Category Archives: Gaming

Feb 23 2012

Wendland, Joan

Joan Wendland is owner/president/head game designer for Blood & Cardstock Games. She is the designer of several card games [Showbiz Shuffle, Counting Zzzzs, X-Machina, Evil Vendetta Pie Fight, Dim Sum Derby, and Alien Invasion Pie Fight] as well as the author of two LARPs [Gilbert and Silicon and The Weekly Midnight News]. Professionally Joan works as a beltway bandit usually as an engineer, but occasionally as a war games coordinator. She lives in northern Virginia with her husband, 2 cats, and 5,000 games in her  garage. Please visit www.blood-and-cardstock.com and help her with that.

By Doris • Posted in Gaming
Feb 23 2012

DeCandido, Keith

Rocketed to Earth as an infant to avoid the destruction of his homeplanet, Keith R.A. DeCandido fights for truth, justice, and reasonable deadlines, though he rarely encounters any of those things.  He is the author of almost 50 novels, at which point he gets a free set of steak knives.  He’s also written bunches of short stories, comic books, novellas, and more.  A good chunk of his work has been in various media universes, ranging from TV shows (buffy the Vampire Slayer, Doctor Who, Farscape, Leverage, Star Trek, Supernatural) to games (Command and Conquer, Dungeons and Dragons, StarCraft, World of Warcraft), to movies (Cars, Resident Evil, Serenity).  His recent and upcoming work inclues the forthcoming Leverage novel The Zoo Job; the high fantasy police procedurals Dragon Precinct (2004, re-released in trade paperback in 2011), Unicorn Precinct (2011), and Goblin Precinct (2012), with Tales from the Dragon Precinct coming later this year; -30-, the first part of the “Vira1″ series of thriller novellas, coauthored with Steven Savile; the SCPD novel series about cops in a city filled with superheroes, including The Case of the Claw (2011) and Avenging Amethyst (2013); Guilt in Innocence, the first of several contributions to the shared-world science fiction series “Tales of the Scattered Earth”; and stories in the anthologies V-Wars (edited by Jonathan Maberry), Tales from the House Band Volume 1, More Tales of Zorro, Dragon’s Lure, and Badass Faeries 4: It’s Elemental.  In 2009, Keith was inexplicably granted a Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, which means he never needs to accomplish anything ever again.  He also babbled incoherently on camera for the biography Channel’s Star Trek special “Captains of the Final Frontier”, and the documentaries Done the Impossible (about Firefly and Serenity) and The Life of Death.

In addition to all this, Keith is the percussionist of the Boogie Knights, a first-degree black belt in Kenshikai karate, podcaster for both The Chronic Rift and Dead Kitchen Radio: The Keith R.A. Candido Podcast, does voices for the audo dramas Gypsy Cove and the Parsec Award-winning Gypsy Cove, and is a lifelong fan of the World Champion New York Yankees.  He has lived most of his life in the Bronx.  Find out less at his mediocre web site at DeCandido.net, read his inane ramblings at kradical.livejournal.com, or follow him on Facebook and/or Twitter under the username “KRADeC”.

Feb 5 2012

Ventrella, Michael

Michael A. Ventrella’s second fantasy novel “The Axes of Evil” (a sequel to “Arch Enemies”) was released in 2010, and
his short story “X Spots the Mark” should be in Dragon Moon’s collection “Rum and Runestones.” “Tales of Fortannis: A Bard’s Eye View” is an anthology of short
stories which may be released by the time of Ravencon 2011.

Michael is one of the founders of modern live action fantasy medieval role-playing games in America, having started NERO in 1989. He currently runs the Alliance LARP, which has chapters all over the country. He also founded Animato magazine, wrote for FPS Magazine, and has been quoted as an animation expert in Entertainment Weekly, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and books and webpages. He can be easily found on Facebook, My Space, Twitter, and other social networks under his name. Michael is from Richmond originally and graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University back when it was much, much smaller. He is married to artist Heidi Hooper. In his spare time, he is a lawyer.

Guest website: www.michaelaventrella.com

Feb 5 2012

Weuve, Christopher

Christopher Weuve is a professional wargame designer and naval analyst. Chris spent the first few years of the 21st century at the Center for Naval Analyses, where he alternated between designing and running wargames for research and education, and supporting the US Navy, where he was he reconstructed and analyzed 13 exercises (most of them at sea) in five years. (He thinks the Combat Information Center of an Arleigh Burke destroyer is the best example of a starship bridge he has yet seen.) He then spent five years on the research faculty of the US Naval War College, specializing in the use of wargaming as a research tool. An avid science fiction fan since before he was old enough to read, he spends his spare time reading science fiction and history, and pondering the differences between Real-World(tm) naval forces and combat and how similar subjects are represented in science fiction. He is also the moderator several science fiction and wargaming mailing lists, including the Science Fiction Wargames list (SFConsim-L) and the Naval Wargames List (NavWarGames). He’s also been a naval consultant for various SF authors, game designers, media outlets, and defense contractors.

 

Feb 5 2012

Waters, Robert

Since 1994, Robert E Waters has worked in the computer and board gaming industry as technical writer, editor, designer, and producer. A member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, his first professional fiction publication came in 2003 with the story “The Assassin’s Retirement Party,” Weird Tales, Issue #332. Since then he has sold stories to Nth Degree, Nth Zine, Black Library Publishing (Games Workshop), Dark Quest Books, Padwolf Publishing, Mundania Press, and Rogue Blades Entertainment. Between the years of 1998 — 2006, he also served as an assistant editor to Weird Tales. Robert currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with his wife Beth, their son Jason, and their cat Buzz.

Feb 5 2012

McPhail, Mike

Mike McPhail is a member of the Military Writers Society of America, and is best known as the Anthologist for the award-winning military science fiction anthology series, Defending The Future (DTF) currently published by Dark Quest Books. DTFI Breach The Hull (2007/2009), DTFII So It Begins (2009), DTFIII By Other Means (2011), and currently working on DTFIV No Man’s Land (for May 2011).

He is also the author of the science fiction series the Alliance Archives (All’Arc), and the creator of its related Martial Role-Playing Game (MRPG) system.

Guest websites:

Defending The Future

Alliance Archives

MCP Concepts

Feb 5 2012

Carden, Roger

Former gaming activist Roger Carden, is best known as the founder and publisher of The Familiar, a professional, independent gaming magazine with an emphasis on world building. Roger was also an early director of the Committee for the Advancement for Role-Playing Games (CAR-PGa) , cofounder of the Games Publishers Association (the GPA), and former convention organizer. Roger has appeared on local radio defending RPGs from groups like Bothered About Dungeons and Dragon (BADD) and the Cult Awareness Network. Roger currently is a staffer at Anime Mid-Atlantic in Cheapeake, VA and is a principle in portableNOUNS.com. Roger lives in Efland, NC with his wife Janet.