Ivan Van Norman Leaves Darrington Press

Ivan Van Norman has departed Darrington Press after a four-year stint. The veteran game developer and director announced on LinkedIn that he had departed the company, having left sometime earlier this month. Van Norman was previously the company director, responsible for creative oversight, product development and team collaboration as well as providing a public presence for the company.

No reason was given for the departure, although Van Norman says that he'll be focusing on Hunters Entertainment as well as several other passion projects.

Darrington Press announced earlier this week that they had hired Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford as the Creative Director and Game Director for Darrington Press, working on both Daggerheart as well as other new games.

Van Norman's full post can be found below:

As people have been reaching out, I wanted to let everyone know that I am no longer working at Critical Role.

I couldn't be happier to have worked with such an excellent group of people, who have worked so hard and passionately to create great things. While I am proud of everything the Darrington team has accomplished over the last four years, I am excited to move on to new opportunities.

In the meantime, I will be using this time to focus on the company I started 15 years ago, Hunters Entertainment, as well as pursue a few passion projects that I now have time to put effort into.

I have always enjoyed new ventures, and Darrington was the largest one by far. There is no greater joy than bringing talented folks together and making games worth participating in.

I wish everyone at Critical Role and Darrington Press team all the luck with Daggerheart. It is an amazing game, and everyone who worked on it should be proud of what they’ve accomplished.

Onto the next adventure!

 

[SteveC]

Just out of curiosity (and not really related) but : what would some of the better known 'narrative gaming' TTRPG's (that I probably should have been aware of already) out there be ? You mentioned 'Powered by the Apocalypse'; would that mean basically any game that uses that engine ?

The ones I really note are Blades in the Dark (Jonathan Harper) and 13th Age (Rob Hensoo and Jonathan Tweet). Fortunately they have a solid "inspirational sources" list, which looks like this:

(Note: Mods, if there's any issue with posting that screencap, I'll remove it).

 

[nyvinter]

If you can find them, the Atomic Robo and Young Centurions are IMO the best books to explain the variants of the game (Core and Accelerated) . They do come with settings though and I think this helps when talking about the rules.

 

[Clint_L]

My strongest memory of Ivan Van Norman is of the rather awesome Dread mini-campaign he ran on Geek and Sundry. I wish him well!

 

[abazaba]

Alright. So I did an (admittedly very limited) look-up of the things mentioned so far (in random order) :

Blades in the Dark
13th Age
Fate Core / Dresden Files
Fate Core / Fate of Cthulhu
Atomic Robo

And I think that considering that since I am someone who only has experience with D&D 5e, both game mechanics wise (D&D) and 'setting' wise ('high-fantasy', mostly), 13th Age seems like the best starting point here. Not too different from the setting and game mechanics I already know, and yet allowing for a more narrative/story oriented approach than D&D 5e.

I am not really looking for sci-fi, horror-ish or dark fantasy approaches, so Dresden, Cthulhu, 'Atomic Robo' and 'Blades in the Dark' seem to be a bad fit.

Thanks for all the (off-topic) help here people, it's really appreciated.

 

[nyvinter]

For even further into the narrative than those there's the Cortex Prime game Tales of Xadia (based on the Dragon Prince cartoon). It's also really good.

 

[Bolongo]

13th Age seems like the best starting point here.

That's probably true. Just be aware there's a 2nd edition of that game coming very soon. In August, according to the kickstarter.

 

[overgeeked]

Alright. So I did an (admittedly very limited) look-up of the things mentioned so far (in random order) :

Blades in the Dark
13th Age
Fate Core / Dresden Files
Fate Core / Fate of Cthulhu
Atomic Robo

And I think that considering that since I am someone who only has experience with D&D 5e, both game mechanics wise (D&D) and 'setting' wise ('high-fantasy', mostly), 13th Age seems like the best starting point here. Not too different from the setting and game mechanics I already know, and yet allowing for a more narrative/story oriented approach than D&D 5e.

I am not really looking for sci-fi, horror-ish or dark fantasy approaches, so Dresden, Cthulhu, 'Atomic Robo' and 'Blades in the Dark' seem to be a bad fit.

Thanks for all the (off-topic) help here people, it's really appreciated.

Check out Fate Accelerated and Fate Condensed. They’re generic and on the lighter side mechanically.

There’s a whole host of PbtA games out there covering just about every genre imaginable. Teenage supers? Masks. 1970s gonzo? Spirit of 77. Monster hunting? Monster of the Week.

 

[abazaba]

That's probably true. Just be aware there's a 2nd edition of that game coming very soon. In August, according to the kickstarter.

Thanks for the heads-up.

 

[abazaba]

Check out Fate Accelerated and Fate Condensed. They’re generic and on the lighter side mechanically.

Thanks for the info.

There’s a whole host of PbtA games out there covering just about every genre imaginable. Teenage supers? Masks. 1970s gonzo? Spirit of 77. Monster hunting? Monster of the Week.

I guess that what I am looking for the most, is something 'high fantasy'-ish. So I took a look at the 'Powered by the Apocalypse' entry on Wikipedia, and 'Fantasy World' (or perhaps 'Dungeon World') seem to fit that genre the best ?

 

[CandyLaser]

Thanks for the info.


I guess that what I am looking for the most, is something 'high fantasy'-ish. So I took a look at the 'Powered by the Apocalypse' entry on Wikipedia, and 'Fantasy World' (or perhaps 'Dungeon World') seem to fit that genre the best ?

Dungeon World (in its original edition; a new edition is coming soon-ish) is very much an attempt to translate D&D-isms into the PbtA engine, and while it's fairly successful at doing so, that doesn't necessarily make it the best PbtA fantasy game. Personally I'd recommend Fellowship for that title. That said, Fellowship is a bit of an unwieldy beast itself, and I probably wouldn't recommend it for a first stab at PbtA mechanics. I like Monster of the Week as a good entry PbtA game, and while it's not high fantasy it's definitely fantasy, in the vein of Buffy and Supernatural.