Grant Howitt

Grant Howitt is a tabletop role-playing game designer, publisher, and journalist. He won six ENNIE Awards for his game Heart: The City Beneath. His game Honey Heist, which inspired an online trend of self-published games with one-page rulesets, has been featured on Critical Role, The Adventure Zone, and Friends at the Table. Through his publishing company Rowan, Rook and Decard, Howitt is a co-designer on Kieron Gillen's DIE: The Roleplaying Game.

Early life and education Howitt began creating games in grade school, running downloaded PDF files through a text processor.

Career Grant Howitt and Maz Hamilton designed a live-action zombie roleplaying game together.

Howitt began designing a new version of the Paranoia role-playing game with James Wallis and Paul Dean in 2014 for Mongoose Publishing.

While living in Australia, Howitt designed his own role-playing game Goblin Quest, writing it on dozens of pages and spending weeks of work on it. Howitt has a Patreon supporting an ongoing project with plans to create 100 one-page RPGs, and he has created Sexy Battle Wizards, Pride and Extreme Prejudice, and Jason Statham's Big Vacation.

Howitt later became the co-owner of Rowan, Rook, and Decard. The first collaborative release between Howitt and Christopher Taylor was the role-playing game Unbound. He was the co-creator of Spire: The City Must Fall. Howitt created the game Eat the Reich, inspired after Gen Con 2022 and the game A Conventional Disaster inspired after Fan Convention Pyrkon.

Games Howitt designed the games Heart: The City Beneath, Honey Heist, Eat the Reich, and Spire: The City Must Fall. In 2022, Howitt became a co-designer and publisher for Kieron Gillen's DIE RPG. In a featured interview on Gizmodo, Howitt described DIE as "a game about why we play games" and his goal for the final product as "a machine to manufacture heartbreak." Howitt has also self-published a large number of games with rules that fit on one page. As of July 2023, Howitt has published 79 games on Itch.io.

Publishing company

In 2017, Howitt co-founded the games publishing company Rowan, Rook and Decard, with spouse Maz Hamilton as business director. The company currently publishes DIE RPG, Heart: The City Beneath, Spire: The City Must Fall, Honey Heist, Unbound, and Goblin Quest.

Awards and nominations

Eat the Reich won three Gold ENNIE Awards in 2024 including "Best Cover," "Best Art – Interior," and "Best Adventure – Short Form." It was also nominated for "Product of the Year."

Heart: The City Beneath won six ENNIE Awards in 2021: Gold winner for Best Setting, Best Writing and Best Layout, and Silver winner for Best Art, Best Art - Interior, Best Game, and Best Monster/Adversary. and Sexy Battle Wizards for Best Free Game/Product. In 2023, DIE: The Roleplaying Game was nominated for an ENNIE for Best Production Values.

Influence Howitt's design inspired a trend of "experimental zines" and "poetic lyric games" on Imgur and Itch.io. In 2018, Howitt's game Crash Pandas was used by Critical Role in one-shot Crash Pandas: Too Trashed, Too Curious and by Twitch stream Surprise Round in 4 raccoons, a car, and a dream. In 2019, The Adventure Zone used Howitt's Honey Heist system as part of their event MaxFunDrive "Fur". Heart: The City Beneath provided the game engine for the 2021 campaign of the actual play podcast Friends at the Table.

In her PhD thesis, Susan Haarman wrote that Honey Heist by Howitt was one of the smaller independent games "that either minimize or eliminate combat altogether. These games have experienced high levels of commercial and critical success" as "the player base for tabletop games continues to diversify, both patience and interest has diminished for games models that still manifest 1970’s mentalities and/or focus solely on violence".

Journalism

Howitt has worked as a freelance writer for mainstream publications such as the Daily Mirror and The Guardian and indie organizations such as Video Brains. He has described his style as "Gonzo Tech Journalism".