2026 Guests of Honour
Industry Guests
Bill Benham
Bill Benham started playing Dungeons & Dragons as a kid and knew he would make games one day. “One Day” was the summer of 2018 when he joined the Wizards of the Coast as a producer for D&D. Before joining Wizards, Bill served 20 years in the Army, earned a master’s in healthcare administration, and was a clinic manager in the public sector. Besides work, he fills his days finding new games, searching for new places to eat in Seattle, WA, and watching horror movies with his loyal French bulldog, Kizzy.
Chris Tung
Chris Tung is the co-founder of the anime/gaming streetwear brand Pink City as well as a Producer/Editor/GM of the comedy TTRPG podcast Super Journey Dudes. He is the showrunner of Blink Space Blues, the world’s highest production Lancer RPG show, and Wizards of WUBRG, a brand new roleplaying Magic: The Gathering actual play. Known for his wacky homebrewed concepts (including a popular Pokémon themed campaign), Chris aims to use his years of experience in the film industry to elevate actual plays to cinematic heights, while also injecting stories with humour and heart as both a GM and a player. Find him online @lil_tungsta.
Christopher Chung
Chris is the designer of Lanterns: The Harvest Festival, My Little Pony: Festival of Lanterns & (the criminally underrated) Spell Smashers. He's also proud to be the adopted designer & developer of the My Little Pony: Deck-building Game. Yes, he's a brony. Yes, he's proud of it. Yes, Trixie is best pony. No, he cannot be swayed to believe otherwise. He's often open to playing all kinds of Euro games (even the slightly crunchier ones, *if* you have the patience to explain the rules. *hint hint*). You can probably find him celebrating (or lamenting) the Blue Jays' World Series victory (or defeat), or he's (constantly) lamenting the Maple Leafs.
Colton Balske
Colton Balske is a Canadian Indie TTRPG writer and digital artist. He loves creating memorable experiences that roleplayers can share with their friends. He hopes these experiences will create meaningful face-to-face connections mixed with silliness and laughter. His debut game is Hell's High Rollers, where players are selfish devils at a casual poker game. You can play the game and several free one-page RPGs he wrote at contron.itch.io
David Van Drunen
David Van Drunen loves bringing people together with "fun", and for over a decade has been designing and developing games that connect people around exciting experiences. Beginning their career in video games, David transitioned to tabletop mixing the familiar with the unexpected to create games inspired by architecture, Luchadors, and family traditions.
As a designer with ADHD and dyslexia David encourages fellow neurodivergent designers to trust your guts, take breaks, and try something completely unexpected.
(Designs: Block and Key. Gnomes at Midnight. || Developed: The Wolves. The Networks.)
Derek Gour
Derek is a Toronto-based game designer spanning tabletop and video games. His goal is to craft thoughtful games that blur genre lines. Games that have influenced him range from roleplaying classics like Burning Wheel and Apocalypse World to computer strategy gems like Civilization and Crusader Kings. Derek is the creator of the Hope Inhumanity tabletop card game, and his new project is Wheat and Wrath, a survival city builder with villagers made of straw.
Dillin Apelyan
Dillin Apelyan (mirror pronouns) hosts the One Shot podcast, helms several popular productions including The Atomless, Dorkspawn, and Patchwork Productions, and has appeared on media giants like Dropout and Critical Role. Dillin has also designed several successful role-playing games like HUNT(er/ed) and Metalepsis, and uses every opportunity to share the sprawling world of RPGs.
Greg Leatherman
Greg Leatherman lives in Minneapolis, Mn and is a indie game designer and podcaster. He’s played over 35 TTRPGs on his actual play podcast, Very Random Encounters, and talks about table top game experiences on Game Mechanics podcast. He enjoys making games that fill his current pop culture obsessions. You can find his games, Glitter Hearts and Domeskai Tamers through Japanime games, The Mystery Business through Indie Press Revolutions, which is all linked on his website, Leatherman.games.
Gwendolyn Marshall
Gwendolyn Marshall is an independent author and game designer, working on products that challenge and supplement D&D, like her ENnie Winning best seller, Ancestry & Culture: An Alternative to Race in 5e, and dozens of other titles. She also develops indie games using OSR and PbtA systems and principles, to explore queer identity, chosen family, and classic adventuring themes. Apart from gaming, she is a professor of philosophy working on metaphysics and mind in 17th C. Europe, with a focus on women authors. She’s also a bi trans woman into games, SF/F, coffee, & punk, and a mom of two teen boys.
Helena Real
Helena Real (she/her) is a Chilean trans writer, TTRPG designer, editor, and translator. She’s the co-designer of Dungeon World 2, the upcoming sequel to the acclaimed PbtA game. She has designed other TTRPG materials for various games and systems since 2015, including 7th Sea: Second Edition, Bluebeard’s Bride, and Avatar Legends, among various others. She also authored two Fate Worlds: The Way of the Pukona and Ngen Mapu. Pukona won the "Best Setting" award at the Indie Groundbreaker Awards 2019. She also received the 2020 IGDN Diversity Sponsorship.
Jack Panic
Jack Panic is an indie game designer from Oklahoma City, OK, creating micro-RPGs and system-agnostic tools and toys. His games are punchy explorations of genre, with a strong emphasis on mechanics that reinforce the vibe and promote collaborative play. He is a full-time indie designer who releases a new mini-RPG each month while also developing additional projects, both solo and in collaboration with other amazing humans. His games include INSTANT STARSHIP, QUANTUM NOBODIES, PSYCHO KILLLER, THE GAS STATION, DNGN+DRGN, HOW'S MY DRIVING, and more.
Jason Pitre
Jason Pitre (He/Him) is owner and primary employee of Genesis of Legend Publishing. He acts as a game designer, writer, editor, layout professional, and lover of coffee. Jason works as a bureaucrat and law nerd by day, working on games in the evenings. Jason is also the mind behind the RPG Design Panelcast which shares recorded panels and seminars about game design. He has also occasionally done freelance work for companies such as Pelgrane Press, Green Hat Designs, Aviatrix Games, and Rowan Rook & Decard.
Jeff Fraser
Jeff Fraser is a rules editor and game developer based in Ottawa, Ontario. He has edited rulebooks for over 100 published games, including Flamecraft, Divinity: Original Sin, and Castles of Mad King Ludwig, and he codesigned The Fox Experiment with Elizabeth Hargrave. As game editor at Allplay Games since 2024, he has worked on a wide array of fresh titles and revised classics, including Container and Sail Legacy (both coming in 2026).
Joe Slack
Joe Slack is a board game designer, publisher, instructor, and the author of the #1 international best-selling book, The Board Game Designer's Guide, along with four other books on game design. He has taught Game Design and Development at Wilfrid Laurier University and runs the Board Game Design Course, an online course for new game designers. Joe has nine published games, including four successful Kickstarter campaigns.
Jonathan Lavallee
Jonathan has been working in and around games for the past twenty years. He began with line license for CyberGeneration and eventually published his own games. He’s published a few things for other people, but mostly focuses on his own content. He has just released the updated version of his latest game We Used To Be Friends (a collaborative teenage detective drama game), Behind You! (a collaborative slasher horror game) and Behext (a "take that" deckbuilder) published by Smirk and Dagger games.
Kurt Refling
Kurt Refling is an award-winning game designer based in Ottawa, Ontario. Publishing small storytelling RPGs as A Smouldering Lighthouse, Kurt has released over 15 games including Sock Puppets, Here We Used to Fly, and The Hourglass Sings. Designer Ian Howard describes Kurt’s games as “whimsical, funny, artful, elegant, and suffused with loving reverence for all the quirks and foibles that make us human.” Which made Kurt blush, to be honest.
In his spare time, Kurt writes a lot of poetry, cooks a lot of vegetables, and loves a lot of people.
Pascal Godbout
Pascal designs RPGs under Spotless Dice Games. He has published multiple supplements for Fate of Cthulhu and is the creator of Ringmaster, a Descended from the Queen story game about a dark and supernatural circus. He recently translated Ringmaster in French and is currently working on Remnants of Fate, a sci-fi existential horror game. You can find a review of his latest game, Ringmaster, at Cannibal Halfling Gaming.
Reed Mascola
Reed Mascola is a Toronto-based board game designer and cat dad. He has two of his designs published: CATNIP Auction House from Tin Robot Games and Vigilante (self-publish). This year, he is aiming to release Dracula is Dead from Lime Green Games, and Rûnebeasts: Deckbuilding Game (self-publish).
Ric Heise
Ric Heise is Mythworks' Chief People Person! Ric is the first point of contact for people interested in Mythworks. For Mythworks, Ric handles the Supporter Experience, Retail and Related Relationships, Connecting a Network of Creativity, and Your Curiosity. Ric is a contributing writer and designer for The Wildsea in addition to being Head of Playtesting. Ric is a Lyric Game Creator and Curator of Ephemeral Joys. Ric can be found on Mythworks' related Discords, or reached by emailing contact@myth.works. Ric would love to play a game with you, especially if you made it!
Robin Ekberg
Robin Ekberg is a TTRPG Writer/Producer, Award Winning GM, and one half of the Dorkspawn video game podcast. They've worked with Darrington Press, Hunters Entertainment, Modiphius, Many Sided Media, and Paizo.
Scott Kelly
Scott is half of BSGames and also an elementary school teacher. He has been playing board games since he was a child, and is now working on creating his own. Along with Bill Murphy (the "B" in BSGames), he has co-created and published Mathemagician's Duel and Sinoda. Scott has a folder full of ideas and a backpack full of prototypes, and is looking forward to getting more games out there into the world.
Spencer Moore
Spencer is a co-designer of Dungeon World 2 and the creator of creator Chasing Adventure. He got into roleplaying games in 2012, and since then has enjoyed being a playing, GMing, and designing and many games and systems.
Tim W. K. Brown
Tim is a multiple award winning board game designer from Stouffville Ontario. His games have been sold in over a dozen countries and have been featured in multiple magazines and podcasts. His published games include Wreck Raiders, Order of Invention, Quartex, and Gridstones. Watch for Tim’s next game “Twin Sisters” in the next Deck Hand Games Kickstarter this Spring!