Tyson Mertlich – Product Manager
Projects: Paths: Temple of Ukro’kaah, Rift Shifters expanded universe
Tyson is an avid board gamer and has been playing board games his entire life. He is a loving husband and father who has a passion for the
board game industry and board game design and has been working on his own designs since 2015. Tyson is one of the founders of the GameSmiths play testing service and has been creating and testing prototype board games professionally since 2017. Paths: Temple of Ukro’Kaah will be Tyson’s first published game design, but he hopes it will not be his last!
Adam Bassett – Game Designer
Projects: Paths: Into the Fray (FRAY)
Approximately two years ago, Adam Bassett developed a small card game for fun, intended to be played among friends. Now, it has evolved into something new. We’re calling it Paths: Into the Fray (FRAY).
Adam has been playing card games for years. From classic games like blackjack and poker to more fantastical ones like Magic: the Gathering and Loveletter. This, plus his graphic design background, lead to the first iteration of Paths: Legends.
Will Esgro – Game Director
Projects: All
Will Esgro has been a gaming enthusiast for his entire life. His involvement in the modern board game community began with weekend game nights with his co-workers to blow off some steam, and built up into a live stream where he, friends, and family share their gaming experiences with the world. Through conversations with independent designers in the industry, Will caught the game design bug.
Recently, Will began working on his own game designs which led him into the Lore Den of Smunchy (Sean Fallon). Late night musings and cogitations surrounding the worlds Sean is actively creating drew each of them closer to developing integrated, exciting concepts. Upon this realization, Will agreed to partner with Sean in design a living system for The Smunchy Games’ Rift Shifters universe.
Emily Blain – Editor
Projects: Paths: A War Drum of Death, Paths Novella book Series, Rift Shifters Novella book Series, all Paths and Rift Shifters games.
Emily Blain is a detail-oriented perfectionist who gets way more annoyed than she should about errors in supposedly professional publications. She graduated from Luther College in 2012 with a liberal arts education, a music major, and an education minor. Since then, she has worked as an administrative assistant and Communications Director in addition to teaching private music lessons. Since starting a proofreading business in the spring of 2018, Emily has worked on board games, lore, and a novella. In her free time, Emily enjoys playing both board and video games with her husband and friends, where she annoys everyone by pointing out every typo and error she finds. She’s also looking forward to the day when she can play more games than just “Go Away Monster” with her toddler.
You can find more of Emily’s work at https://www.revisedbyemily.com/
Jacob Waterman – Lead Game Designer
Projects: Paths: World of Adia tabletop RPG
Jacob Waterman is a professional nerd from Lansing, Michigan. Since 2010 he has been developing his skills as a world builder and storyteller through the medium of tabletop roleplaying games. He is a professional Dungeon Master for the Twitch channel Nerdolopedia, terrorizing players live with improvisational storytelling through the use of spoken words, dice, and extensive worldbuilding. Jacob takes his experiences from the real world as a martial artist and Eagle Scout combined with a large list of played games to help formulate his design choices. A Bachelors in Software Engineering helps with working on team projects and understanding the testing process. It also has trained him in working with computers and mathematics. His biggest hobby is finding new hobbies and not having enough time for any of them.
Bailey Phillips – Lead Writer
Projects: Paths: World of Adia tabletop RPG
Bailey Phillips does their best to not be revealed as a bunch of rats in a trench coat. As a long-time player of rpgs and builder of worlds they have found a home at Smunchy games as a lore master and spell writer. They are also a professional idiot who plays video games and table top rpgs badly for other people’s entertainment on the Twitch channel Nerdolopedia.
Nick Butler – Lead Game Designer
Projects: Tide Breaker RPG system
Nick has been taking apart games and re-imagining them since childhood. Diving headfirst into the many challenges gaming presented gave Nick a love for the hobby and a passion for theory crafting. Eventually, this lead to Nick discovering the flourishing indie game design community, and from there he took up the ultimate challenge of making his own games! After a few attempts at homebrewing add ons, helping people online with there own games, and a lot of research on people who did this before, Nick met Smunchy while working on his passion project. The two became fast friends and partnered up to create Nick’s first professional game: Tide Breaker!
Nick hopes to share his love of gaming and design with his nieces and nephews, and through their hobby teach them that everyone has got a hero in them.
Sean Fallon – CEO & Founder
Projects: All
As a child, Sean Fallon was always the dreamer coming up with new stories to tell and games to play. He would spend hours mapping out his worlds, and creating a place where he felt him, his friends, and his family would enjoy being part of. In Sean’s adult life, he decided to take those dreams and push to turn them into a reality.