Hello Role Players!

It’s been a while, and we want to extend our heartfelt thanks for all of your patience. We’ve been nose-down focused on some big exciting changes, and are finally ready to share some of them with you. We know you’re all eager to hear what we’ve been working on, and what the rest of 2021 has in store, so without further ado…

Happy 1 Year!!

It has officially been 1 years since our original Kickstarter campaign! Wow. That’s amazing and surreal at the same time. In that time, our player community has grown and the Role platform has evolved in powerful ways. At every step, we’ve worked to shape Role based on your feedback. We know we say this a lot: but we could not do this without you, and we’re so grateful to be creating with this community. There’s still a long way to go, and plenty more for us to build, so thank you again for an amazing first year.

The Role Team is Growing

Our ambitions for Role have always been grand, and growing challenges require a growing team. We’ve been incredibly fortunate to bring on some new friends with the passion and talent to take Role further than ever before. Let’s meet the team as it exists today:

Logan Dwight [They/Them]

CEO & Co-Founder

A designer by trade, and creator at heart, Logan has always had a strong love for storytelling and imaginative play. From the first time they saw a Miyazaki movie at 6 years old, they knew they wanted to create fantasy worlds for everyone to enjoy. That passion has driven them through a decade-long career in games, media, and technology. Most notably, they helped design & launch the Kabam Games platform, and served as creative director for a number of successful VR projects for HTC and Oculus. Logan has been playing role playing games since the age of 9, and still GMs for their friends every week.

Ian Hirschfeld [He/Him]

CTO & Co-Founder

With a passion for technology and media from a young age, Ian has pursued a lifelong focus in software development and digital arts. From stop-motion animated films & e-commerce sites in high school, to world-wide technology platforms today – Ian’s work showcases a diverse range of projects that bring immersive worlds to life through technology. He has developed significant work for Unity Technologies, VR for Google, HTC, & Oculus, as well as helped launch the Mighty Networks social platform. He is also the co-creator of Hack Design, the world’s largest free software design education platform.

Jason Olmstead [He/Him]

Director of Design

A multidisciplinary designer and developer inspired by technology’s capability to empower people to connect and share- Jason has a passion for creating products that can simplify and bring joy to our lives. With a background designing game platforms for Disney Interactive, Kabam and OnLive, he brings a deep knowledge of human centric product thinking to the team. An avid science fiction fan and gamer, Jason has designed interfaces for City of Heroes, Rift, and Magic: Legends, and is excited to create new and innovative ways to help people share their stories with Role.

Danny Alvarez [He/Him]

Senior Software Engineer

Only really discovering TTRPGs about 5+ years ago, Danny has deep dived into the lore and action and surprises of games like D&D. With Role, he will be focused on up-leveling the client-side stack with the implicit goal of bringing a high-quality platform for all OnlineTTRPGs (he calls “otterpegs”) so they can be played, discovered and enjoyed. Having GMed now for a 3+ year campaign, various one-shots and acted as player in both D&D and Numenera, Danny holds that TTRPGs are a storytelling medium first and, through these, players learn and experience their own tales in the making. Besides bringing large maps and weird voices to the game, he also comes with 10 years of engineering experience from various platform and tool development from Kabam, Ticketfly and Pinterest, as well as his love of baking, lifting and general tomfoolery.

Steven Medeiros [He/Him]

Games Producer

A student of writing and language, Steven has spent a lifetime collecting, running, playing, and homebrewing tabletop role playing games of all systems. A true believer in the power of collaborative storytelling and the unique social experiences that RPGs can evoke. Most recently, he is the lead writer and co-creator of Astra, a tabletop RPG about unique beings from across space and time wandering a surreal landscape together exploring their dreams and conquering their nightmares. Steven has lived many lives in his professional career, at times as a writer and developmental editor, international trade and business entrepreneur, as well as nearly twenty years as a freelance blacksmith. When not making games, Steven can often be found forging steel into horseshoes, obsessing over rare orchid species, gamemastering various RPGs for his friends and family, or muttering to his assorted pets about the weather.

We’re Hiring!

The Role team growth doesn’t stop there! We’re actively hiring for two more open positions. We’re especially interested in candidates who bring a diverse personal and professional perspective to the team. As we strive to serve an inclusive community of players across all cultures & identities, we want our team to reflect those communities as well. If you or someone you know would like to be considered, please email us at jobs@playrole.com.

Frontend Software Engineer

Come build the tools that dreams are made of! We’re looking for a frontend developer with React experience who’s excited to dive in and create the innovative gameplay and creation systems this community deserves. We’re looking for someone with game and/or tech platform experience, with a passion for storytelling and collaborative play.

Marketing & Growth Manager

Help us find more people to play with! As our player community evolves, reaching new people in meaningful ways becomes more important than ever. We’re looking for someone who can join the team and bring a focused perspective to brand messaging, social media marketing, streaming, and growth. We’re looking for someone with experience with tech and/or gaming community growth.

You can find all of this information and more on our Jobs Page. Come join us!

What’s Coming Next?

We know it’s been a little while since our last big feature update, and for good reason: we’ve been actively pouring over every piece of feedback and building a path towards revised features that meet your needs and more. Here’s a glimpse at what’s coming:

Play Kits: Sheets, Templates, and Assets 2.0

Right now we’re working on a major overhaul of our sheets, template creation, and asset management tools. Our aim is to increase your options while further streamlining and enhancing the joy of play. Coming later this summer, you can expect a fully refreshed creation suite with new and richer options, as well as the ability to upload and create bundles of game assets and share them with your community. We’re calling this revised feature set “Play Kits”, and we hope it will revolutionize the way you create, play, and share with one another.

Cards 2.0

One area we have wanted to pour love into from the start: playing cards on Role! Our current interface is being replaced with an entirely new system that will better support the wide range of card mechanics and custom decks used across hundreds of popular role playing games. Stay tuned for that later this year.

Maps 2.0

When a game needs a map, we know you need more. That’s why we’re working on a major revision to our map tools that will feature snap-to-grid, fog of war, custom grid overlays for any image, more precise token sizing, better drawing tools, and more. Ease of play is our goal, and we know we can provide a more powerful map experience that is simple to learn without sacrificing the depth you desire.

Video Play Enhancements

We always say that nothing is more important than the people you play with! As such, we’re always working on enhancements to our video call systems, to both provide a better user experience and more stable play. Look out for features such as better volume/mic controls, screen sharing, speaker view, and more later this year.

Community & More…

As we polish off our revised play & creation experience, we’re setting our sights on community hubs and collaboration next. We’ll have more to show you down the road, but for now just know that we have big plans for entirely new features that will help you meet people, form lasting friendships, and build entire worlds together on Role. We have a lot of work to do to get there, but we’re sure you’re going to love it. <3

What About Games?

Hey! It’s been a year! Where are all those Kickstarter exclusive game supplements?? We have good news: everyone is on track, and your Kickstarter reward supplements are coming to you this year. We’ll dive into those more in another post soon, but for now know that everyone is working hard to bring you new content to play in the worlds you love.

Thank You Again

Seriously, we want to say once again: your patience, enthusiasm, and passion for role playing has kept us going through the past year. We’re still just getting started, and we’re more excited than ever to be blazing this trail together. We like to say: there’s a difference between building things for your community vs building things with your community. We’re fortunate enough to be doing the latter.

So this is for all of us, and the stories we tell together. Let’s imagine better worlds.

Thank you always. You can play with us.

– The Role Team <3