About Face

If you’re the public face of something, think about what you can do to make sure the people who aren’t the public face still get some recognition and publicity.  Being the public face is easy in a lot of ways; you’re standing where the spotlight already is.  The trick, then, is to learn how to reflect that light in other places.

I say this as I think about how often I get conflated with Evil Hat, even though Evil Hat — especially with the Dresden Files RPG — is a team effort, a collaboration.  I flinch a lot whenever I see someone credit me for a thing that I only did the “packaging” on.  I’m loud, and a lot of the work I do has to do with the delivery, the last mile of connection between the publisher and the customer.

Heck, it might be baked right into my psychology to take on those jobs that put me in that position. Customer service, layout, spokesperson, amateur marketeer, what have you — all of those are about putting polish on something and getting it straight into the hands of someone who will express some gratitude for it being done.  That’s intensely gratifying. So it’s almost certainly the case that I’m into that sort of stuff because of the sweet, sweet hit of recognition and respect it gets me.

I can’t, and shouldn’t, deny that it’s part of the equation. But if I let it be all of the equation, I’m a jerk. From where I stand, it’s the artists, the writers, the editors who are doing the heavy lifting.    And these days, those roles are not mine (except in bits & pieces, always a minority portion). They’re the people who deserve celebrating, respect, recognition.  So in the twitter tradition of “follow friday” — which, yes, is about getting people followers but is really about heaping more recognition on folks you feel deserve it — I’m going to talk quickly about the Dresden Files RPG team.

Amanda Valentine: Man, the Valentines. I was very lucky to be introduced to them a couple GenCons back — they are friends of Jim’s, so it felt right to involve them in the game, the ultimate friends-of-Jim project.  Amanda has been acting as our managing editor for the last several phases of the game’s development, and she has a keen eye for seeking out clarity in the text.  When we can explain something to Amanda’s satisfaction, we know we’ve nailed it.  Out of everyone on the project, she has probably read through the text the most times (and given the volume, that’s saying something), each time pushing us to refine and improve.  We’re in great shape because of it.

Clark Valentine: Yeah. The Valentines. Clark is Amanda’s husband and he has almost zero idea how good he is.  Clark has had our bases covered in so many ways throughout this project, stepping in and getting the main work of statblocking done when I just didn’t have the endurance for it, working up extensive examples, and writing up nearly all of the truly magnificent Baltimore chapter based on some notes Rob Donoghue put together. Whenever we’ve faltered in our step or collapsed from exhaustion, Clark has stepped in and gotten us to the finish line.  I’m pleased as hell he’s on the Leverage RPG team we’ve got going over at Margaret Weis Productions because I absolutely need to keep working with him.

Ryan Macklin: Ryan is steadily working on becoming a force of nature. He’s been acting in a complementary role to Amanda on the Dresden Files project, taking care of talent coordination, schedule management, supplemental editing, as well as a few big chunks of writing.  If you end up liking city creation in the Dresden Files RPG, it’ll be because Ryan saw where Rob Donoghue’s early draft COULD go, and took it there.  I’ve seen Ryan do the editor/developer act with a couple other Evil Hat products — Don’t Lose Your Mind and A Penny For My Thoughts — and he’s truly, truly good at it. Seeing him branch out and start to do this for other companies and projects (including Leverage) has been exciting. More folks should get to drink from this well.

Chad Underkoffler: Man, Chad. CHAD. The Chad is crazy good. For some insane reason I had thought I was the equal of reading all of our source material and digesting it clearly enough to write our setting chapters. I was deluded.  The task was way too big for me. Way too big for most people, really. But not for Chad.  He took to it like a pit bull and after many weeks — months — of work put together the definitive guide to the characters and stories of the Dresden Files.  Chad is almost too good at his job, like he throws off too much light to look at him directly.  Screw this “robot from the future powered by beer” crap; he’s a miniature sun.  And research, truly, is where that sun shines the most.  I knew this already from seeing how well he explores the ideas and stories of superheroes, swashbuckling, and faerie tales in his games (Truth & Justice, Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, and The Zantabulous Zorcerer of Zo), but seeing him do this on a property I already thought I knew so well was really humbling.

Rob Donoghue: Rob and I were the early team for the Dresden Files project, back when we didn’t think it was too big for us (it was). But all throughout, he’s been the Brain In A Jar who takes the time to think in all directions at once.  This can be a bit like trying to ride a tornado, but man, the stuff that spins out of it.  He was the force that, together with Lenny, drove Spirit of the Century through to completion; without Spirit, no Dresden.  Getting Spirit out there gave us a chance to really test drive our new ideas for Fate on the tabletops of the public — in many ways, it’s the biggest, most commercially successful playtest ever. And his fingerprints are all over the Dresden Files RPG, even if it’s difficult to truly suss out a specific passage of text that’s entirely his.  When it comes down to it, Rob’s the guy who goes down into the mind-mines and brings back the ore.  He was the first guy to take a swing at the magic system, at city creation. It taxed him terribly, I’m afraid, but I am incredibly grateful he was on the earliest front lines, smoothing out the road so the rest of the team could march forward with greater confidence. In many ways that was the hardest work of all.

Lenny Balsera: I am certain that this project blew Lenny’s brain clear out the back of his head. That did not stop him.  While Rob could be said to be the man who made all the first moves that got us to where we got, Lenny made so, so many of the final ones. He overcame the magic system after it bested both Rob and I.  He got the vision of the system down when the rest of us were still blinking through the murk.  We thought we’d be able to just take things straight over from Spirit of the Century, but Lenny saw so many ways we could improve and refine.  I might have copy and pasted with some light editing; Lenny rewrote and where necessary reworked from the ground up.  If something in the system needed doing, he went and did it.  In so many ways, he was just fearless. You need that mentality when you need to produce something first rate.  Lenny made sure we did.

There have been others who have helped with the project, for sure — Genevieve Cogman who gave us the core text that formed the basis for our introductory setting chapters, Adam Dray on the editing tip, Kenneth Hite guest-starring as a werewolf tour guide for occult Chicago, Priscilla Spencer as our back-pocket series expert, Matt Gandy as sounding board and earliest of playtesters, Jim’s agent Jennifer Jackson, Jim Himself of course, Chris Hanrahan for his marketing and retail savvy, all of the incredible artists, the truly staggering number of alpha playtesters, our ridiculously supportive family, friends, and fans — but those are my core folks, the crew who saw the final biggest push through from start to finish, the team that salvaged the efforts that, yeah, I started, but frankly never would have finished without every one of them involved.

Shine a little light on ‘em, would ya?