(21/41: 2012) Chris Birch
The Fashion Label Guy
Before Chris Birch published a single roleplaying game, he spent thirteen years running Joystick Junkies, a video games fashion label. Before that, he booked tours for bands and organized electronic music events. The path from dance floors to dungeon crawls is less strange than it sounds. Both industries run on licensing deals, passionate niche audiences, and the ability to translate someone else’s creation into a new format that feels authentic.
Birch discovered tabletop gaming young — finding Steve Jackson’s OGRE in an art shop at age seven, joining his brother’s D&D game at eight, running his college gaming society. The love was always there. The business instinct came from everywhere else.
When Kickstarter emerged in 2012, Birch saw the same opportunity he’d seen in band merchandise and video game t-shirts: a passionate audience willing to pay for something that spoke directly to them. He and his wife Rita launched Achtung! Cthulhu — World War II meets Lovecraftian horror — and raised £177,000. Twelve books, a miniatures range, and a merchandising line followed. Modiphius Entertainment was born.
The Licensing Pipeline
What separates Modiphius from every other mid-tier RPG publisher is velocity. Within a decade, Birch secured and published licensed RPGs for Star Trek, Dune, Fallout, Conan, John Carter of Mars, The Elder Scrolls, and Dishonored — franchises that larger companies had either ignored or fumbled. His years negotiating licensing deals for Joystick Junkies with Atari, Midway, and Activision gave him the contacts and the instinct for how these deals work.
The business model is elegant: develop a house system flexible enough to adapt to any IP, then sign licenses faster than competitors. Each new property sells a new core book. Each core book sells five times what a supplement does. The 2d20 system became the vehicle for that strategy.
The 2d20 System
Birch co-conceived the 2d20 system with Michal Cross during development of the Mutant Chronicles RPG, but the mechanical heavy lifting was done by Jay Little (designer of Star Wars: Edge of the Empire and X-Wing Miniatures), then refined by Nathan Dowdell and Benn Beaton across subsequent product lines.
Birch himself has been candid about the system’s origins. In interviews, he described it as “a whole bunch of good ideas thrown together” — incorporating FATE-like Aspects, momentum/threat economies, and accessible d20-based resolution. The momentum/threat economy is the system’s most distinctive element: players generate momentum through successful actions that can be spent on future rolls, while the GM accumulates threat as a mirror resource. It creates a genuine push-your-luck tension at the table.
The system’s real strength is its modularity. Star Trek Adventures made starship bridge operations feel collaborative. Conan delivered brutal sword-and-sorcery combat. Dune captured political intrigue through asset and influence mechanics. Each implementation feels meaningfully different while sharing a recognizable core. That adaptability is architectural achievement, even if it was achieved by a team rather than a single hand.
The Honest Assessment
Chris Birch is a publisher who designs, not a designer who publishes. His genius is the licensing pipeline — identifying underserved fandoms, securing the rights, and delivering a product that respects the source material. The 2d20 system serves that mission, but it was built primarily by other hands. Jay Little’s mechanical architecture, Nathan Dowdell’s refinements, and the individual line developers who adapted the system to each property deserve significant credit for the system’s success.
Achtung! Cthulhu — Birch’s first and most personal creation — launched using Call of Cthulhu and Savage Worlds rules, not his own system. The decision to develop 2d20 came later, driven by the business logic of owning your own engine. That’s smart publishing. It’s not the same thing as being a great mechanical designer.
The 2d20 system has not been adopted outside Modiphius’s own product lines. No third-party ecosystem exists. No other publishers have licensed or adapted the framework. It is a successful house system, not an industry-shaping engine.
The Scoring Case
Invention (5): “Significant contribution — others have taken it further.”
The 2d20 system is competent but self-admittedly derivative. The momentum/threat economy is the most original element, creating narrative push-your-luck tension. But no single 2d20 mechanic has been adopted by designers outside the Modiphius ecosystem. The real innovation is the licensing-first publishing model — securing major IPs at a pace no other indie publisher matches — which is a business innovation, not a mechanical one. Contribution noticed within RPG publishing, not widely adopted as a design framework. 5.
Architecture (6): “Published designs work — someone noticed.”
The 2d20 system has proven genuinely adaptable across radically different genres — from Conan’s physical brutality to Star Trek’s diplomatic problem-solving to Fallout’s wasteland survival. Star Trek Adventures in particular solved the hard problem of making starship bridge operations feel collaborative rather than captain-centric. The modular toolkit approach shows real architectural range. But the architecture hasn’t been adopted outside Modiphius — no third-party 2d20 ecosystem exists. The system works within its own garden. 6.
Mastery (5): “Demonstrated competence.”
Birch’s career as a game designer specifically spans roughly thirteen years (2012–present), with his primary skill set in publishing, licensing, and business direction rather than mechanical design. The 2d20 system was co-conceived but developed primarily by other designers. Clear improvement from early Modiphius products to current ones, but the craft refinement has happened through his team rather than through solo authorship. The directorial vision is strong; the personal mechanical output is limited. 5.
Adjustments (+5):
- ■ Longevity 10+ years: +1 — 2012–present, thirteen years of published game designs through Modiphius Entertainment.
- ■ Full-time career: +1 — Modiphius Entertainment as primary profession since founding in 2012.
- ■ Awards: +1 — Gold ENnie for Best Writing (Dune: Adventures in the Imperium, 2022), UK Games Expo Best RPG (Achtung! Cthulhu, 2014), multiple other nominations.
- ■ Branded name: +0 — Modiphius is well-known within hobby gaming but not recognized by non-gamers. The licensed properties are famous; the publisher is not.
- ■ Cross-genre success: +1 — RPGs (Star Trek Adventures, Dune, Fallout), miniatures games (Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms, Fallout: Wasteland Warfare), board games. Three distinct formats.
- ■ Commercial success: +1 — Star Trek Adventures, Fallout RPG, and Dune collectively exceed $10M lifetime retail revenue across multiple product lines and languages.
- ■ Design propagation: +0 — 2d20 system used exclusively within Modiphius’s own product lines. No external adoption or third-party licensing documented.
Total: 21 points. Year: 2012.
The Hidden Pattern
Every phase of Chris Birch’s career has been about the same thing: taking someone else’s creation and translating it into a format that a passionate audience can hold in their hands. Band tours became club nights. Video game logos became fashion labels. Beloved film and game franchises became tabletop RPGs. The medium changes; the skill doesn’t.
The 2d20 system is a translation engine. It exists to make Star Trek feel like Star Trek at the table, to make Dune feel like Dune. It does not exist to advance the state of RPG mechanical design. And that’s not a failure — it’s a design philosophy. Birch builds bridges between audiences and worlds. The bridge itself is functional, well-engineered, and deliberately invisible. You’re not supposed to notice the system. You’re supposed to feel the license.
21 points. 2012. The license whisperer who gave a dozen fandoms their tabletop home.
The bridge between a beloved world and the table where you play in it — that bridge has an architect, even if his name isn’t on the blueprints.