Teddy Hulsker
Teddy Hulsker (he/him) is an Oakland-based Bay Area native and Game Master for hire. As a DM, Teddy creates a fun environment for play that rewards players for creativity and ingenuity. He loves games that feature a blend of humor, excitement, danger, and collaborative problem solving. In addition to being a Game Master, he is also freelance theater artist specializing in sound and projection design. He loves storytelling, collaboration, rich imaginary worlds, the bizarre, the strange, and the beautiful. He sees Game Mastering as a continuation of his artistic career and brings many of the skills he honed as a professional theater artist to his role playing adventures. He tends to favor creativity and imagination over a strict interpretation of the rules, but he also loves having a well-defined framework as restrictions are an impetus for creativity. He see role playing games as a collaborative art experience in which a group of storytellers work together to weave a tale of high adventure.
Sam Tillis
Sam Tillis (he/him) has been playing roleplaying games since the age of twelve and Game Mastering almost as long. His players have explored kingdoms of legend and lore, galaxies filled with scum and villainy, mutant-filled metropoles, the wildest west, and much more, defeating villains as grandiose as gods or as personal as their own demons. He’s done games with elementary school students and elders, soldiers and coders, teachers, therapists, authors, and actors. Each has been totally different, unique to those people in that time and place.
Gayle Why
Gayle Why (they/them) has been playing and running TTRPGs for over twenty years. They love to curate richly detailed, player-driven adventures fueled by a healthy dose of whimsy, as well as explore extraordinary concepts within the safety of play. When not rolling dice, they also do voice and stage acting, craft costumes, teach improv, and spend way too much time crafting minis in HeroForge.
Fenner Merlick
Fenner (they/them) is a theater artist and teacher dedicated to studying and embodying enduring forms of theater, melding them to new forms and generations of artists. They thrive by empowering young people to be expressive, generous, and joyful in their unique experiences through theater arts. They have taught weekly drama workshops in public schools throughout the San Francisco Bay Area with New Conservatory Theater Company and American Conservatory Theater to children from 1st to 8th grade, creating connections through play. They have cultivated joy in failure as the resident clown at summer camps with Kinetic Art Center in Oakland, CA, and introduced the delectable chaos of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ mechanicals to elementary school children at the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival’s summer program. They can be found playing D&D on the podcast ‘The roll report’!
Slater Penney
Slater Penney (he/him) is an Emmy award winning performer whose turned his interests towards ensemble creation. In the 25+ years of teaching and performing, he’s come to appreciate the combination of role playing and roll playing, and sees D&D as a beautiful form of group storytelling. Slater looks forward to the next adventure!
Dylan Waite
Dylan Waite (he/him) is a Dungeon Master with over a decade of experience running campaigns in Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, 5th Edition, and Pathfinder. His campaigns, usually written from scratch, focus on storytelling and player freedom, modifying the rulesets to streamline action and exploration. He has previously written for Palace Games escape rooms in San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts, and has spent ten years writing musicals, interactive performances, and radio plays. He currently lives in New York City.
Colin Epstein
Colin Epstein started playing D&D a long time ago, so long he doesn’t remember which edition, and then forgot about it. More recently, a friend reintroduced him to 5e and the magic of digital character sheets, and he was hooked again. Since then he’s DMed upwards of ten campaigns, created a series of unique one-shot adventures, and played in campaigns with friends all over the world. Colin prefers to run campaigns full of characters and humor and oddball NPCs while practicing his accents; when not playing or voicing NPCs, he is a performer all around the SF Bay Area with 13th Floor Theater and others.
Jacob Walker
Jacob Walker (he/him) is a longtime RPG player and particularly enjoys exploring different rule systems to gain a deeper understanding of what the best parts of role-playing games are for different audiences. From D&D 4e in elementary school to Pathfinder 1e in middle and high-school to D&D 5e and a wide array of rules-light games and hacks in college and beyond (Mausritter, Dungeon Walk, DCC, Merciless HellBorg, and more!), Jacob has tasted a bit of everything and aims to bring the best of what he’s found into his games. He likes a combination of fast-paced, action-packed combat and social intrigue plots that encourage interpersonal communication and deductive reasoning. He also loves including puzzles and traps in his games that encourage players to think critically and find out-of-the-box solutions, and he has many years of experience making funny voices and monster sounds.
Emilio Garcia-James
Emilio Garcia-James (he/him) has many years of experience playing AD&D and 5e D&D, and has been DMing for most of them. He was a staff member for an afterschool program for elementary and middle schoolers in 2017-2018, was later a cook for that very same afterschool program, and most recently was a part of a poetry initiative in Berkeley to help 4th and 5th graders deeply explore their unique creativity in a safe space. He enjoys a KungFu theater approach to dungeon mastering, creating campaign worlds inhabited by ninjas, samurai, wandering masters, and mysterious spirits.
Don Mancha III
Don Mancha III (he/him), is a California based writer/editor of comics and TTRPGs. He’s the eldest of five. He hates long walks on the beach. Don was tricked into playing D&D a long time ago, and then he fell in love with it. If he was stuck on an island and was only allowed to bring one thing with him, he’d bring a boat.
Hai Do
Hai Do (he/him) is a middle school science teacher, which coincidentally makes him an improv specialist, therefore making him a fun, collaborative DM. While he only feels comfortable with 5e so far, he values creativity and really enjoys working with beginners just at the cusp of seeing the beautiful potential that this powerful game has to offer. Don’t let his master’s degree in education fool you—he may be a teacher, but being in front of 12-year-olds all the time forces him to be theatrical and engaging. Come enjoy his silly maps and ridiculous voices.
Flynn
Flynn (he/they) has been running games for friends and strangers for 20 years, starting with Paranoia and branching into story games like Fiasco, Wanderhome, and “The Tragedy of King Puma,” a convention scenario for World Wide Wrestling RPG inspired by King Lear. He co-wrote a LARP about communication at a distance that made use of actual nautical signal flags. He is interested in nontraditional settings and topics for D&D, and he is currently working on a campaign inspired by Robert Caro’s The Power Broker. He also helped popularize the sci-fi genre of “solarpunk.”
Brian Stauber
Brian Stauber (he/him) is a professional GM who has been spinning tales through role-playing games for over 25 years. He finds a special type of magic in the connection and collaboration that happens between players when a story and game mechanics come together. A trained improv actor, his sessions often combine his whimsical sense of humor with earnest and provocative narratives. He loves to bring up the next generation of gamemasters through summer camp and aftercare programs and is a father to his own burgeoning little adventurer. Outside of his GM work, Brian is a certified wellness coach and organizational facilitator who strives to foster sustainable, effective, and vibrant lives for his clients. He is active in the applied play community and is always looking for ways to use tabletop games to increase learning and honest human connection in the world.
Philip Lindsey
Philip Lindsey (he/him) is a Second City alumni and a transplant to the Bay Area. Born in Italy, he spent his childhood in Turkey, Egypt, Senegal, and South Africa—he is endlessly struggling to answer the question “Where are you from?” He is the author of Alone In Bad Company, which chronicles how D&D can liberate us from being spectators of our own lives. Expect zany characters, lots of discovery, and an open sandbox whenever we roll up some characters. He splits his time between Santa Cruz and San Francisco, and when he’s not rolling dice he’s teaching, fundraising for causes near and dear, and exploring hidden beaches.
Stella
Stella (she/her) is a Dungeon Master for hire. She uses her many years of experience with tabletop roleplaying games and improv comedy to craft games that are fun, memorable, and encourage collaboration and creative problem solving. Stella believes in roleplay as a vehicle to empower players and instill a strong sense of agency and possibility. Common themes in her games are ecology, power, and the balance between individual and communal needs. Stella loves fabulous and ferocious characters, and she has a soft spot for queer and gender variant characters (and players!).
Matthew Minter
Matthew Minter (he/him) has been playing and running tabletop RPGs for over a decade, primarily D&D 5e. He is also a performing musician, writer, and creator of the original tabletop RPG Chaos Melody. His games are cinematic and roleplay-heavy, with an emphasis on collaborative storytelling and the rule of cool. He loves memorable NPCs and voices, creative combat, deep worldbuilding, and a good mystery. His experience as a performer and writer shapes his approach to pacing, character, and atmosphere at the table. He also has the “cilantro tastes like soap” gene, a burden he bears with dignity.
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