  Play devil's advocate with your own disagreement.  Make sure that before you type word one, you understand the other guy's point of view and the ways in which he or she is right AS WELL AS you. 

This is not a good practice that you can exercise only occasionally.  It's the price of admission here.  It's necessary every day, with every post.

Getting upset about the topics here, getting strident, or cloaking yourself in the language of the jerk just because you're so certain you're right, is not worth it, and more to the point, not in any way okay. 

The things you publish here when you post are going out on the internet.  Anyone could see them.  Your lover.  Your mom.  Your future grandkids who are looking for a reason to be proud of you instead of embarrassed.  Post like you've got an eye on that.  Just because you're not sitting next to these people you're getting so, ridiculously upset with is no excuse to throw mud at them.

Be your best self.

It's mandatory.

Now that we've done away with the Touchy Topics board at the request of Jim, we have a few topic areas that are simply not okay to discuss on these boards (boards which should be strongly oriented on Jim-specific fandom anyway).

This list may be updated at any time as we evolve our understanding of what topics are particularly toxic.

Do not discuss:

- Real world religion (Grey area: real world religion in the Dresden Files might be OK, but anything that comes off as using that to slam members of particular faiths in the real world by proxy is a step over the line)

- Real world politics (this is not confined to political parties, their hi jinxes, and the like, but also beliefs that cause political hot topics, such as a stance on abortion, death penalty, taxes, LGBT rights either pro or con, gun politics, etc.)

- This includes having anything like the above in your sig, or by your Avatar, or in your Avatar.

Useful guideline: if you find yourself sitting at your keyboard, looking at Jim Butcher Online and thinking "I am OUTRAGED! I must TELL EVERYONE ABOUT THIS OUTRAGE!", DO NOT POST. Stop, take a deep breath, go outside, hug your significant other, do whatever you have to. But this isn't the place for it. We hear blogspot is good for that sort of thing.

Other items for this list are currently under private discussion by the moderators and will see the light of day here shortly.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=478196

I have no ETA. Bluehost has screwed me again.

We're going to start sharing Harry's World -- the player's setting primer chapter -- with folks via a multi-part blog post series starting next Tuesday, August 4th, with new posts every other Tuesday after that.  Once that wraps up, we'll get on into the paranormal politicking chapter, Old World Order.  Stay tuned!

In the meantime, in case you missed it, Ryan posted up another status report: http://www.dresdenfilesrpg.com/2009/07/28/july-status-update/

Hey, folks. I'm gonna try to get the Dresden Files RPG lead developer Lenny Balsera on the horn sometime in the next few weeks to talk about the game.  Any questions you want me to be absolutely sure we cover?

http://butcherblock.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=453176

[21m 44s] In this second of three parts, Fred continues his conversation with Jim, covering the frequently asked questions of the tour, including things like Harry's relationships (and lack thereof), power escalation, the number of books in the series, the RPG that Fred and others are working on, and that whole "Jim Butcher Himself" thing.  Plus, famous people are just people, and James Marsters is a good guy.

NOTE: There are some mild series spoilers in here, but it's nothing that people who've read all of the paperbacks and the Turn Coat sample chapters online don't already know.  All the same, you've been warned!