There is a great list of guests lined up for RinCon '09!
RinCon '09 Guests of Honor
In addition to all the Gaming Goodness, RinCon '09 features an amazing lineup of guests, complete with seminars and opportunities to play with (and against!) all weekend long!
Wil Wheaton
Wil Wheaton's successful acting career began in 1986 with acclaimed roles in Stand By Me and Toy Soldiers. He continued to build his resume through his teen years as series regular Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation and opposite Robin Williams in Flubber. But Wil is much more than just an actor; he's an author, blogger, voice actor, Columnist for the LA Weekly and Suicide Girls, widely-followed Twitter user, and a champion of geek culture.
Wil currently splits his time between acting and writing. He has recently appeared as the hacker CHAOS on Leverage, serial killer Floyd Hansen on Criminal Minds, comic book publisher Miles Sklar on NUMB3RS, and as the voice of Ted Kord, the Silver Age Blue Beetle, on Batman: The Brave and the Bold. He's published three acclaimed books: Just A Geek, Dancing Barefoot, and The Happiest Days of Our Lives. His latest book is Sunken Treasure. All of his books grew out of Wil's immensely popular, award-winning weblog, which he created at WIL WHEATON dot NET and currently maintains at WIL WHEATON dot NET: in Exile. While most celebrities are happy to let publicists design and maintain their websites, Wil took a decidedly different turn when he started blogging in 2001. He designed, coded, and maintained WWdN entirely on his own, until he "blew up" his sites' database in 2005 and moved his blog to the TypePad service. In 2003, Forbes.com readers voted WWdN the "Best Celebrity Weblog." Wil's blog was chosen by C|Net for inclusion in their 100 most influential blogs, and is an "A" lister, according to Blogebrity.com. In the 2002 weblog awards (the bloggies) Wil won every category in which he was nominated, including Weblog of the year. In 2007, Wil was nominated for a Lifetime Achievement Bloggie, alongside Internet powerhouses Slashdot and Fark. In the 2008 weblog awards, Wil was voted the Best Celebrity Blogger, and in 2009 Forbes named him the 14th most influential web celebrity. This is all amusing to Wil, who doesn't think of himself as a celebrity, but is instead, "just this guy, you know?"
Kelley Barnes
Kelley Barnes joined White Wolf in November 2005 as the Marketing Director, but was involved with the company for several years beforehand, supervising events ranging from 200 to 1000 attendees as the conventions manager for the Camarilla fan club. She is still an active member and player, enjoying the ability to meet players in countries around the world during her travels as the Global Event/Conventions Manager for CCP Games.
In her time with the company, Kelley was a member of the design team for Changeling: The Lost, Scion, and several other projects. As a writer, her contributions to White Wolf's Summer 2009 releases include City in the Sand and the SAS Group Kit: Legacy Security.
James Ernest
James Ernest is an intellectual juggernaut, crushing normal humans with the power of his mind. He roams the Earth doing great works for the glory and betterment of Mankind, while destroying those who oppose or offend him.
In physical form, James Ernest works as a Game Design Manager for The Amazing Society, a game development studio in Seattle. He spends his weekends playing board games with his wife and daughter, of 19 and 7 years respectively.
As a younger man, James Ernest sharpened his talents as a writer for Wizards of the Coast. In 1996 he formed an entire game company from nothing, calling it Cheapass Games. This company has released several Origins Award-winning games including Kill Doctor Lucky, Button Men, and BRAWL.
James Ernest has also contributed to the financial health of millions of other hobby game companies, including Wizards of the Coast, Wizkids, Rio Grande Games, and many billions more. Such works include Wizkids' Pirates of the Spanish Main, winner of a 2005 Origins Vanguard Award, and Michelangelo, new this year from Bucephalus Games.
James also has millions of hobbies. Included among them are juggling, brick counting, poker, quality assurance, playing Rock Band, and writing a webcomic. Read his salubrious lies online each week at brianandjohn.com .
Andrew Hackard
Andrew Hackard is the Munchkin Czar for Steve Jackson Games. This is his second time working for SJ Games; in a previous incarnation, he was the Managing Editor and supervised projects such as Transhuman Space and the GURPS Fourth Edition launch. Andrew has also been a high school teacher (math and Latin, not simultaneously), graduate student, and project manager for an educational development house. Andrew is also the Managing Editor of Wil Wheaton's Monolith Press. In his spare time, Andrew goes to see movies at Austin's Alamo Drafthouse, live music all over Austin, and goes to the occasional Texas home game. Hook 'em.
Jess Hartley
Jess Hartley is a novelist, editor, game designer and developer, fiction writer, and all around wordsmith. She began writing professionally in 2001, contributing to local newspapers and national magazines such as eSchool News, Renaissance Magazine, and School Planning and Management Digest.
Jess started working with White Wolf in 2003, when she penned the Exalted novel, In Northern Twilight, which was a runner-up for Pen & Paper's 2004 Fan Awards in the category of Best RPG-Related Novel/Anthology.
Since then, she has written content for more than 30 roleplaying game products including Skinchangers, Reliquary (which she also developed), Midnight Roads and Innocents from the World of Darkness core game line, The Beast That Hunts The Blood (Nosferatu Clanbook) for Vampire: The Masquerade, Free Council, Silver Ladder, and Mysterium for Mage: The Awakening, all four of the Promethean: The Created supplements (Pandora's Book, Strange Alchemies, Magnum Opus, and Saturnine Night), "Predators" for Werewolf: The Forsaken and "The Compass of the Celestial Directions 1: The Blessed Isle" for Exalted Second Edition. She's also contributed to the Scion line (Scion: Demigod and Scion: God), and was part of the core team that created Changeling: The Lost and Hunter: The Vigil, working on both the core rule books, as well as several supplements for each of the lines.
One of Jess' latest projects has been helping create Geist: The Sin-Eaters, White Wolf's newest game line, which made its formal debut in August of 2009, as well as multiple electronic projects such as The Rose-Bride's Plight, a Changeling: The Lost Storyteller Adventure System .pdf product.
Recently, one of Jess' short stories, Stigmatized Property, was printed in the horror anthology Buried Tales of Pinebox, Texas, and she is a contributor to the upcoming essay collection Family Games: The Best 100.
A life-long native of the Pacific Northwest, she's recently found herself transplanted to the wilds of Southeastern Arizona, where she dwells with her husband and youngest daughter and a menagerie of other interesting creatures. She's an active member of The Camarilla and the Society for Creative Anachronism, and participates in a plethora of other strange and curious hobbies and pastimes which often make her neighbors and acquaintances scratch their heads in confusion.
More information about Jess can be found through her website at JessHartley.com .
Shane Hensley
Shane Lacy Hensley is a 20-year veteran of the pen-and-paper and video/computer game industry. Shane's own company, Pinnacle Entertainment Group, has been going for 17 years, creating multiple award-winning products such as Deadlands and Savage Worlds and maintaining a large and loyal fanbase eager to strongbrace any new product Shane puts his name on.
Shane served as as a lead designer on the award-winning City of Heroes/City of Villains at Cryptic Studios (now Atari) before moving on to become President of Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment and Studio Head of Superstition Studios. There his own Deadlands game is being made into a 3rd person persistent shooter using the Unreal engine, and another studio works on the Stargate:Worlds® game under license from MGM Studios.
His long experience includes work for such companies as SSI (one of the industry's first computer game companies), Hasbro, Topps, WizKids, and most recently Cryptic Studios (now Atari) and Cheyenne Mountain. He has written or designed hundreds of products, including role-playing game books, collectible card games, web-based games, historical miniature games, Facebook games, large scale MMOs, first person shooters, novels, and short stories. Shane is a frequent Guest of Honor at conventions world-wide.
Shane lives in Gilbert, Arizona, and loves the heat. He also loves to run games and meet gamers from all around the world.
Rick Loomis
Rick Loomis is an Origins Hall of Fame inductee (a tribute to his thirty plus years in the industry), the first and current president of the Game Manufacturer's Association, the professional trade association that governs the hobby games industry, and the founder and president of Flying Buffalo Inc, the oldest Adventure Game company still under its original management.
Rick also was the first person ever to buy a computer (in 1972) solely to play games on it! He also wrote the first solo adventure for a role playing game (Buffalo Castle for Tunnels & Trolls) and designed all of the expansion sets for the popular Nuclear War card game (Nuclear Escalation, Nuclear Proliferation, and Weapons of Mass Destruction).
Jeff Mariotte
Jeffrey J. Mariotte is the award-winning author of more than forty novels, including the border horror trilogy Missing White Girl, River Runs Red, and Cold Black Hearts, and as Jeff Mariotte, The Slab, the Witch Season teen horror quartet, and others. He also writes comic books, including the long-running horror/Western comic book series Desperadoes, original graphic novel Zombie Cop, and the bestselling biographical comic about Barack Obama, Presidential Material. He's a co-owner of specialty bookstore Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego, and lives in southeastern Arizona on the Flying M Ranch. For more information, please visit www.jeffmariotte.com.
Janni Lee Simner
Janni Lee Simner's post-apocalyptic young adult fantasy, Bones of Faerie, is set after the war between the faerie and human realms destroyed the world, leaving behind a land filled with deadly magic: trees that seek out human blood, glowing stones that burn with cold fire, forests whose shadows can swallow a person whole. Her next YA fantasy, Thief Eyes, is based on the Icelandic sagas and will be out next summer. She's also published books for younger children and more than 30 short stories, including appearances in Chicks in Chainmail, Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar, and Gothic! Ten Original Dark Tales.
Michael Stackpole
Michael A. Stackpole is a New York Times bestselling author of over 40 novels, and has won awards as a novelist, editor, game designer, computer game designer, comics writer, podcaster, and screenwriter. His career in gaming spans over 31 years, defending the roleplaying industry against the Religious Right. He is well known for his many fiction novels set in the Star Wars and Battletech universes.
Paul Tevis
Paul Tevis is a game designer, writer, and podcaster living in Santa Barbara, CA, with his wife and their three cats. His podcast about tabletop games, Have Games, Will Travel, won the Gold ENnie for Best Podcast in 2007, the first year the category existed. His most recent project, A Penny For My Thoughts, is a storytelling game of improv and amnesia and was published this summer in cooperation with Evil Hat Productions.
John Wick
John Wick is an award-winning author and game designer. He wrote the Legend of the Five Rings and 7th Sea roleplaying games, winning Best Roleplaying Game for both. He then moved on to self-publishing where his games Orkworld, Cat, Discordia, and Thirty have won awards and acclaim from gamers and critics. Other writing credits include working for companies such as White Wolf, PEG, NeoPets, Upper Deck, and Totally Games.
His most current games include My Monster (a roleplaying game for children), The Shotgun Diaires and his magnum opus, Houses of the Blooded. He will be running a Houses of the Blooded LARP at this convention. More information about Houses of the Blooded, John's newest game, can be found at www.HousesOfTheBlooded.com.