Ronin Arts

Ronin Arts
Founded	2003; 21 years ago
Founders	Philip J. Reed; Christopher Shy;

Ronin Arts is a

Philip J. Reed and Christopher Shy in 2003, to some degree a successor to Shy's Studio Ronin and Reed's selling of role playing games PDFs from his blog.^[1]

Ronin Arts publishes or published at some point, among other products

M&M Superlink support, and D20 Future

support.

History

Author

Herbert West: Reanimator (2003) featuring artwork by Shy.^[2]^: 374 Ronin Arts expanded that same year beyond their d20 collections by purchasing the rights to The Whispering Vault by Pariah Press and Star Ace by Pacesetter.^[2]^: 374 Reed and Shy started producing new material for The Whispering Vault soon after, starting with Mortal Magic (2003) that was previously unpublished by Ronin Publishing, but after publishing several more PDFs in 2003, that line ceased.^[2]^: 374 Reed wanted to convert Star Ace to d20 Modern but never finished work on that.^[2]^: 374 Ronin Arts was so successful that Reed left Steve Jackson Games in 2004 to work full-time on the company.^[2]^: 374 Around that, freelancers such as Bruce Baugh, Michael Hammes, James Maliszewski and Patrick Younts started to produce material for Ronin Arts.^[2]

^: 374

Ronin Arts has produced material for other licensed systems, such as publishing the "Runic Fantasy" series for the

Green Ronin sold directly.^[2]^: 374 Reed was able to sell an extended PDF series in 2006 called ePublishing 101, which explained how to succeed at PDF production.^[2]^: 374 The market for PDFs had slowed down greatly by 2007 so Reed went back to work for Steve Jackson Games, and in 2008 he became their Chief Operating Officer.^[2]

^: 374

Ronin Arts began as an experiment, when Reed wrote the company's first PDF 101 Spellbooks. Surprised by how quickly the gaming community embraced the product, he quickly set out to produce more. The company soon made its products available at RPGNOW.com, one of the first sites to exclusively handle the sale and promotion of roleplaying games in electronic format. From 2003 to 2007 at least,^[1] Ronin Arts was considered one of the most successful publishers in the emerging PDF industry.^[3]

In February 2007, however, they ended their relationship with RPGNOW due to creative differences.^[4]^[5]

As of March 2015, Ronin Arts' website is no longer active, having apparently been let go as of late 2012 or early 2013. Many of its products are still available by way of

Paizo Publishing

.

Not to be confused with Green Ronin Publishing, another popular producer of RPG supplements.

References

^ ^a ^b Shannon Appelcline (2015). Designers & Dragons: The 00s, "Mini-History: Ronin Arts (2003-2008)". Evil Hat Productions. p. 49.
ISBN 978-1613170878
.

^
ISBN 978-1-907702-58-7
.

^ "theRPGSite". theRPGSite. Archived from the original on 2012-02-06. Retrieved 2013-09-01.
^ ":: Game Publishers Association ::". Thegpa.org. 1969-12-31. Retrieved 2013-09-01.
^ "Design Notes: May you live in interesting times". Rpgdesign.blogspot.com. 2007-02-02. Retrieved 2013-09-01.

[dd00s-1] Shannon Appelcline (2015). Designers & Dragons: The 00s, "Mini-History: Ronin Arts (2003-2008)". Evil Hat Productions. p. 49.
ISBN 978-1613170878
.

[designers-2] 
ISBN 978-1-907702-58-7
.

[3] "theRPGSite". theRPGSite. Archived from the original on 2012-02-06. Retrieved 2013-09-01.

[4] ":: Game Publishers Association ::". Thegpa.org. 1969-12-31. Retrieved 2013-09-01.

[5] "Design Notes: May you live in interesting times". Rpgdesign.blogspot.com. 2007-02-02. Retrieved 2013-09-01.

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