Stretch Goal Guests

Aaron Lim is a tabletop gamemaker, occasional games educator, and community organizer based in Malaysia. He's made storygames like An Altogether Different River and Spectres of Brocken, several roleplaying games, board games and card games, is an avid proponent of the art of the shitpost game, and runs the fortnightly playtesting meetup Playtest Zero.

Caro Asercion is an interdisciplinary artist who works at the intersection of tabletop, theatre, and visual design. Their published games include i’m sorry did you say street magic, Exquisite Biome, The Long Shift, and Last Train to Bremen. Caro has worked as a contributing designer on a number of projects including Spindlewheel, ARC, Wickedness, Venture & Dungeon, Interstitial, The Prince of Nothing Good, and the Strange Beast Tarot anthology. Their practice centers on building small, intentional worlds through collaboration.

Vincent Baker has been creating and publishing independent role-playing games since 2001. With Meguey Baker, he co-created Apocalypse World and kicked off the Powered by the Apocalypse boom in ttrpgs. The games he's worked on subsequently include Murderous Ghosts, Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands, The Wizard's Grimoire, and Under Hollow Hills.

Erin Roberts is a game writer and designer who enjoys bringing imagined worlds to life. She has helped to create adventures and build settings for Darrington Press, Ghostfire Gaming, Kobold Press, Paizo, Wizards of the Coast, and many others on projects large and small. She was recognized for this work in 2023 as one of the winners of the Diana Jones Emerging Game Designer program. Outside of her TTRPG life, Erin is a published author of science fiction and fantasy short stories, teaches creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin, and appears weekly on the Writing Excuses podcast.

Having finally defeated the kung-fu ghost of Rene Magritte, I'd like to settle down and live in a house made out of macaroni for a while.

Jonathan Connor Self (Connor, he/him) is The Healer DM, gaming creative and charity leader. He is a mental health professional at a Title I public school and served in his state counseling association. Connor created over 40 products for D&D and other games, and he is a top-rated proDM on Start Playing Games. Connor is the Vice President of Product Development for The Word Refinery, an organization uplifting marginalized voices in gaming, as well as the President of D8 Summit Charities. This 501c3 has raised tens of thousands for local causes such as food banks, homeless shelters, and mental health providers, as well as produced expert seminars to give back to the gaming community. Connor has numerous interviews available online on the intersectionality between gaming, mental health, education, charity work, and diversity. Connor lives in rural Illinois with his dog Roscoe and parrot Petra.

Kienna Shaw (she/they) is a TTRPG writer and designer, and one of the co-curators of the TTRPG Safety Toolkit. Their work can be found in DIE RPG, Candlekeep Mysteries, Lost Omens: Tian Xia, and Starforged. She can be found self-publishing games and being on the internet everywhere as KiennaS.

Lara Paige Turner has been a professional RPG creator for about a decade now, and has been making games about being trans and autistic since before she realized she was either. When she's not doing that, she lives near Seattle, and spends her days putting books on shelves at her local library.

Lauren Bryant-Monk (she/her) is dedicated to making the Tabletop Industry safer, more diverse, and full of smooches. She is a game designer, safety consultant, and a co-curator of the TTRPG Safety Toolkit. Her work can be found in DIE RPG, Starforged, and Fight, Item Run. Her self-published games centre on emotional intimacy, meaningful relationships, and important choices and have been featured in Dicebreaker and Gizmodo. She can be found on most places on the internet as starvingsoubrette

Liam Stevens is an ENnie Award winning Game Designer, Podcaster and Cultural Consultant. Based in Otautahi, Aotearoa, he has Whakapapa to Ngai Tamaterangi, Ngāti Ruapani Ki Waikeremoana and Ngāti Hika, all within the Ngāti Kahungunu Rohe. He has worked folks such as Evil hat, Anodyne Printware, Tomkin Press and Darrington Press and is currently hard at work on Tomb Raider Shadows of Truth RPG. He is passionate about indigenous and anti colonial design and bringing more indigenous voices into the industry.

Meguey Baker has been creating and publishing independent role-playing games since 2006, including 1001 Nights, PsiRun, Playing Nature's Year, and the brand-new Under Hollow Hills! With Vincent Baker, she co-created Apocalypse World and kicked off the Powered by the Apocalypse boom in ttrpgs. In her other life, Meg is a museum curator and consultant focused on amplifying non-dominant voices in local history. Meg loves rocks, tea, toast, and socks, and will pet a bee if given the chance.

Takuma is a game designer creating tabletop games and music under the name No Road Home. They like to design games about strange and magical places, the everyday moments that occur there, and the sublime.

Inside of games, Kathryn Hymes (she/her) and Hakan Seyalıoğlu (he/him) are the co-founders of Thorny Games, a game studio out of Washington D.C. Their work often deals with the intimate and epic stories behind the language we speak. They’ve won awards for their games like Dialect (Silver Ennie Game of the Year, Tabletop Game of the Year—Indiecade Europe) and Sign (Indiecade Finalist, Indie RPG award-winner). Newly released is Xenolanguage, a soulful sci-fi game about alien language, and upcoming this year is the Games to Bind Us Play Anthology. They regularly speak about games, language and technology at places like SXSW and GDC. They also partner with universities, museums and non-profits to make games as a form of research by design.