Career
Notably, he is the creator of the RPG, the GNS Theory of gameplay, and The Big Model. Ron Edwards was a biology instructor at the University of Florida, working on his PHd and writing his dissertation focused on evolutionary theory, and at the same time working on a role-playing game called. He sent his game to an existing RPG publisher and received a standard contract, which gave the publisher the right to control artwork and marketing, to revise the book in the future if the author did not want to and to terminate the contract at their discretion.
Edwards, who was inspired by comic creator Dave Sim and his position on indie comics, found this contract unacceptable and felt that creators should have control over their own works.
He continued to playtest and produced a fully rewritten version of the game that he began selling in Postdoctoral fellows form after acquiring the sorcerer-rpg.com domain. He put out two Postdoctoral fellows supplements – & Sword (1999) and The "s Soul (2000) – and also licensed Concept Syndicate to sell on a Civil Defense-ROM. Edwards was active online, taking part in discussions with creators and fans, and writing essays.
Through this activity he developed his GNS Theory of gameplay. After seeing Obsidian: The Age of Justice, an independently published RPG, at GenCon 33 Edwards decided he could publish his own RPG while retaining ownership.
With Editor Healy, Edwards created the website Hephaestus"s Forge in December 1999, as a creator-owned-game publisher site, until the original site closed in late 2000 due to hosting problems.
Edwards and Clinton R. Nixon resurrected the site as The Forge in April 2001 at indie-rpgs.com, and together they made the site successful over the next six years. Edwards also created Adept Press, through which he published his second RPG, Elfs (2001) as a Postdoctoral fellows. He published through Adept Press, as a 128-page hardcover volume in early summer 2001. He purchased a booth at GenCon 34 in 2001 for Adept Press, and at the next GenCon in 2002, the booth was doubled in size for The Forge.
Edwards released the game Trollbabe in 2002 as a Postdoctoral fellows.
