Guests of Honor

Matthew “Feedback” Atherton - A fan of Spider-Man since the age of five, Matthew Atherton realized his dream last summer when he got the opportunity to participate in the SciFi Channel's new reality TV show, "Who Wants To Be a Superhero?" In 1997, Matthew was chosen to be an official Marvel Spider-Man and couldn't believe that he had actually grown up to become his hero. But fate had more in store for Matthew. 9 years later, the creator of Spider-Man, Stan Lee, chose to bestow "immortality" on Matthew by making him his next great superhero: Feedback, and Matthew emerged as the winner of the first season of "Who Wants To Be a Superhero?" As Feedback, Matthew uses his "powers" for good, and raises money for Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic and the "Make-A-Wish" Foundation.  To date, Matthew has raised over $7,000 for Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic (www.rfbd.org), and over $11,000 for "Make-A-Wish" (www.wish.org), just through donations made by the true heroes that come to see him at comic-book conventions!

Issue #1 of "Who Wants To Be a Superhero?" (the main prize for winning the show, published by Dark Horse Comics and written by Stan Lee) has sold out in comic book stores across the United States, and plans are underway for a second issue to give fans more Feedback! Matthew also appeared as Feedback in the Sci Fi Saturday Night Original Movie, "Mega Snake", and will have a Feedback action figure released by Shocker Toys in the early part of 2008!

In his secret identity, Matthew lives in Rancho Cucamonga, California, with his wife, Sarah, where he maintains his secret identity and makes a living as a software engineer.

 

Ed Greenwood - The busy game designer and Fantasy and SF writer Ed Greenwood is the creator of The Forgotten Realms® (arguably the largest and most detailed fantasy world-setting ever). During more than thirty years of unbroken publishing success, the Realms has grown into the top-selling Dungeons & Dragons® product line, with copy sales in the tens of millions worldwide.

Ed is an award-winning gamer, writer and game designer. His gaming supplements have won several Origins™ and Gamer's Choice™ awards, he has been an Ennie nominee. He was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design Hall of Fame in 2003.

Ed has been a Contributing Editor and Creative Editor of Dragon® Magazine, and a columnist for several magazines, including Troll, Cryptych™ and Polyhedron Newszine.™

Ed has also worked on computer games, contributing to the classic Interplay computer game The Two Towers, based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and Ed's lore was used in over a dozen SSI games and the bestselling Baldur’s Gate series of games and supplements.

Ed has also been hailed as "the Canadian author of the great American novel" (J. Robert King), "an industry legend" (Dragon® Magazine), and "one of the greats" (Games Magazine). His writings have sold millions of copies worldwide in more than a dozen languages. Ed's published fiction includes over twenty-five novels (including the New York Times bestselling Spellfire and Elminster: The Making Of A Mage), more than forty short stories, and several bestselling collaborative novels. Ed also scripts comics and radio plays, and writes horror, pulp adventure, and Arthurian fantasy. Ed’s work has been nominated for science fiction’s Nebula Award, and he has served as a judge for the World Fantasy Awards.

Ed’s forthcoming books include The Sword Never Sleeps (third in the Knights of Myth Drannor trilogy from Wizards of the Coast), Arch Wizard (second in the Falconfar trilogy, from Solaris Books), and Dark Vengeance (second in the Nilfheim series, from Tor Books).

Born in 1959 in Toronto, Canada, Ed holds a Bachelor of Applied Arts degree (Honors: Journalism) from Ryerson Polytechnic University, is chair of his local library board, and when not writing books can often be found behind the desk at the public library in a nearby town. He lives in a farmhouse in the countryside of eastern Ontario, Canada, with some 80,000 books.

 

Reiner Knizia has a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Ulm, a Masters of Science from Syracuse, has taught Management and Project Management at international universities, and Game Design at MIT.

Dr. Knizia is also one of the world’s most prolific and successful game designers, with over 200 published games and numerous awards in both Europe and North America.  He has published several books on game design, and both his games and his books are in print in dozens of countries and languages. Currently, seven of his games are on the USA Games 100 list. His games are renowned for incorporating strategic planning and resource management principles that educate while they entertain.

Dr. Knizia was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design Hall of Fame in 2003.

 

Mike Mearls broke into the gaming industry in 1999 with work on supplements for the Unknown Armies and Feng Shui RPGs. From there, he volunteered as the Keoland triad for the RPGA's Living Greyhawk campaign. That experience served as a springboard to the wild world of the early days of d20 publishing. He worked with a number of publishers, including Fiery Dragon, AEG, Atlas Games, Mongoose, and Goodman Games, before landing a staff position with Monte Cook's Malhavoc Press. While with Malhavoc, he had the opportunity to design the Iron Heroes RPG. Rolling on the random RPG publisher chart, he next went to work with Paizo Publishing as lead developer on the Dragon Compendium.

Finally, Wizards of the Coast decided to hire him as an RPG developer. He worked on Player's Handbook II, the Book of Nine Swords, and Dungeonscape, and served as lead developer for the 4th edition of D&D.

 

Michelle Nephew - After years of playing Shadowrun and Vampire in college, Michelle Nephew's RPG editing career began in 2000 with Atlas Games' Three Days to Kill, the very first adventure available for sale under the Open Game License. She followed this up by authoring her own d20 adventure, The Tide of Years, in 2001. While continuing to write and edit gaming material, she finished her Ph.D. at UW-Milwaukee, writing her dissertation on the topic of authorship and roleplaying games. A chapter from her dissertation has since been published in Gaming as Culture, a collection of academic essays on RPGs. With the title "Tenured Editor," Michelle wears many hats at Atlas Games today, including production coordinator, card and board game developer/editor, layout monkey, advertising/marketing coordinator, convention support organizer, and Special Ops demo team coordinator.

 

Duke Seifried – Duke is a true living legend of hobby gaming. His massive, stunning dioramas and detailed figurines set the standard for convention presentation. He is a thorough researcher and historian, and a master sculptor and painter, game designer and hobby industry executive, but to every wargamer, he is simply “Uncle Duke”. Duke started or was involved in several companies, including vice-president at TSR.  He also wrote one of the first wargames every published in the US (Melee). His mixing of fantasy and historical into Adventure Gaming (his term) created an entirely new class of game. 

Duke was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design Hall of Fame in 2005.

 

Phil Viverito- Some 40 years ago Viverito began his gaming career as a historical miniature gamer after reading H.G. Wells’ Little Wars while earning his B.A. Degree in History at Niagara University.  It would be 20 years before he would arrive at creating and getting his own game system published.

Viverito collaborated on his first set of rules Knight Hack Medieval Warfare 1000 to 1234 with Ed Backer and Richard Kohlbacher. After Knight Hack came Classical Hack II , Classical Hack III: Hack in the Dark Warfare in the Dark Ages  and finally Fantasy Hack. Around 1995 Holy Hack Hacking by the Book: Biblical Warfare was added to the list.

While attending the many different conventions the advent of the internet was growing and with it was born the Classical Hack Web Site. This helped to achieve Viverito’s desire to advance his concepts and thoughts on ancient and medieval historical gaming.

Shortly after the publication of Holy Hack Viverito completely rewrote Classical Hack and  Knight Hack through LMW Works Publishing.

Between convention trips and rules writing Viverito contributed many articles to gaming magazines and journals. These include Spear Point, Magweb.com, La Gloire, Historical Miniature Gamer Magazine and most recently War Gamer’s Journal (Rebel Publishing).

Of all the accomplishments perhaps the most important had been Viverito’s lecture engagements. Becoming a Smithsonian instructor and speaking at the Tunisian Embassy on the Legacy of Hannibal. Other engagements included those for the Biblical Historical Society and as a seminar speaker at various gaming talks and War Colleges.

Viverito  has been lucky enough to have had his rules translated into Italian (Taglio Classico) by Luca Marini of Rome, Italy. A Spanish translation is also in the works for Classical Hack. In addition to rules writing Viverito is currently writing his first historical work to be published by LMW Works in 2008: a history book on ancient Egypt).