"Giant in the Playground" is the web-alias of Rich Burlew, writer, game designer, and graphic designer. Learn a little about who he is and why he does what he does here. Let the sharing begin!

The Giant Speaks My latest diatribe on whatever subject crossed my mind.

Things I Like That, By Extension, You Should Like As Well I think the name says it all.

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Rich Burlew (Giant in the Playground): The founder of this site and the guy who writes almost everything here, Rich first broke into game writing with Wizards of the Coast's Fantasy Setting Search in late 2002, where he was one of only three finalists asked to prepare a full 125-page bible for their setting. Ultimately, he was defeated by his archnemesis, Keith Baker, for whom his fiery wrath still burns like the heat of a thousand suns. Rich has since gone on to contribute to Wizards' Monster Manual III and Paizo's Dragon Magazine, as well as working on top secret projects that, were you to learn of them, would almost certainly spell your doom.

In the summer of 2003, Rich founded www.GiantITP.com as a thinly-veiled means of promoting himself as a game designer. It met with middling success until he invented his now-signature webcomic, The Order of the Stick. Since then, the site has been growing by leaps and bounds, leading Rich to believe he is destined to crush the world political order with an unstoppable army of zombie webcomic readers.

While it shocks anyone who sees the Order of the Stick before they meet him, Rich actually attended design school and has a degree in Illustration and Graphic Design. He has absolutely no formal training as an author, however, which only leads to periodic panic attacks when he realizes he has committed to produce a few thousand words within a short span of time. In addition to his obvious interests in gaming and comics, Rich watches Iron Chef religiously and has a DVD collection that is on the verge of achieving sentience. Tragically, he lives in Queens, NY.

Amber E. Scott (Medesha) lives in a dark hole in the ground with her D&D books and an internet connection. Born in Canada, she now roams the land like a tumbleweed of gaming goodness, going wherever the wind may take her. She has had one article published in Dragon Magazine, with more scheduled to appear this year, and is working on several other writing projects. In what little free time she has, she moderates the Nifty Message Board and a fiction writer's guild, as well as running several online campaigns. She likes playing rogues and paladins the best, but prefers DMing over all, because of the POWER. The absolute POWER! Yes, she really is a gamer chick, no, she's not available. She just celebrated four years of wedded bliss with her husband. Amber lives entirely on praise, and will starve if you do not feed her ego.

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The seeds of Henry Dunn's (Wampa X) gaming career were planted when he began reading the old Blue Books and 1ed AD&D books that his cousin would bring with him on family trips. He didn't begin to grasp the mechanics of the system until after running a few sessions of West End Games' Star Wars many years later. Sadly, he had never had a decent savings account since.

Six years ago during high school, Oliver Kennedy (X the Mage) was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons by being conscripted into DMming a short lived campaign.  He has since been sighted both running and playing several types of of RPGs, though he appears to prefer the D&D variety. A student at NYU, Oliver was born in England, but try not to hold that against him.

James Neesom (Baron) has been roleplaying for about 10 years on and off, playing a number of different gaming systems (AD&D, D&D, 3e, Starwars (old and new), Cyberpunk, SLA industries, ICAR), and GM'ing most of these.  Yet another Brit, he also LARPs in one of the UK's largest systems (Lorien Trust) as a heavy armour skirmisher.

Richie Procopio (Bogotter) lives in North Brunswick, NJ with his wife, and his newborn son. He has played D&D since he was 10 years old and 90% of that time was as a DM. Richie is known mostly for placing in the top 11,000 in the Wizards of the Coast's Fantasy Setting Search in 2002.  Other credits include almost writing numerous articles for Dragon and Dungeon magazine and going to high school with Rich Burlew.

Wizards.com Interview This interview appeared on Wizards.com during the selection process for the Fantasy Setting Search. They sent me the giant foam check from the picture, too, which is fun at parties.