Achievement Unlocked! I’ve been invited to be a guest at Celesticon over Labor Day weekend, sponsored by the wild men over at Geekline415. This will be my first time as a guest at a con, and I am pretty jazzed about it. I’ve been on panels before, including a really fun one at Comic Con New Orleans with Kevin Eastman (creator of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), but I’ve never been flown out as a guest before.
Even more exciting is the list of fellow guests. Check out this array of names! I am honored and humbled to be among their number. (Bios excerpted from the Celesticon program)
Sandy Petersen is a game designer who wrote Call of Cthulhu in 1981. From 1983-1988 he edited or developed nearly all of Chaosium’s products. From 1988 to 2009, he designed video games, and was on the team of Civilization, Doom, Quake, and Age of Empires. In 2013, he published Cthulhu Wars.
Frank Chadwick, a founder of Game Designers’ Workshop (1972) and Origins Hall of Fame inductee (1984), will be a speaker in the War College and running games at CelestiCon. Frank has over sixty published games to his credit, including Space 1889, A House Divided and Command Decision.
Jeff Dee has worked in the gaming industry for over 35 years. His artwork appeared in games and magazines, including TSR’s Deities and Demigods, AD&D modules, West End Games’s Star Wars adventures. He co-designed Villains & Vigilantes, TWERPS, and Cavemaster. UNIgames’ Bethorm: the Plane of Tekumel, reintroduces the first tabletop RPG setting ever published: TSR’s Empire of the Petal Throne (1975).
Leland R. Erickson is a military historian, and author. A senior faculty member of Henley-Putnam University, he has spent over 35 years researching various conflicts, particularly the less well known battles, campaigns, and wars of the Far East and the 20th century. He has been a researcher for numerous model and figure manufacturers including Crusader Miniatures, Reviresco, Army Group North Miniatures, and Old Glory Shipyards.
Talzhemir Mrr (Manda) is the artist and co-creator of POCKET UNIVERSE (rules for Bethorm and Quicksilver Lite) and FURCADIA (the world’s oldest multiplayer online social game). She is co-designer of Cavemaster (the tabletop RPG played with stones instead of dice). She was an artist and writer on Ultima VI. She worked for Apogee and Optigon. Ultima fans know her as ”Penumbra”.
George ”Loki” Williams is the lead Pathfinder designer for Savage Mojo, where he helms the company’s new product line, including the critically acclaimed Dungeonlands: Palace of the Lich Queen. Comanager of Planewalker.com since 2004 and first published in 2012. Loki will be running a series of Pathfinder adventures at CelestiCon! Geekline415, who are in the Dealer Room, sponsor him at CelestiCon.
Another thing that will make this a ton of fun is that I’ve never been to California before. Really looking forward to my first experience of the Bay Area, my wife says I’ll love it!
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