He first rose to fame as the head writer and front man for the sci-fi concept band The Mechanisms, in which he played the character Jonny D'Ville. He went on to join the British entertainment company Rusty Quill, where he became perhaps best known for writing their long-running horror podcast The Magnus Archives, which premiered in 2016 and concluded in 2021. A sequel podcast, The Magnus Protocol, premiered on public podcast feeds in 2024. Sims has also done voice acting in other podcasts outside of the Rusty Quill network. In addition to this, Sims also co-develops board games together with his spouse and fellow Magnus Archives actor Sasha Sienna for their own company, MacGuffin & Company
, with Sims primarily writing the games' stories and world-building and Sienna doing the game design.
His personal website can be found here. His Twitter / X can be found here.
Works
Literature
- "The Hierophant" - short story
- "Last Laugh" - short story
- Thirteen Storeys (2020)
- Family Business (2022)
Podcasts / Other audio dramas
- The Magnus Archives (2016-2021) - wrote all 200 episodes and voiced main character Jonathan Sims
- The Magnus Protocol (2024)note - lead writer, voice of text-to-speech program "Chester"; sequel to The Magnus Archives
- Outliers (2017-2020) - wrote episode 2 of Season 1 and episode 12 of Season 2
- Spectral Tales (2022, 2023) - dramatic readings of classic horror stories; released on Bandcamp
- Re: Dracula (2023) - voice of John Seward
- The Amelia Project (2023) - guest role as Carl Granton in the Season 5 episode "Jack (1888)"
- Super Suits (2023) - voice of the narrator / reporter / court stenographer Curt Rapaport
Other work
- Slay the Princess (2023) - voice of the Narrator and the "Voices in Your Head"
Tropes / Trivia
- Casting Gag: He plays both the Archivist from The Magnus Archives - a haggard academic slowly driven mad from learning that the supernatural is real and very, very dangerous - and John Seward from Re: Dracula - a haggard academic slowly driven mad from learning that the supernatural is real and very, very dangerous.
- Creator Couple: He co-develops games and sometimes acts together with his spouse, Sasha Sienna.
- The Danza: His character in The Magnus Archives was named after himself. Apparently, it started as a placeholder, but he decided to stick with it.
