Ryan S. Dancey is a businessman who has worked primarily in the collectible card game and role-playing game industries. He was vice president in charge of ''

Dungeons & Dragons ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (commonly abbreviated as ''D&D'' or ''DnD'') is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The game was first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. (TS ...

'' at

Wizards of the Coast Wizards of the Coast LLC (often referred to as WotC or simply Wizards) is an American publisher of games, primarily based on fantasy and science fiction themes, and formerly an operator of retail stores for games. It is currently a subsidia ...

. When the publisher of Dungeons & Dragons was facing bankruptcy, Dancey helped negotiate sale of the property to Wizards of the Coast. Dancey promoted the D&D's open gaming license (OGL), which reversed the policy from opposing third-party publications to supporting them.

Career

Dancey was the owner of distributor Isomedia Inc, which was helping to fund ''

Legend of the Five Rings Legend of the Five Rings (often abbreviated ''L5R'') is a fictional setting created by John Zinser, Dave Seay, Ryan Dancey, Dave Williams, DJ Trindle, Matt Wilson and John Wick and first published by a joint venture between Alderac Entertai ...

'' (1995), and he joined in on the project. In 1996 the principals behind the game created a new company with better funding, calling it Five Rings Publishing Group. Robert Abramowitz became the President of the new company, and

Alderac Entertainment Group Alderac Entertainment Group, or AEG, is a publisher of role-playing game, board game, and collectible card game products. AEG was formed by Jolly Blackburn in 1993 and is based in the city of Ontario, California. Prior to getting into their cu ...

(AEG) and Isomedia gave over their rights to ''Legend of the Five Rings'', with Dancey becoming Vice President of Product Development and John Zinser of AEG becoming VP of Sales. In early 1997, TSR was approaching bankruptcy and looking for a buyer; Abramowitz and Dancey negotiated a deal to purchase TSR, which they brought to

Peter Adkison Peter D. Adkison is an American game designer and businessman who is the founder and first CEO of Wizards of the Coast (1993–2001). During Adkison's tenure, Wizards of the Coast rose to the status of a major publisher in the hobby game indust ...

, who purchased Five Rings Publishing along with TSR. At the end of the next year the Five Rings Publishing Group was dissolved, and Dancey took over as the business head of Wizards of the Coast's roleplaying department, where he became involved in the development of the third edition of ''

''. Adkison put Dancey in charge business and marketing for TSR. Dancey championed Wizards of the Coast's purchase of

Last Unicorn Games Last Unicorn Games (LUG) was a game publisher owned by Christian Moore that was eventually purchased by Wizards of the Coast. Last Unicorn developed the collectible card games ''Dune'' (1997) and '' Heresy: Kingdom Come'' (1995) as well as the 19 ...

in 2000, to obtain their more efficient R&D force and bring it in with Wizards' existing RPG staff. Dancey largely conceived of the

Open Gaming License The Open Game License (OGL) is a public copyright license by Wizards of the Coast that may be used by tabletop role-playing game developers to grant permission to modify, copy, and redistribute some of the content designed for their games, nota ...

(OGL) and d20 System Trademark License, based on his belief that the true strength of ''D&D'' was in its gaming community. He said that TSR was far too aggressive looking for copyright violations and alienated fans. The OGL was published by WOTC in 2000 to license the System Reference Document (SRD) for ''D&D'' in a move spearheaded by Dancey. Dancey also co-authored the '' Hero Builder's Guidebook'' (2000). Dancey later moved to "consultant" status, and was among those employees laid off by Wizards before the end of 2002. Dancey later worked for Icelandic video game producer

CCP Games CCP hf., doing business as CCP Games, is an Icelandic video game developer based in Reykjavík. Novator Partners and General Catalyst had previously collectively owned a majority stake in the company, and in September 2018, CCP was acquired ...

, which had purchased

White Wolf Publishing White Wolf Publishing was an American roleplaying game and book publisher. The company was founded in 1991 as a merger between Lion Rampant

. In 2011, Dancey began working on Goblinworks "Pathfinder Online" Sandbox MMORPG. In August 2015, interim Goblinworks CEO

Lisa Stevens Lisa Stevens is an American editor, CEO and founder of Paizo Publishing, and COO of Goblinworks. She began her career in games in the 1980s, working with Jonathan Tweet and Mark Rein•Hagen to help produce the tabletop roleplaying game ''Ars ...

announced that Ryan Dancey had left Goblinworks for personal reasons. In a separate letter to players, she indicated that Dancey was still involved, and would continue to consult on the project.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dancey, Ryan American game designers Dungeons & Dragons game designers Living people Place of birth missing (living people) Year of birth missing (living people)