Guests of Honor

Boardgame Guest of Honor -  Tom Lehmann, Designer of Race for the Galaxy

Tom grew up around DC and overseas, where he didn't have many games, so he started inventing his own.  Professionally, Tom has been an economist, programmer, and technical writer.

After a stint with Oracle in the mid-80s, Tom started a boardgame company, Prism Games, putting out six of my designs in the mid-90s, including Fast Food Franchise, Time Agent, and 2038 (the last a co-design with Jim Hlavaty).  Tom figured out he wasn't a businessman and went freelance in the 00s, designing card, dice, and board games: Magellan/Pizarro & Co., To Court the King, Jericho, 1846, Phoenicia, Middle Kingdom, and Race for the Galaxy, plus expansions to RFTG, St. Petersburg, and, with Matt Leacock, for Pandemic.

In the late 80s, Tom assisted Steve Goodman and Don Woods (of Adventure fame) in developing the first completely automated, computer moderated, play-by-email game, Phoenix.  In the late 90s, he was involved as player, GM, and writer for various SIL-West live
roleplaying games.  From 1978 on, Tom GMed campaigns of Bushido (5 years), Call of Cthulhu (8 years), and Legends of the Five Rings (5 years), as well as short adventures in many systems.  Tom enjoys gaming, contra dance (he calls and has written 25 dances), waltzing, history, and attending the performing arts.

Roleplaying Guest of Honor Vincent Baker - Author of Dogs in the Vineyard

  Vincent Baker is the author of the award-winning and critically-acclaimed independent RPG Dogs in the Vineyard, and several other games including In a Wicked Age,  KPFS, and Mechaton.. He lives with his wife and his three sons in the beautiful hills of Western Massachusetts. He's also the webhost and technical administrator for the Forge, indie-rpgs.com, the internet home for independently published role-playing games.

Artist Guest of Honor - Quinton Hoover

Quinton Hoover is a 46-year-old freelance game, fantasy, and occasional comics artist best known for his work on Magic: the Gathering, Middle Earth and other collectable card games.  He has also done work for various gaming and support manuals, and has most recently entered the arena of illustrating for board games.

Initially aiming at a career in comics, he stumbled into the gaming world with the launch of Magic, and has done the bulk of his professional work in that market in the years since.

In recent years he has been largely inactive in the market while dealing with the inevitable Personal Issues, and is currently in the process of rebuilding his career from his modest abode/studio in rural and scenic Glide, Oregon.
Aside from art he dabbles in poetry, fiction writing, comics scripting and, of late, photography.  Lacking other entertainment options at present (there are only so many sheep one can taunt...), he spends way too much time on internet social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, and is decidedly less elusive than Bigfoot, so you might spot him there.  If you’re female, be forewarned: he’s a shameless (if largely harmless) flirt.  In his natural environment he can often be seen wandering the woods and rivers of his youth, camera and other creative tools in hand.

He has four adult children, and an equal number of grandchildren.  And an insane orange and cross-eyed Tabby named Clarence to keep him warm at night and accost him with endless opinions.

Special Guests

Nick Etchegaray

Calye Lacefield

Phil Lacefield Jr.

Phil Lacefield Jr. has been an active sales manager, marketing guru, writer, line editor, designer and layout guy for game companies such as Agents of Gaming, US Playing Card Co., Journeyman Press, Score Entertainment, Reaper Miniatures, Discovery Bay Games, Paizo Publishing and Bucephalus Games. Phil also served eight years on the board of directors of the Game Manufacturers Association, and is a past Chairman of the Academy of Adventure Game Arts And Sciences.  In February of 2006, Phil took the plunge and moved to Seattle, much to the chagrin of his overweight cat. Now safely ensconced in his mountain hideaway with his lovely bride Calye, Phil continues to obsess over his precious Saab collection, dote on his marine and tropical fish tanks and insists on wearing a full kilt on random occasions.

Seth Norman

Michael Pondsmith, founder of R. Talsorian Games

Mike Pondsmith spent his first 18 years wandering the Earth in conjunction with the U.S. Air Force. Then, after a tour of four campuses of the University of California, emerged with degrees in Psychology and Graphic Design. (Hey, this game appeals to my Inner Child, and looks good too!) In 1985 he developed Mekton, the first anime-based role-playing game in an attempt to avoid fantasy RPG's. After terrific response at conventions, he started R. Talsorian Games, Inc. to publish Mekton, followed by Teenagers from Outer Space, (RPGA Gamer's Choice Award), Cyberpunk, (translated into 8 languages), Castle Falkenstein, (Best Game of 1994), as well as a number of others. He also collaborated with the Hero Games designers on the Fuzion system, oddly enough a fusion of the original RTG Interlock system and the Hero system (Herolock or Intero being stupid names.) Taking a hiatus from paper games since 2000, Mike has been pushing pixels for Microsoft and Monolith Productions, on games like Bloodwake, Crimson Skies, and Matrix Online. Mike has just recently finished the long awaited Cyberpunk 3 and has opened a new chapter in Cyberpunk gaming. Somewhere along the line he acquired a wife and son, who make getting anything accomplished much harder, but they both game so its okay.
http://www.talsorian.com/

Kyle Rhône

Janice M. Sellers started working in the adventure game industry in 1990 at Chessex Manufacturing. After four years there, as the Assistant Production Manager and the entire Roleplaying Department, she realized a long-held dream and escaped to Chaosium, where she worked for three years editing and developing the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game and fiction lines and the Pendragon fiction line. She has also edited, indexed, and/or translated for Alderac Entertainment Group, Eden Studios, Fantasy Flight Games, Grey Ghost Press, Last Unicorn Games (all the Star Trek RPG lines), R. Talsorian Games, Reaper Games, Steve Jackson Games, Two Hour Wargames, Vortext magazine, White Wolf, and Wizards of the Coast, to name only a few. She has edited fourteen products (games, fiction, and one CCG) that have won Origins Awards, and has won three Origins Awards as an editor. She has industry credits as developer, editor, indexer, translator, artist, writer, cartographer, and layout. She is currently an Associate Director of the Game Publishers Association.

Janice was born in Los Angeles, California and has lived in California, Australia, and Florida. She started gaming in 1978 with white-box Dungeons and Dragons. She has a Bachelor's degree in foreign languages (French, Spanish, and Russian) from USC, which has had only a small application in the game industry, to the eternal regret of her mother. Along with continued freelance editing and indexing work in the game industry, she also has a day job as an office manager and is a professional genealogist.

Bill Witt:  Chairman of Pajaggle

In February 2009, while fiddling with a couple pieces of wood, Bill found that placing a piece of wood into a unique socket provided some inherent good feeling.  That good feeling spawned an idea to create a game that everyone could play.  Bill has been creating for years and has an eclectic group of successes.  From creating the world's largest mobile bar-b-que, known as Juicys Outlaw Grill™, which today sees millions annually, to creating Trapezy, a tax software company, or to building GenRight, which today is one of the largest Jeep accessory shops in the country, Bill's diverse background coupled with his energy to create new games makes for an interesting background, particularly, when consider you, he’s been a practicing CPA and attorney for over 20 years.  Bill earned degrees from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Wharton School of Business, and from Southwestern University School of Law.

http://www.pajaggle.com/