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Evil Hat Productions
Evil Hat Productions is a company that produces role-playing games and other tabletop games. They are best known for the free indie RPG system Fate, Blades in the Dark, and Thirsty Sword Lesbians, all of which have won multiple awards.
Fred Hicks had been working with Lydia Leong, Rob Donoghue, and others to run LARPs at AmberCon NorthWest starting in 1999, and came up with the name Evil Hat for themselves. While on a trip to Lake Tahoe, friends Hicks and Donoghue developed a new game based on a conversation about running another Amber game and fixing some problems with FUDGE; the result was Fate which Hicks and Donoghue would publish under the name Evil Hat. Donoghue and Hicks released a complete first-edition of Fate through Yahoo! Groups (January 2003) then cleaned up the technical writing and slightly polished the system for a second edition (August 2003). Hicks and Donoghue began work on the licensed Dresden Files Roleplaying Game in 2004, but publication was held up because they decided to use Spirit of the Century (2006) to introduce the Fate 3.0 system instead. While working on these other games, as a side-project Hicks worked on Don't Rest Your Head (2006), which would be Evil Hat's first published game. Don't Rest Your Head was critically acclaimed and quickly sold through Evil Hat's short print-on-demand print run.
In 2005, the company began producing a series of commercial role-playing games using an updated version of the Fate system, each focusing on a different genre. These include the 1920s pulp adventure Spirit of the Century and the hard sci-fi Diaspora. In 2010, they released Dresden Files Roleplaying Game, based on the Dresden Files series of novels by author Jim Butcher. The FATE system had also been licensed to Cubicle 7 Entertainment who used it for Starblazer Adventures, based on the British Starblazer comic.
Evil Hat Productions is a part of the Bits and Mortar initiative and was one of the original founding companies in August 2010.
In January 2016, Evil Hat Productions announced print-runs for some of its Fate Core System games such as Venture City (2014) and Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple (2011). The company then announced in September 2016 that they would be bringing both Blades in the Dark (2017) and Karthun: Lands of Conflict (2017) to trade in 2017; both games were funded via successful Kickstarter campaigns in 2015 and 2014, respectively.
In October 2018, ICv2 reported that Evil Hat was scaling back with "a total of a dozen projects [...] postponed or cut in the immediate future" along with staff reductions such as the Head of Marketing Carrie Harris and the Head of Business Development Chris Hanrahan leaving that month and Senior Art Director Brian Patterson being laid off "at the end of 2018". Game designer Alex Roberts told Polygon that her game For the Queen (2019) was "the last boxed game" released by Evil Hat as the publisher shifted to exclusively releasing books and that originally, the game was "almost on the chopping block" as it was "80% done" when the publisher made their change.
In 2019, Hicks revealed that the role-playing game Monster of the Week (2015) had a surge in sales after being featured on The Adventure Zone podcast in 2018. Hicks informed ICv2 that "interest in that same month surged to a level similar to our initial product release spike; in practically every month since, sustained interest in the game has vastly outstripped what we were able to achieve ourselves. Only one month, October 2018, dipped below the highest interest level we saw immediately following release in 2015, and was promptly followed by November 2018 where we saw our strongest sales-month ever for the product (possibly due to retailers stocking up for the holiday gifting season)". Hicks highlighted that while Fate Core System "achieved a big sales surge" after being featured in May 2017 on Geek & Sundry’s TableTop "the impact was shorter than it was for The Adventure Zone" impact on Monster of the Week. Lin Codega of Rascal highlighted that "while it was never out of stock during its four-year run at Evil Hat, after For the Queen was featured on Shut Up, Sit Down, it became exceptionally hard to find at physical distributors, according to a spokesperson from Evil Hat".
Don't Rest Your Head was a runner-up for Indie Game of the Year at the 2006 Indie RPG Awards, losing to Evil Hat's Spirit of the Century. In 2007, Evil Hat won a silver ENnie Award for Best Rules and an Honorable Mention for Best Game, both for Spirit of the Century. In 2008, the game supplement Don't Lose Your Mind won the Indie RPG Awards for Indie Supplement of the Year. In 2009, Don't Lose Your Mind won the Silver ENnie for Best Writing and Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies won the Silver ENnie for Best Setting; both games were also nominated for Product of the Year.
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Evil Hat Productions
Evil Hat Productions is a company that produces role-playing games and other tabletop games. They are best known for the free indie RPG system Fate, Blades in the Dark, and Thirsty Sword Lesbians, all of which have won multiple awards.
Fred Hicks had been working with Lydia Leong, Rob Donoghue, and others to run LARPs at AmberCon NorthWest starting in 1999, and came up with the name Evil Hat for themselves. While on a trip to Lake Tahoe, friends Hicks and Donoghue developed a new game based on a conversation about running another Amber game and fixing some problems with FUDGE; the result was Fate which Hicks and Donoghue would publish under the name Evil Hat. Donoghue and Hicks released a complete first-edition of Fate through Yahoo! Groups (January 2003) then cleaned up the technical writing and slightly polished the system for a second edition (August 2003). Hicks and Donoghue began work on the licensed Dresden Files Roleplaying Game in 2004, but publication was held up because they decided to use Spirit of the Century (2006) to introduce the Fate 3.0 system instead. While working on these other games, as a side-project Hicks worked on Don't Rest Your Head (2006), which would be Evil Hat's first published game. Don't Rest Your Head was critically acclaimed and quickly sold through Evil Hat's short print-on-demand print run.
In 2005, the company began producing a series of commercial role-playing games using an updated version of the Fate system, each focusing on a different genre. These include the 1920s pulp adventure Spirit of the Century and the hard sci-fi Diaspora. In 2010, they released Dresden Files Roleplaying Game, based on the Dresden Files series of novels by author Jim Butcher. The FATE system had also been licensed to Cubicle 7 Entertainment who used it for Starblazer Adventures, based on the British Starblazer comic.
Evil Hat Productions is a part of the Bits and Mortar initiative and was one of the original founding companies in August 2010.
In January 2016, Evil Hat Productions announced print-runs for some of its Fate Core System games such as Venture City (2014) and Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple (2011). The company then announced in September 2016 that they would be bringing both Blades in the Dark (2017) and Karthun: Lands of Conflict (2017) to trade in 2017; both games were funded via successful Kickstarter campaigns in 2015 and 2014, respectively.
In October 2018, ICv2 reported that Evil Hat was scaling back with "a total of a dozen projects [...] postponed or cut in the immediate future" along with staff reductions such as the Head of Marketing Carrie Harris and the Head of Business Development Chris Hanrahan leaving that month and Senior Art Director Brian Patterson being laid off "at the end of 2018". Game designer Alex Roberts told Polygon that her game For the Queen (2019) was "the last boxed game" released by Evil Hat as the publisher shifted to exclusively releasing books and that originally, the game was "almost on the chopping block" as it was "80% done" when the publisher made their change.
In 2019, Hicks revealed that the role-playing game Monster of the Week (2015) had a surge in sales after being featured on The Adventure Zone podcast in 2018. Hicks informed ICv2 that "interest in that same month surged to a level similar to our initial product release spike; in practically every month since, sustained interest in the game has vastly outstripped what we were able to achieve ourselves. Only one month, October 2018, dipped below the highest interest level we saw immediately following release in 2015, and was promptly followed by November 2018 where we saw our strongest sales-month ever for the product (possibly due to retailers stocking up for the holiday gifting season)". Hicks highlighted that while Fate Core System "achieved a big sales surge" after being featured in May 2017 on Geek & Sundry’s TableTop "the impact was shorter than it was for The Adventure Zone" impact on Monster of the Week. Lin Codega of Rascal highlighted that "while it was never out of stock during its four-year run at Evil Hat, after For the Queen was featured on Shut Up, Sit Down, it became exceptionally hard to find at physical distributors, according to a spokesperson from Evil Hat".
Don't Rest Your Head was a runner-up for Indie Game of the Year at the 2006 Indie RPG Awards, losing to Evil Hat's Spirit of the Century. In 2007, Evil Hat won a silver ENnie Award for Best Rules and an Honorable Mention for Best Game, both for Spirit of the Century. In 2008, the game supplement Don't Lose Your Mind won the Indie RPG Awards for Indie Supplement of the Year. In 2009, Don't Lose Your Mind won the Silver ENnie for Best Writing and Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies won the Silver ENnie for Best Setting; both games were also nominated for Product of the Year.