Lisa Smedman
Author Guest of Honor
Lisa Smedman is an accomplished author and game designer, with 24 books published to date, covering a wide range of topics: science fiction and fantasy novels, a murder mystery, alternative-history fiction, and non-fiction histories of Vancouver, the city she lives in. She has written novels set in the AD&D Forgotten Realms universe and the Shadowrun universe, as well as a number of original novels. Her latest novel, Windship: The Crazy Plague, is a hard science-fiction novel set on a colony world. Her most recent book is Weird Jam, a collection of short stories.
Lisa has designed adventures for the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons game (primarily for the Ravenloft and Dark Sun worlds), as well as for the Indiana Jones and Star Wars roleplaying games. She was one of the founders of Adventures Unlimited, a magazine for roleplaying game enthusiasts.
A newspaper journalist and editor for more than 20 years, she currently teaches game design at LaSalle College Vancouver.
Lisa facilitates a bi-weekly writers’ workshop and has been active in organizing science-fiction conventions. She has also written three one-act plays which were produced by an amateur Vancouver theater group.
Her real-time bidding card game, Merchants of the Sands, is due for publication soon by Rather Dashing Games. She has also designed several tabletop-miniatures combat games, including Trench Raid, a solo wargame to be published this summer by Compass Games.
Lisa takes part annually in the Global Game Jam, and hosts smaller game jams; one of these produced Co-opoly, a “conversion kit” (board game equivalent of a mod) that takes the Monopoly game back to its anti-capitalist roots. The game, which was nominated for Indiecade 2019, can be found at Monkey Mind Games.
Lisa loves exploring the intersection between narrative and interactivity, either in digital format (using the Twine or RPG Maker game engines) or in the form of board/card games. She does so as a member of The Papercut Arcade.
A complete list of Lisa’s books and games can be found on her website.
https://lisasmedman.wixsite.com/author
https://www.monkeymindgames.com/
