Staff Profiles

Meet the people who make the games!

Fox Barrett, e23 Clerk, Warehouse 23 Marketing Assistant

Updated October 27, 2008

Fox's dream was simple. If he played enough games, one day an alien would come down and beseech him to come help fight off Xur and the Ko-Dan armada. Sadly, fate had other plans. Shortly after gaining his first level in Grown Up, he fell in with the SJ Games crowd and has been pushed from one department to the next ever since. Presently, his job is to toil away at a keyboard, arranging letters and numbers into something resembling jokes. He still has a job, so it must be working.

BattleTech and Shadowrun were his first loves. His leisure time is mostly spent time playing far too many video games. He also likes watching anime, bothering his cats, painting minis, and playing very silly games of D&D. His hat is not in the slightest bit lucky, but he likes it anyway.

Jimmie Bragdon, IT Manager

Updated October 29, 2008

Over a decade ago, I joined the Network branch of the Consipiracy under the guise of Illuminati Online and began my foray into helpdesks, network administration, and [REDACTED]. Since then, I've been through the back rooms and data centers of businesses, telecom companies, and even a major computer manufacturer (where the iDomination initiative is going quite well). I've since returned to the home office to patch myself into the heart of the Network once again.

In my free time, I enjoy a pretty wide range of gaming interests. I enjoy roleplaying games, from the periodic pen-and-paper game, to the online MMO, City of Heroes / Villains. I'm also a fan of any number of board games, non-collectible card games, and lightweight miniatures games like the Pirates CSG.

Paul Chapman, Marketing Director

Updated October 14, 2008

Paul Chapman is a gamer. The RPG section of his history with dice and cards is pretty robust, covering the spectrum from GURPS to D&D, White Wolf to Over the Edge. In the digital game arena, he's but a noob, owning only a single modern console and one handheld. But his boardgame experience is expanding; Scotland Yard and Shadows over Camelot are two of his favorites.

When he's not gaming, he likes to cook and play Lazer Tag.

Alex Fernandez, Production Artist

Updated October 26, 2008

Alex like to draw pictures. Alex no like word things.

Alex like lizards and monkeys. Some of Alex art here.

Andrew Hackard, Munchkin Brand Manager

Updated January 8, 2009

Andrew's first experience with roleplaying games was taking a first-level magic-user into the Caves of Chaos armed only with a dagger and a detect magic spell. This experience taught him valuable lessons about resource allocation, spell selection, and rolling up new characters. Since then, he has learned a lot, making him ideally suited to oversee the continuing growth of the Munchkin juggernaut. In his previous lives, Andrew has been a project manager, the managing editor for a major game publisher, a frustrated graduate student, and a high-school teacher, where he learned more about munchkinry from his students than in any activity before or since.

Andrew's non-gaming interests include watching movies at the Alamo Drafthouse, watching TV at the Alamo Drafthouse, and watching his paychecks disappear at the Alamo Drafthouse. In his free time, Andrew wants to eat your brains.

Robert Hood, Webmaster

Updated October 6, 2009

Nobody quite knows whether "Rev. Bob" is a twisted individual because he reads strange books, or if he reads the off-kilter stuff because he's weird. Either way, it was inevitable that his love for SF, fantasy, horror, gaming, and High Weirdness would eventually bring him into contact with SJ Games. He was recruited into the Men In Black in late 2005, after two existing MIBs found him wandering the halls of a convention, carrying a tote bag stuffed with card games. He was subsequently given more and more responsibilities, until the only thing left was to hire him . . . and yet, he keeps coming back for more.

He now maintains the SJ Games website from the depths of his secluded hilltop cave, from which mad cackling is sometimes heard in the dead of night. If you encounter him at a convention (or on Twitter), do not ask him for reading recommendations, unless you have a total disregard for your own sanity. He is also an expert at pun warfare, as well as a practicing Pastafarian and SubGenius.

Steve Jackson, President, Editor-in-Chief

Updated October 31, 2008

Steve Jackson founded the company in 1980, so it's all his fault. Blame him.

Steve has also designed way too many games, including Ogre, Car Wars, Illuminati, GURPS, and Munchkin. He wants to do some more. Thus, gaming no longer counts as a hobby, though it's still a Favorite Thing. His actual hobbies include Lego, pirates, tropical fish, rolling ball machines, and gardening. He really wishes he could still find the time for beekeeping, model railroading, and keeping up with videogames . . . and in his weaker moments he misses the SCA. If only we could do something about this sleep thing . . .

He is a carnivore, specializing in sashimi. Mmm, sashimi. A few years ago, he broke a 30-year 3-liter-a-day Coke addiction. Now it's two cups of coffee a day. This is better, honest. He drinks sissy drinks and Kahlua. He reads science fiction and fantasy. Did we mention that he games?

Jason Levine, Assistant GURPS Line Editor

Updated August 7, 2009

Jason Levine, better known to most as "Reverend Pee Kitty", has been a gamer for most of his life and a die-hard GURPS fan since the release of Third Edition. He lives GURPS, loves GURPS, and even maintains a GURPS fan-site at www.mygurps.com . . . guess what Steve Jackson Games product he works on?

In his spare, non-gaming time, he enjoys making music, collecting Transformers, reading comics, and generally refusing to grow up.

Steven Marsh, Pyramid Editor, e23 Manager

Updated October 29, 2008

Steven Marsh has been a gamer since he was 13, when his newly generated Dungeons & Dragons magic-user – creatively named Zappo Zam – happened to roll all 18s during character creation.

Although his blatant cheating tapered off once puberty kicked in, Steven's love of gaming continued until he went to college at Florida State University. While there, he worked at a comic and game shop, resulting in a truly frightening collection of comics and games. His break in the creative aspect of gaming came in 1997, when a letter he wrote to Shadis Magazine detailing his theoretical "perfect" issue was turned into the "Special Steven Marsh Issue." He wrote a couple of articles for Shadis, and in 2000 he joined the Steve Jackson Games family as the editor of Pyramid Magazine. Since then, he's done work for Green Ronin Publishing, West End Games, Grey Ghost Games, White Wolf Publishing, and others. In 2008 he took over as e23 Manager for Steve Jackson Games, where he parlayed the skills he honed during his Pyramid years into a full-time job.

In between editing Pyramid, managing e23, and writing and editing for freelance gigs as his fancy is struck, he has an unhealthy fascination with Doctor Who, portable video games, and tinkering with computers. He lives just outside Indianapolis with his wife and their son. He sporadically posts to his blog at waitingforgo.livejournal.com. He rarely sleeps.

Sean Punch, GURPS Line Editor

Updated October 14, 2008

Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch set out to become a particle physicist in 1985, ended up the GURPS Line Editor in 1995, and has engineered rules for almost every GURPS product since. During the GURPS Third Edition era, he compiled both GURPS Compendium volumes, developed GURPS Lite, wrote GURPS Wizards and GURPS Undead, and edited or revised over 20 other titles. With David Pulver, he produced the GURPS Basic Set, Fourth Edition, in 2004. His latest creations include GURPS Powers (with Phil Masters), GURPS Martial Arts (with Peter Dell'Orto), GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1-4, and GURPS Action 1-2. He continues to edit and contribute to GURPS projects daily.

Sean has been a gamer since 1979. His non-gaming interests include cinema, cooking, and wine. He lives in Montréal, Québec with his wife, Bonnie. They have two cats, Banshee and Zephyra, and a noisy parrot, Circe. As befits a professional in the RPG business, he mixes his work and personal life without a second thought on his LiveJournal: http://dr-kromm.livejournal.com/.

Philip Reed, Managing Editor, Chief Operating Officer

Updated October 14, 2008

Philip Reed, best known for his work with Ronin Arts, spends far too many hours of each day thinking about games (even for someone working in the game industry). With credits throughout the game industry as an author, artist, layout monkey, editor, publisher, designer, and playtester, Philip definitely sunk more points into skills than common sense. Check his blog daily for updates as Philip struggles between the desire to create games and the responsibility of overseeing the creation of games. (Which are – as you probably already know – two very different jobs.)

Randy Scheunemann, Playtest Coordinator

Updated June 5, 2009

Randy is a wanderer. He made his way into the office one day, and hasn't managed to fully escape yet. He believes in keeping his friends close, his beer cold, and his enemies subdued beneath his oppressive boot. In the end he is a nomadic practitioner of the "wine, women, and song" mentality. By wine he means beer, by song he means games, and by women he means WOMEN!!!

Randy's gaming interests are varied. A game of Catan is as welcome as an 18 hour Descent marathon, followed by a giant game of Werewolves.

Will Schoonover, Assistant Developer, Art Director

Updated October 22, 2008

Will's gaming time is divided between miniatures, card/boardgames, and RTS games on the PC. Some of his favorites in those categories are WarMachine, Shadows over Camelot, and Company of Heroes. When not gaming Will enjoys reading fantasy/sci-fi novels, watching movies, and thinking about gaming.

He lives in Austin, and wishes it wasn't so hot.

Monica Stephens, Assisting Managing Editor

Updated November 13, 2008

Monica Stephens has worked for SJ Games in every department and at many positions, and has been here longer than anyone but Steve. If you want to hear about hand assembly of games in ziplock bags, or phototypesetting on a Compugraphic system for wax pasteup, or creating a Car Wars-themed van in three days to display at a trade show in Dallas, ask Monica.

Monica enjoys games, but she's spent more time getting games to press than actually playing. She likes playtests, though, and has edited several games. She developed the card game Spooks. She is currently the Assistant Managing Editor and the final gatekeeper of editing and graphic quality for our releases.

She likes nature, water gardening, sudoku, science, science fiction, and SF cons, and would like to spend more time with her sweetie and friends. It is a challenge to get a good candid photo of Monica.

Nikola Vrtis, e23 Editor

Updated October 29, 2008

Nikola Vrtis is a production assistant, editor, and indexer for Steve Jackson Games. She was the co-designer of the Men in Black Roleplaying Game, co-designer and co-editor of the DC Universe Roleplaying Game and its supplements, and designer and editor of the revised D6 System books. She has done writing, editing, indexing, graphic layout, and Web site creation and maintenance for various companies in and out of the game industry.

Nikki currently resides just outside of Indianapolis, Indiana with her husband and their son (who plans on being an award-winning something-or-another and, by 13 months, already had a taste of fame when his picture appeared of the front page of a local newspaper).

Thomas Weigel, Staff Programmer

Updated October 28, 2008

Thomas Weigel is boring: he actually likes numbers, infrastructure, and support roles. In games, he tends to play the medic. Professionally, he tends to focus on process efficiencies and tool-building.

GM Thomas Weigel is a vicious, sadistic monster: he actually likes making players cry, designing world-eating monsters, and spending hours poring over spreadsheets to generate demographic statistics for a campaign he's only going to run once. The latter of which may, in retrospect, help lead to the first two. He has been known to have NPCs kick imaginary puppies.

Quirks (-1 point each): Likes prime numbers and puns; measures his life in gigaseconds; likes Perl and Python; has an unnatural love for database structures; and (to be determined in play).

Ben Williams, Production Assistant

Updated October 27, 2008

Taken by a local hillbilly, scientists now believe this blurry image may be the only existing photograph of Ben Williams, the newest production assistant at SJ games. Though reports are hazy and often contradictory, many suggest this bizarre creature is an avid tabletop miniature gamer and painter. Recent eyewitness accounts indicate that he has lately abandoned Warmachine and Hordes, in favor of the newer Monsterpocalypse. Another individual reported seeing him purchase one of the new Alkemy starters as well. Recent evidence supports earlier hypotheses that his natural habitat is in central Texas in the Austin area.

Loren K. Wiseman, Traveller Guru-in-Residence, JTAS Editor, Part-time Author

Updated October 23, 2008

I've been involved with the gaming business since 1973, when a group of friends and I founded Game Designers' Workshop. When GDW closed down 22 years later, I free-lanced for a while, worked a series of part-time dayjobs, and then moved to Illuminati world HQ in Austin Texas to work for SJ Games. I am a founder of the Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow, a member of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame, and winner of the Origins Award.

I design RPGs for a living and paint and play tabletop miniatures as a hobby. My website has more information on my writings, my past, and my current projects.

Elisabeth Zakes, Development Administrator

Updated July 23, 2009

Elisabeth was one of the first of the SJG Illuminati in 1980, editing magazine articles, playtesting some of the first games, producing game components, and doing a myriad of other tasks around the office. She took a "leave of absence" for a while, but came to her senses in 2009 and returned with a multitude of new skills under her belt. She now coordinates both the development of games and the playtesting of same.

In her spare time she plays more games, runs a Neverwinter Nights persistent world, hangs out in the SCA, and is in the last stages of raising a family. The "helping to raise grandchildren" stage is starting.