 Chris Pramas at Gen Con on August 17, 2007 | |
| Born | Chris Pramas |
| Occupation | Game designer |
| Nationality | American |
| Genre | Role-playing games |
| Website | |
| www | |
Chris Pramas is an American game designer and writer, as well as a founder of Green Ronin Publishing. He is best known as the designer of the Dragon Age RPG, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (second edition), and Freeport: The City of Adventure.
Pramas began his career in the game industry as a freelancer in 1993, contributing to games such as Underground from Mayfair Games, the supplement Dangerous Prey (1995) from Pariah Press for The Whispering Vault, and The Dying of the Light (1995) Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay campaign from Hogshead Publishing.[1]: 369 He also contributed to the game Over the Edge.[2] Pramas acquired the rights to The Whispering Vault from Mike Nystul in early 1996 and with his brother Jason Pramas and their friend Neal Darcy, they founded the company Ronin Publishing; Jason Pramas left before long, and Ronin Publishing only successfully published The Book of Hunts (1997) before the rights to The Whispering Vault were transferred to another company.[1]: 369 Pramas moved to Seattle, Washington in August 1997, and made freelancing his full-time occupation.[1]: 369 Pramas worked on the sourcebook Blood of the Valiant (1998) for Feng Shui to be pulised by Daedalus Games; when that company instead went out of business, Pramas acquired a license to publish his adventure, which became the second and final book published by Ronin Publishing.[1]: 369
Pramas accepted an offer of employment from Wizards of the Coast as an RPG designer in March 1998.[1]: 369 Pramas designed the wuxia-inspired Dragon Fist, a variation of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons that was released in 1999 as one of the first PDF releases from the company.[1]: 370 Pramas made contributions on several products for AD&D and co-wrote the PDF-only Dark•Matter adventure The Final Church (2000).[1]: 370 Wizards created a miniatures division and made Pramas the creative designer on the Chainmail Miniatures Game (2001).[1]: 370 Pramas created the "Sundered Empire" setting for Chainmail, which he intended to be a standalone setting but Wizards management wanted him to place the Sundered Empire in Greyhawk, so he made it into the subcontinent Western Oerik.[1]: 289
Pramas' work for Dungeons & Dragons includes: Slavers (2000, with Sean K. Reynolds), Guide to Hell (1999), Apocalypse Stone (2000, with Jason Carl), Vortex of Madness (2000), as well as some work on the third edition Player's Handbook (2000) and Dungeon Master's Guide (2000).
Pramas founded Green Ronin Publishing in 2000 with his wife Nicole Lindroos, and by 2001 they had brought Hal Mangold on as a third member of the team to do freelance graphic layout for Green Ronin.[1]: 370 Wizards of the Coast laid off Pramas in March 2002.[1]: 371 Toren Atkinson of the band The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets arranged with Pramas to have Green Ronin publish his RPG Spaceship Zero (2002) based on one the albums by the band.[1]: 371 Pramas asked Steve Kenson to design a new d20-based superhero role-playing game for Green Ronin, which resulted in Mutants & Masterminds (2002).[1]: 371 Green Ronin was incorporated as an LLC in 2004, with Pramas, Lindroos, and Mangold as the three partners.[1]: 373 Pramas designed the second edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (2005) for Games Workshop.[1]: 51 Pramas wrote the sourcebook The Pirate's Guide to Freeport (2007) for Green Ronin, with Patrick O'Duffy and Robert J. Schwalb.[1]: 375 While continuing to lead Green Ronin Publishing, Pramas is a content designer for the Pirates of the Burning Sea massively multi-player online game at Flying Lab Software.[2] Pramas designed the simplified class-and-level system for the role-playin game Dragon Age: Set I (2009).[1]: 377
Pramas also worked as the lead writer for Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online at Vigil Games.[citation needed]
Pramas was a notable guest at Trinoc*coN in 2005,[citation needed] and a guest of honour at Ropecon 2008 in Dipoli, Espoo, Finland.[citation needed] He has also been a guest of Pacificon in 2015,[citation needed] and OrcaCon in 2016.[citation needed]
In 2012, he appeared on two episodes of the web series TableTop running his Dragon Age roleplaying game for host Wil Wheaton and the show's guests.[3] Since 2012 he has also been one of the curators of an annual "Art of RPGs" art show featuring the work of artists whose work have appeared in role-playing games.[4][5]