Samm Spearman (she/they) is a tabletop RPG performer and screenwriter who’s a sucker for telling stories of romance, grief, found family and evolving into one’s true self through friendship and community. Their passion is creating and telling diverse stories in various forms of media with all types of creators but especially BIMPOC storytellers, writers and performers. Dan Dillon is a game designer for the D&D Studio. He discovered D&D at 8 years old when a family friend cleared out a...

Zac Clay is a content creator, educator, and professional dungeon master from the San Francisco Bay Area. For years, he taught drumline ensembles throughout the Bay Area, with a focus on contemporary percussion and mallet keyboard instruments. Now, Zac produces gaming and tabletop content on media platforms like Twitch and YouTube, and also makes a living running games of D&D for private clients and corporations. Every week, he works with youth at his local middle school and high school...

Tom and Bodhi Kambouris are a Father & Son team bringing you original D&D content, including an upcoming D&D Kickstarter, called "Sky Zephyrs - An Airship (and Spaceship) Combat Overlay for 5e settings", a podcast with guests who love D&D (including awesome Dungeon Masters and content creators), a D&D5e actual play livestream called "The Sky Realm". Tom and Bodhi also produce Family-made XL dice and other D&D supplements like stat-blocked NPCs, Magical Items and...

A 20-year industry veteran, Rob Daviau has worked on over 80 published games. For 14 years, Rob was at Hasbro Games, where he worked on Risk 2210 AD, Axis & Allies Pacific, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Star Wars Epic Duels, Heroscape, Clue DVD, Clue Harry Potter, Risk Star Wars, Risk Lord of the Rings, and many more. He was editor of Trivial Pursuit for 8 years and ran the editorial department for 1. F. Wesley Schneider joined the Dungeons & Dragons team in 2019 after nearly two...

Katie Downey, otherwise known as Goblinkatie, is a D&D connoisseur with an unending appetite for dice. Owing to her extensive hoard, she’s the acknowledged Patron of The Pact of The Polyhedral. You may recognize her as Saesha Valispard (Aasimar Oath of Vengeance paladin/Inquisitive Rogue) on the weekly D4 stream & podcast. She also currently appears as Rollo (School of Evocation Urd Kobold wizard) on The Dawnbringers stream. Katie is deeply passionate about bringing attention to...

Austin Taylor is an award winning professional game designer, writer, performer, and friend! Their most recent work as a designer was co-designing Deimos Academy, working on the award winning book Arcon, and yet to be announced work with MCDM along with various work found in NPC guidebooks. His most recent performing work however has been spilt between three 5th edition actual play series, Transplanar, Mind and the Marty, and of course Strix U; not to mention being featured on two WoTC...

From Gracious Hostess to Shapeshifting Cosplayer and beyond, there isn’t anything quite like the cozy confidence and dedication Jade Valkyrie (She/They) brings to the table. This US-based creator focuses primarily on gaming, cosplaying, TTRPGs, and fashion. You may know her as a player from channels Mercs of Mischief, BlackwaterDND, and Feywild And Out. Jade also produced and performed in the FanologyPV The Boys Pride one-shot series titled, "Be Gay, Fight Crime."

Ron Ogden is the Co-DM & Surena Marie is a cast member on the new season of The Dungeon Run; the epic interactive D&D show available on Twitch and YouTube! Surena Marie is a performer and illustrator who can also be seen on the new season of Dimension20, "A Court of Fey & Flowers.” Ron Ogden is a performer, producer & dungeon master who's been with The Dungeon Run since the beginning and is also an avid miniature printer and painter.

Jahara Jayde is a lifelong entertainer and US-based creator with a deep love for video games, anime, fantasy, cosplay, and her family. She enjoys streaming games that tell in-depth stories, and sharing her candid experience with her viewers through both the sad and happy tears. Known as one of the most prolific cosplayers in the anime and gaming community, Jahara has cosplayed all nine Sailor Scouts, as well as nine versions of Princess Zelda! Jahara strives to bring more representation for...

Kelly “Socks” Galten (she/her/they) is the Runemaker at Goblin Bros. Games and Gear in Petaluma, CA. She is a player and Dungeon Master, and she works hard to bring Dungeons and Dragons to a new generation. Goblin Bros. hosts Beginner’s D&D workshops for kids in their back garden game space. Socks runs a special adventure for young parties ages 12-16, where they learn the basics of the greatest role playing game. Socks and the Goblins have made every effort to embody the Friendly Local...

Jamie Umanzor is a queer person of color, a child of immigrants, and has a passion for indigenous spirituality, anti-racism, LGBTQ+ advocacy, gaming, and Dungeons & Dragons. Jamie is the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) for Howard Brown Health, Board Chair for Human Values Collective, and the founder of C3 Equity, a DEI consulting firm.

Abadonne Kilbride is a Black Indigenous non-binary TTRPG player, DM, writer, makeup artist, and voice actor who lives for collaborative storytelling that highlights what is unique and unusual about the human experience. They’re also the Owner, Producer, Creative Director, Editor, & Head of Social Media/Community Management for Exquisite Corpse Presents, a Home for Unusual TTRPGS. Abadonne specializes in storytelling, worldbuilding, homebrew content, social media, and community management....

CJ McCullough (they/them) is a Tabletop Game Designer, Storyteller, and Performer. They love to tell stories of identity, queerness, and the fantastical mundane. They're passionate about world building, and safety within games. Above all else, they love to explore and use TTRPGs as a way of telling diverse and robust stories. Teos Abadía is a Colombian-American freelance author and developer working with Wizards of the Coast, Penny Arcade, MCDM, Hasbro, and several organized play programs....

Molly Knox Ostertag is a writer and cartoonist known for the middle-grade graphic novel trilogy The Witch Boy, the YA romance The Girl From the Sea, and her work writing for animation. Xanthe Bouma is an illustrator, comics artist and colorist from southern California. Their recent works include The Dragon Prince: Through The Moon, the 5 Worlds series, and Dungeon Club: Roll Call. Justice Arman is an Iranian American Senior Game Designer on the Dungeons & Dragons RPG team.

Chris Perkins is the Senior Game Designer for Wizards of the Coast. Chris Funk is best known as the multi-instrumentalist in the indie-rock band the Decemberists and is a Grammy-nominated artist who has also found much success as a music producer, composer and studio musician. Funk is also a founding member and co-writer in the acclaimed neo-gothic string band Black Prairie and has produced records for Red Fang, Langhorne Slim and Y La Bamba.

Amanda Hamon is a Senior Designer working on Dungeons & Dragons at Wizards of the Coast. She is also an award-winning tabletop game designer, developer, writer, and editor, her work has appeared in dozens of releases from numerous publishers, including Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, and Kobold Press. Cameron and Tara Rout are a Canadian brother-sister duo who together founded D&D in a Castle in 2017, to live out their nerdy fantasy of gathering fellow make-believists in an epic retreat...

Chris Lindsay is a Product Marketing Specialist for Dungeons & Dragons at Wizards of the Coast where he works with the larger team to produce and market the tabletop RPG, and has been integral to the success of the fifth edition of the game. He is the architect for the Dungeon Masters Guild, and the head Dungeon Master for the D&D Adventurers League. Joining Shelly for How To DM are Thorin and Tony who are 2/3’s of Three Wise DM’s Podcast (along with the Rock n Roll DM Dave). They...

R.A. Salvatore is one of the fantasy genre’s most successful authors who’s books regularly appear on The New York Times best-seller lists and have sold more than 30,000,000 copies. Salvatore’s most recent original hardcover, The Two Swords, Book III of The Hunter’s Blade Trilogy (October 2004) debuted at # 1 on The Wall Street Journal best-seller list and at # 4 on The New York Times best-seller list. Salvatore's first published novel, The Crystal Shard from TSR in 1988, became the first...

Ursula Vernon, aka T. Kingfisher is the author and illustrator of far more projects than is probably healthy. She has written over fifteen books for children, at least a dozen novels for adults, an epic webcomic called “Digger” and various short stories and other odds and ends. Kevin Sonney is a technology professional, media producer, and podcaster. A Linux Sysadmin and Open Source advocate, Kevin has over 30 years in the IT industry, with over 20 years in Open Source. Kevin hosts the weekly...

Chris Porter is the writer/director/composer of SOLAR, a thrilling sci-fi narrative podcast starring Stephanie Beatriz, Alan Cumming, Helen Hunt and Jonathan Bangs. Chris is also a fan of D&D in general, with a regular and mostly bi-weekly campaign with friends! He's DM'd in the past (which lasted a year and a half) with a pretty complicated home-brew game of sorts. He has also named his new car after his current D&D character. He wrote some music for Monsters & Fables which aired...

Epic Levels is a D&D/TTRPG hip-hop music outfit that's slowly growing into producing podcasts, game accessories, apparel, and RPG books all under the same banner. The Mad Dungeon podcast features the Epic Levels musicians Steve Albertson AKA DRAGON WARRIOR (he/him), Andrew Bellury AKA TIGER WIZARD (he/him), Rob Bellury AKA WARLOCK ROC (they/them), and a guest from the RPG community. Together they create a playable adventure that are released in a one page format with the episodes every...

Glenn Goddard is a retired Brigadier General in the US Army. Glenn started playing D&D back in 1976 when there were only five rule books for the game. He was a Forever DM through high school and college. After college he enlisted in the U.S. Army as a Private but worked his way up to Brigadier General over a 35-year career. Twice deployed to Iraq, he even played D&D in a war zone as a break from 90-hour work weeks. Glenn received numerous awards including the Bronze Star, Defense...

Greg and Shelly welcome you to the show and handle the introductions. Later, D&D Game Designer Makenzie DeArmas returns for a brand new edition of Meet Your Monsters. This week, Makenzie gives us a deep dive on the Mage Hunter. Our special interview this week is with long time friend of the show and host of Star Wars: The High Republic, Krystina Arielle!

Greg and Shelly handle our introductions and discuss Stranger Things 4, Volume 1. Afterwards, the two are joined by Theo Teris and Chase O’Neill to discuss their new musical, Here There Be Dragons!

Greg and Shelly welcome you to the show. Later, Shelly welcomes freelance copy editor and game designer Laura Hirsbrunner for a new edition of How To DM. This week, Laura talks with Shelly about making your NPC’s more three dimensional. Our special interview this week is with the two project leads for Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, Ajit George and Wes Schneider!