Phenomenon crew & writers
Here
are the fine organisers and writers of Pheno 2006’s games and activities.
As you will note, they are beyond description via the written word, beyond
reason, and beyond thanks.
Buy them lots of drinks at post-Con drinkies.
President
Ryan d'Argeavel, The Astral Chief of Enchantment and Charisma
Secretary and Public Officer
Mike McClure, The Compassionate Spectral Chief That Burns the Joker
Treasurer
Paul Naveau, The Unjust Bishop Who Freezes the Inquisitor
Committee Member
Shane Donohoe, Earl Desirability
Writer Wrangler
Xole Karman, The Haunted Indigo Empress Who Imbues Panic
RPGA Liaison
Wes Nicholson, The Marquis That Loves Terror
Venue Liaison
David James, The Gauntlet of Dusk
Random Inc Liaison
Nigel Cunningham, Grail of the Blessed Cenotaph
Identity Team
Nadina Geary (graphic design), The Final Marquessa of Talent
Andrew Smith (website design), The Tsar Uniqueness
Paul Naveau, also Miter of the Terrifying Chamber
Ingrid Bean, The Princess Dressed in the Dress of Unknowable Scales
Rob Barbetti, The Indigo Rascal
IT Team
Justin Deutsch (database design), Authority of the Monolith
Elissa Feit (database design), The Blasphemous Princess
Mike McClure (web support), also Earl That Keeps the Ruins and is Reaching
for the Valley
Shane Donohoe, also The Mystic Assassin
Support Team
Dea Matthews, The Insane Profane Emperess
Sandra d'Argeavel, The Czarina of the Silver Voulge
Phil Goodwin, The Adventurer Who Justifies the Archivist
Eleanor Goodwin, The Unspeakable Sultana of Poison and Silver
Game writers
Get to know your gamewriters (a bit) before leaping boldly into their games! Some liberties with the truth may have been taken with the blurbs, or worse, things left unwritten...
Triptychs
Liz Argall
Liz tries to hide her Buddha nature under an amiable, goofy exterior but fails often. Often this involves skin off knees and adventures with eligible bachelor bunnies, often accompanied by the music of folk guitar. Her enlightened soul emits a radiance that she finds hard to conceal.
Ingrid Bean
Though Ingrid has always had plenty of ideas for great character driven stories, she’s never been able to come up with decent dialogue. She finally realised the somewhat obvious solution to her problem when she decided to try writing games. She ran her first game "Keeping the Faith" at Phenomenon 2001, and was very pleased to win the best new designer award. She subsequently wrote "Silence" as part of the Triptych in 2003, and has since written several more games. Ingrid’s games tend towards dark themes, with a heavy focus on character interactions and development.
Joe McNamara
Last year, Joe won Pheno's Best New Designer, and didn't sleep for the entire weekend. His brain almost melted. The causality linking these assertions is of a superhumanly high order. This year, 'almost' isn't going to be good enough.
New writers
Angela & Ben Kemp
Angela is a Taurus, who likes caramels, spring days and long walks on the beach. A gamer by marriage, not birth, she took to the hobby like a penguin to quantum physics. Weaned on RPGA games, her own first con game was written about 30 minutes after playing her first real freeform. Angela is Rated: PG. Keep out of reach of children.
Ben Kemp: you know you’ve heard the name before, but you’ve probably blocked it from your memory. Good choice. He’s been harassing GMs since Red-Box DnD, graduated to cons in 1988, writing in 1992, organising in 1994, and hasn’t looked back since (in case he sees what’s chasing him). His less disastrous fiascos include Soap-Opera the Freeform, Tiny Teddies: The K Files, The Defenders, and more MacquarieCons than his sanity could handle.
Stephanie
Matthews
In recent years Stephanie, the epitome of the Bronte-esque dutiful daughter, helped her dear decrepit father Robbie write and run 'And now presenting...', and the next year the two of them did 'Mayhem Over Manhattan', a manic pulp-fiction glasspunk romp which did nothing to help either of their sanities. Last year was the Sky Marshalls again in 'Beaker: Sky Marshalls-the Freeform'. But Stephanie asserts this year's offering promises something completely different!
Stacey
Payne
Stacy L. (the 'L' is for 'Laiea', a rune in the lost language of Mu whose meaning is tragically lost) Payne is new to the GM scene, having had her first experience writing the Changeling genre after playing it for many years. She likes her games with a healthy dose of the myth and a dash of the Orient for flavour.
Tim
Smith
Tim's vast experience with the cold void between planets has ideally nurtured his trans-human psionic powers. You will have a great time in his game: you quite literally will not have a choice. But he will keep you safe from the Eddorians while you're playing.
Vintage writers
Shane & Sharon Dowling
Shane and Sharon are notorious explorers of forbidden places. They have been expelled from Shamballa twice, the second time in chains of amnesia, but it hasn't stopped them planning their next trip. When asked why, they only say "Lattes" and burst into hysterical laughter.
Brett Evill
Brett Evill is a baby-boomer and one of the last polymaths of the 'Scottish Enlightenment' (ca. 1750-1825). He lives in a spacious three-level concrete sepulchre in Kempsey, NSW, with mountain and river views blocked by hoary old trees draped with leprous-looking epiphytes. Mr. Evill was the sick mind behind last years' succès d'estime, Aprés Moi L'Enfer. The real name of that adventure was '9,401', but Mr. Evill didn't think of it until too late.
Hugh Fisher
"I've been roleplaying, game mastering, and writing for a long long time. Usually it's high fantasy, but I like to try other genres too. So why I do I keep writing Paranoia games? The best answer I have is that I enjoy writing and running Paranoia (once a year) and people enjoy playing my games. But I also feel Paranoia is an important RPG that belongs at Phenomenon. Underneath the explosions and silliness it's the Carnivale of RPGs, turning our usual expectations upside down. If you want three hours of high intensity humour to balance the more serious games, play Paranoia. If you want to find out what cooperative roleplaying becomes when all the players are encouraged to kill each other, or how a game can be played when the rules are arbitrary and the GM change things on a whim, play Paranoia. Just don't spend too much time in thought or you'll get shot."
Laurie Flower
Laurie Flower first cut his teeth on the first editions of Dungeons and Dragons, Traveller and Empire of the Petal Throne and he has never really been the same since. Over 25 years experience in playing and storytelling in a number of genres he has developed a different approach to challenging his players. Some refer to this as the “Chained Naked to the Oars” system of storytelling. Over the past ten years he has switched from tabletop to LARP as both a player and Storyteller. Authoring and co-authoring three Star Wars LARPs and two Star Trek LARPs as well as running a continuing Hunters LARP over a eight month period, some say he has a handle on the genre others say not nice things, but all have a enjoyable and challenging time at his games.
Laurie believes in props and costumes and tends to reward gamers who go to the extra effort with their costumes, while he himself likes setting the scene with as much stage dressing as he can. Following this years Theme of “Unwritten Earths” he has developed an alternate direction for Star Wars set after Episode IV.
Eric Henry
Eric will naturally deny being the love-child of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, and Bilbo Baggins Esq., of the Shire. Not only did they miss each other by some two hundred years, she's historical and he's fictional. It's just impossible.
David James & Xole Karman
David James has been roleplaying since 1982, writing his first convention game with Andrew Smith for CanCon 1987. In recent years he has co-written 'Seek' and 'Mirrordark' with Xole Karman and 'Use By Date' with Virginia James. When it comes to writing games, either table-top or freeform, David prefers to indulge in characters and situations that allow players to explore their own paths, morals and emotions; in worlds where no one is black or white, but all, including the PC's themselves, are varying shades of grey.
Xole (That's pronounced 'Kole') is primarily a freeform writer, creating games based heavily in thick soupy politics. She likes the Amber setting rather too much and does scary things to Greek mythology. She periodically writes freeforms with David James, possibly because she still has his childish innocence in a jar on her shelf and is using it as blackmail.
Sim Lauren
"I'm the tall loud chick that has the attention span of an ant. Probably a good idea not to feed me too much sugar. Definitely not a good idea to give me a flamethrower. I've been going to RP cons since 2000, and enjoy every minute of it!
'Faenor' is the first game that I've written that has the potential to be very serious and angsty – and that scares me... Peter Pan Complex Much!"
Barb Kearins
Barbara has been writing St Tyrants games for over ten years. Like most GMs she's a little loopy now, but don't hold that against her. St Tyrants has been through a few changes over the years including being run as a freeform and with Bridge Crew, however with the upgrade to 4th Edition GURPs it has returned to the tabletop format its most familiar with.
Fi McConnachie
While working in the very respectable field of environmental science Fiona's real drive is to obtain a postion as script writer on "The Bold and the Beautiful" because not only does it pay better but that is where her talents as an evil writer of melodrama can be put to best use.
Adam Reeve
Adam Reeve is the fabled Knight Verte Perilous Sans Doublet, who fought Sir Tristram and Sir Brucelak to a standstill across three days at the Ford of White Peaches in Haute Logres. Although a deadly foe with lance, sword or pair of eyebrow tweezers, Adam is susceptible to backrubs.
Peter Trueman
Peter Trueman has been roleplaying and game-mastering since 1980, principally D&D but with some experience of Traveller, Heroes Unlimited, Vampire the Masquerade, Witchcraft, Armageddon and Champions. Last year his favourite roleplaying flavour was Hero System ("Copy That!"). This year he's discovered GURPS and is trying that out. One day he's going to run out of game systems to try.
Liz Waldock
“Darn this new fangled wanting to know everything about the person writing the game you are planning to enjoy. Why, in my day…”
As you can tell from the above quote I have been around for quite a while. I was first introduced to roleplaying back in 1980 through a game called Dragonquest, from there I rapidly discovered Universe, Runequest Glorantha and Cthulhu. All these games tended very much towards character driven adventures and so created a game style that still influences my writing form today.
“The Trial” is a themed freeform, set in G&S Land, wherein I have played merry chaos with the plots and characters of Gilbert and Sullivan. It written in much the same style as “Bride Finding Ball” and “Who Killed Cock Robin” and like those could best be described as a convoluted but fun filled frolic.
James Walker
1 gatcctccat atacaacggt atctccacct caggtttaga tctcaacaac ggaaccattg
61 ccgacatgag acagttaggt atcgtcgaga gttacaagct aaaacgagca gtagtcagct
121 ctgcatctga agccgctgaa gttctactaa gggtggataa catcatccgt gcaagaccaa
181 gaaccgccaa tagacaacat atgtaacata tttaggatat acctcgaaaa taataaaccg
241 ccacactgtc attattataa txagaaacag aacgcaaaaa ttatccacta tataattcaa
301 agacgcgaaa aaaaaagaac aacgcgtcat agaacttttg gcaattcgcg tcacaaataa
361 attttggcaa cttatgtttc ctcttcgagc agtactcgag ccctgtctca agaatgtaat
421 aatacccatc gtaggtatgg ttaaagatag catctccaca acctcaaagc tccttgccga
481 gagtcgccct cctttgtcga gtaattttca cttttcatat gagaacttat tttcttattc...