U-Con 2023 Guests of Honor

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Hello U-Con community. With much ado, we bring you our U-Con 2023 Guests of honor:

  • Tanya DePass (Fifth Season RPG)
  • Matt Forbeck (Marvel Multiverse RPG)
  • Robert Schwalb (Shadow of the Weird Wizard)
  • Plus other special guests

Stay Tuned for more information about our individual Guests of Honor, you will not want to miss their events!

Introducing U-Con Talk: An Evening with Lenny

The U-Con Team is excited to announce a new annual talk show event hosted by none other than Leonard Balsera. Lenny is a long time guest of the con with an amazing career, giving him all sorts of insight into the mind of game designers as well as the culture of the industry. 

We also timed so you can grab some food and dine while you participate: Friday 5-7pm in the Auditorium (seats 100). Dinner and a show!

We hope you will find this to be a great way to start your convention weekend. So join us, have some dinner, learn more about our guests and their plans, and enjoy a little entertainment before you head off to your Friday night game.

We look forward to seeing you in the audience!

Tanya DePass

Tanya DePass is the founder and Director of I Need Diverse Games, a not-for-profit organization based in Chicago, which is dedicated to better diversification of all aspects of gaming. I Need Diverse Games serves the community by supporting marginalized developers, attendance at the Game Developer Conference by participating in the GDC Scholarship program, helps assist attendance at other industry events, and is seeking partnership with organizations and initiatives. Tanya is a lifelong Chicagoan who loves everything about gaming, #INeedDiverseGames spawn point, and wants to make the industry better and more inclusive for everyone. She’s part of the Rivals of Waterdeep actual play stream on twitch.tv/rivalsofwaterdeep, a partnered Twitch variety broadcaster; and often speaks on issues of diversity, feminism, race, intersectionality & other topics online, at conventions and as a public speaker.

She’s also contributed to publications at Green Ronin, Paizo and Monte Cook Games and is the co-developer for the Fifth Season RPG based on N.K. Jemisin’s three time Hugo award winning Broken Earth trilogy. She’s the creator and Creative Director of Into the Mother Lands, a Twitch supported RPG and Actual Play stream, airing weekly on her channel, twitch.tv/cypheroftyr. Additionally, she is a Senior Annenberg labs Civic Media Fellow at USC. She’s also the creator and Creative Director of Into the Mother Lands, a new sci fi afro-futurist RPG developed with a team of all POC and Black creators; live streamed on her twitch channel, /cypheroftyr. 

She’s named as one of The Game Awards Future Class 2020, a diverse group of builders, thinkers and dreamers whose voices elevate and diversify our artform. It recognizes individuals around the world who represent the bright, bold and inclusive future for video games. She was also named as one of Gamers of the Year 2020 by Kotaku along with three of her contemporaries. She was also invited to the Xbox MVP program in February 2021.

Her work to make the industry more inclusive has been highlighted in Game Changer, Directed by Tina Charles, WNBA star & olympian as well as filmmaker. The short documentary premiered at Tribeca 2021, as part of the Queen Collective; an initiative started by Queen Latifah, supported by Proctor & Gamble in an effort to get more Black women into film making. Game Changer was also featured as part of BETHer’s 2021 Juneteenth Programming on 19 June 2021.

Tanya is the programming & diversity coordinator for OrcaCon and GaymerX. She also serves on the Board of Directors for OrcaCon and was named the Chair for Take This in January 2023. She often speaks on issues of diversity, feminism, race, intersectionality & other topics at conventions. Her writing about games and games critique appears in Uncanny Magazine, Polygon, Wiscon Chronicles, Vice Gaming, Paste Games, Mic, and other publications. She’s the editor of Game Devs and Others: Tales from the Margins (2018, CRC Press) and contributed to The Advanced Game Narrative Toolbox. (2019, CRC Press)

Matt Forbeck

Matt Forbeck is an award-winning and New York Times-bestselling author and game designer with over thirty-five novels and countless games published to date. His projects have won a Peabody Award, a Scribe Award, and numerous ENnies and Origins Awards. He is also the president of the Diana Jones Award Foundation, which celebrates excellence in gaming. 

His latest work includes Hard West 2, Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus, the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game, and the Shotguns & Sorcery 5E Sourcebook based on his novels. He is the father of five, including a set of quadruplets. He lives in Beloit, Wisconsin, with his wife and a rotating cast of college-age children. For more about him and his work, visit Forbeck.com. 

Robert Schwalb

Game designer and developer, Robert J. Schwalb hit the ground running in the roleplaying games industry nearly 20 years ago and shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. With over 200 game books, magazine articles, digital articles, and a novel to his name, his design can be found in three editions of Dungeons & Dragons, Dark Heresy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, A Song of Ice and Fire RPG, Star Wars Saga Edition RPG, Witch Hunter: The Invisible World, Numenera, The Strange, and in numerous other RPG products. 

Robert spent much of his early career as a freelance writer and game designer, helping to produce Fantasy Flight’s Grimm, Green Ronin Publishing’s Book of Fiends and The Black Company Campaign Setting, along with several other popular game books. Robert soon after became a designer and developer at Green Ronin Publishing, where he worked d20 products, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and designed A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying. 

In addition to his work at Green Ronin, Robert also produced game design and story work for Paradigm Concepts, for Witch Hunter: The Invisible World, and later began work for Wizards of the Coast, contributing to several 3rd Edition D&D sourcebooks such as Tome of Magic, Fiendish Codex 2, and Player’s Handbook 2, as well as sourcebooks for Star Wars Saga Edition.

Robert worked as contractor for Wizards of the Coast starting in 2008 and has spent his time there working on 4th Edition D&D products such as the Dark Sun Campaign Setting, D&D Gamma World: Famine in Far-Go, and the Book of Vile Darkness. During his last three years with Wizards, Robert was a member of the 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons design team and his work can be found in the Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual, and the Dungeon Master’s Guide, as well as in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, and the Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica.
In 2014, Robert launched his own imprint, Schwalb Entertainment, to produce roleplaying games, card games, and more. After a successful Kickstarter, he released Shadow of the Demon Lord, a tabletop RPG, in 2015. Since, with the help of three successful Kickstarter campaigns he’s supported his flagship game with nearly 200 sourcebooks, short supplements, adventures, and more. In addition, Schwalb has also released several 5th edition compatible game material, under the Max Press banner. Since, he’s released PunkApocalyptic: The RPG and is hard at work bringing his newest fantasy game, Shadow of the Weird Wizard, into your hands. You can find out more of his goings on at schwalbentertainment.com.

Leonard Balsera

Leonard Balsera has worked almost every side of the hobby games industry, in a 15-year career that spans over 40 published titles. Starting as an assistant developer on Evil Hat Productions’ breakout 2006 pulp RPG, Spirit of the Century, he quickly amassed many writing and design credits working across the breadth of the industry for such companies as Pelgrane Press, Onyx Path Publishing, Margaret Weis Productions, and others. He won two Origins Awards in 2010 for his work on the acclaimed Dresden Files Roleplaying Game and was the lead designer on Evil Hat’s setting-agnostic Fate Core ruleset, which remains one of the most popular toolkit RPG systems in use today.

But in addition to his writing and design work, Leonard also has years of experience leading project teams and overseeing the creation, production, and publication of game products. Starting at Steve Jackson Games as an assistant developer for the Munchkin card game in 2012, he has since held positions as a marketing director, licensing manager, project coordinator and director, line developer, and even became the chief operating officer of a small game publisher. In those roles, he worked tirelessly to create diverse opportunities for creators to thrive and do their best work.

His work has even taken him beyond the boundaries of print, developing content for Geek and Sundry’s online series, Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana, as well as writing the script and designing the narrative for Armature Studios’ independent video game, Where the Heart Leads.

In short, Leonard’s career gives him a unique and holistic perspective on the work of publishing games at any scale, from the smallest of indie press to multimillion-dollar big box retail projects. He lives in Austin, TX with a cat and a rotating sample of the finest craft beers.