Special Guests

Keith Baker - Keith has been an avid fan of Dungeons & Dragons since grade school. His life took a dramatic turn in 2002 when he submitted the world of Eberron to the Wizards of the Coast Fantasy Setting Search. In addition to developing the Eberron Campaign Setting and Shadows of the Last War, he wrote for Atlas Games (Friends of the Dragon, Living Lore), Goodman Games (The Complete Guide to Beholders, The Complete Guide to Wererats, The Complete Guide to Dopplegangers), and Green Ronin Publishing (Creatures of Freeport, Mutants & Masterminds Annual #1, Denizens of Freeport).

Richard Borg - Richard’s professional game credits cover a broad spectrum of family games, strategy games, war games, and roleplaying games -- almost 50 titles in all. Milton Bradley published his first game, Liars Dice, in 1988. In 1993 Liars Dice went to Europe as Bluff and won the prestigious German ‘Spiel des Jahres’ award.

Following this initial success were Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games (TSR), X-Men games (Pressman Toy), and another hit for Milton Bradley, Times to Remember. Richard was part of Decipher’s Star Wars Customizable Card Game design team, and was also involved with a number of other collectible sport card games. Some of his recent designs include Hera & Zeus (Rio Grande Games), Pig Pile (R&R Games), Memoir ’44 (Days of Wonder), Warriors (Face 2 Face Games), Narnia Risk Junior (Parker/Hasbro UK), Kong Power Slam Battle Game (Pressman Toy) and Commands & Colors: Ancients (GMT Games).

Richard Burlew - Rich first broke into game writing with Wizards of the Coast's Fantasy Setting Search in late 2002, where he was one of only three finalists asked to prepare a full 125-page bible for their setting. Ultimately, he was defeated by his arch-nemesis, Keith Baker, for whom his fiery wrath still burns like the heat of a thousand suns. After that, Rich went on to contribute to Wizards' Monster Manual III and Paizo's Dragon magazine, as well as working on top secret projects that, were you to learn of them, would almost certainly spell your doom.

In the summer of 2003, Rich founded www.GiantITP.com as a thinly-veiled means of promoting himself as a game designer. It met with middling success until he invented his now-signature webcomic, The Order of the Stick. Since then, the site grew by leaps and bounds, leading Rich to believe he is destined to crush the world political order with an unstoppable army of zombie webcomic readers.

While it shocks anyone who sees the Order of the Stick before they meet him, Rich actually attended design school and holds a degree in Illustration and Graphic Design. However, he claims absolutely no formal training as an author, which leads to periodic panic attacks when he realizes that he committed to produce a few thousand words within a short span of time.

Kenneth Hite – Mr. Hite started out a fresh-faced amateur ten short years ago as the author of Secret Societies for Chaosium's cult favorite Nephilim and the co-author of GURPS Alternate Earths.

Parlaying that early "indie cred" into quick success, he became Nephilim Line Developer, edited two books for In Nomine, wrote Nightmares of Mine on horror gaming for Iron Crown, The Canite Heresy for Vampire: The Dark Ages, and part of three books including the core book for Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade.

He co-designed the Origins-Award-winning Star Trek: The Next Generation RPG, scaled the dizzy heights of high-concept magical horror with GURPS Cabal, and saw his Suppressed Transmission column collected into a book.

But soon, it all came crashing down. Watch for the shameful story of his spiral into addiction, groupies, and sequel-mania (GURPS Alternate Earths 2, GURPS Infinite Worlds, Suppressed Transmission 2, Star Trek: The Original Series RPG, GURPS Horror 3rd edition, and Decipher Games' Star Trek RPG) when "Behind the Gaming" returns.

Reiner Knizia -Dr. Knizia holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Ulm and a Masters of Science from Syracuse. He 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, plus numerous awards in both Europe and North America. He wrote several books on game design. Both his games and books appear in print in dozens of countries and languages. Currently, seven of his games hold positions on the Games Magazine “Games 100” list. His games are renowned for incorporating strategic planning and resource management principles that both educate and entertain players.

Dr. Knizia was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design Hall of Fame in 2004.

Ken Koury - An internationally known MONOPOLY® player, Mr. Koury competed as a player and coach at the national and international tournament levels for more than 25 years.

Ken holds world records in official tournament play for the fastest game (bankrupting 3 players in 15 minutes, 38 seconds) and the highest asset 4 player game ($20,882). He frequently corresponds with fellow players via e-mail, and often plays socially with some of the top players in the country. Players from all over the world contact him several times each month to help settle disputes over the MONOPOLY® rules and their interpretation.

In 2003, he took 3rd place in the United States MONOPOLY® Championship among a field of 48 players. The event is held every 4 years. He is also the United States MONOPOLY® Coach, having been retained by Parker Brothers to prepare the United States Champion for World MONOPOLY® Championship in the fall of 2004. This is a role he has performed off and on since the 1970's. Among those joining Ken's coaching team are Lee Bayrd, the first World MONOPOLY® Champion.

Sarina Koury – Sarina is currently ranked the 34th best MONOPOLY® player in the country. Sarina started playing MONOPOLY® at the age 4. By the age of seven she was traveling the country with her father Ken Koury (a top seeded tournament player for more than 25 years) competing in tournaments and building an impressive tournament record of her own. By the age of 10 she had qualified for the National Championships, the youngest person ever to do so.

In 2003 she competed against her dad at the United States MONOPOLY® Championship. In preparation for this she trained with former World MONOPOLY® Champion Lee Bayrd who, ironically, mentored her Dad when he trained for his first National Championship more than 25 years ago. In preparation for the most recent World MONOPOLY® Championship, Sarina’s dad recruited her for practice games along with Lee Bayrd and the reigning U.S. Champion.

Christopher Morrison - Christopher is a professional fight choreographer/director/performer and educator holding a B.F.A. in Movement from Boston University’s Theatre Conservatory. He just came off a tour with Cirque du Soliel, working on their brand new experience entitled The Bar du Bout du Monde.

Some of his credits include The California Shakespeare Theatre, The Magic, The Huntington Theatre Company, Portland Stage Company and many more. He has taught internationally at Charles Strut University in Bathurst, Australia. He has also taught at Boston University, Berkeley Repertory School of Theatre, Chabot College, College of Marin, Middlesex College as well as numerous college and high school workshops covering topics ranging from movement for the stage to Shakespeare. He held the title of Artist in Residence twice: once for the Z Space Studios and the other at the San Francisco School for the Arts. He trained and/or choreographed international stars like Emily Deschanel, Keith David, and Zakes Mokae, plus brought his unique style to local Ren Faires.

He played Dungeons and Dragons since his early teens, and runs a chilling Call of Cthulhu game. He is thrilled to rejoin his roots at Origins, and to bring his brand of fight choreography to gamers everywhere.

Steve Prescott - From the earliest days of filling every available sheet of paper with dinosaurs and airplanes, Ohio native Steve Prescott pretty much dedicated his life to art. He graduated with a BFA from the Columbus College of Art & Design and has since slaved happily away for the gaming industry with heaps of work for Werewolf: the Apocalypse, Shadowrun, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, and Dungeons & Dragons. He also worked on concept art for Wizards of the Coast's Eberron RPG, designed creatures for the upcoming Monster Manual 4, did cover work for Dungeons & Dragons, and both Dragon and Dungeon magazines. He also had a hand in Dungeon's Age of Worms campaign, and has been honored for his artwork at Gen Con three times.

Somewhere in there, he found time to get married, have a kid, and breathe. Steve lives in Columbus with his wife, daughter and a slew of pets.

You can see more of Steve's artwork on the web at www.rottface.com.

‘Uncle Don’ Ross - 'Uncle Don' started writing and running theatre-style Live Action Roleplaying Games at the beginning of the genre’s modern era. In the past twenty years, he wrote over a dozen games of varying lengths and styles, and still holds at least as many ideas on the back burner, awaiting future production. Perhaps the most well-known of these was the weekend-long game Etherlines: The Morning After' which first ran at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1990, and recently celebrated its 19th run. He regular supports the annual Intercon LARP convention in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, and tries to produce about one new four- to eight-hour game each year. Many of these appear under the auspices of Etherlines Tours, the gamemastering and writing team responsible for the success of TMA.

Don's games avoid heavy mechanics and detailed background information, concentrating instead on each individual character's development as the story line unfolds around them. Many of his games also feature some overarching theme or 'gimmick', with the ultimate goal of making the player think about his role in an unexpected way.

After nearly twenty years of experience on the floor, he can safely say that he has seen it all, yet somehow his players still manage to surprise, delight, dismay, confound, and perennially entertain him. And that's what keeps bringing him back to the game.

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, a master sculptor and painter, a celebrated game designer and hobby industry executive. Still, he loves the fact that every wargamer knows him simply as “Uncle Duke”.

Duke started or was involved in several companies, including vice-president at TSR. He also wrote Melee, one of the first wargames every published in the US. 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.

Tom Wham - Tom Wham has been a game designer since age 7 when he started modifying the rules for his first Monopoly set.

Through strange circumstances, Tom found himself in Lake Geneva during May, 1977, walking through the door of TSR as employee number thirteen. After running the Dungeon Hobby Shop for a summer, he was bumped upstairs (literally) to the art department where he worked with Dave Sutherland and Dave Trampier on the original Monster Manual, and was later assigned various editing and development tasks. It wasn't long before he made a deal with Tim Kask, editor of Dragon magazine, to do a game called Snit Smashing, and the obvious sequel: Snit's Revenge. This led to several more games printed in Dragon, including The Awful Green Things From Outer Space (recently re-released from Steve Jackson Games).

From there, his games left the magazine pages and turned into stand-alone products. These include Kings & Things (with Rob Kuntz, Wet End Games/Games Workshop), Mertwig's Maze (TSR), and The Great Khan Game (with Richard Hamblen, also through TSR). He also shares the design credit with Darwin Bromley for Mayfair’s Iron Dragon.

Tom’s more recent efforts include the reprint of Snits from Steve Jackson Games, Planet Busters from Troll Lord Games, and some projects from Mayfair.