Captain's Blog

Brian Carnes is a long time fan of all things geeky, historical, or high technology. As a child his two main passions were drawing old sailing ships, and drawing cutaway rockets and airplanes.  With a passion for technology, Brian has worked as an IT professional for over 12 years, but also has attended and or volunteered conventions for gaming or sci-fi. He also has worked at his family’s booth at the Ohio Renaissance festival selling pewter.  Most of Brian’s family is creative in some way with passions ranging from fine art to jewelry to ceramics and beyond. Content previously to build geeky things and write mainly as a hobby, in 2007 Brian had a revival of his family’s art business passion with his cousin Sarah. He began casting sailing ships to go with his age of sail game that he had been working on for the last eight years.

Encouraged by the interest received at shows. Brian started Sea Dog Game Studios to make innovative creative products of interest to his fellow geeks and gamers. He began seeking out fellow creatives with a passion for making great ideas come to life. Sea Dog Studios began to make a showing at various conventions where Brian and his crew of awesome SWAT pinjas (pirate ninjas for all you non geeks) worked to make the most impressive large scale games possible.

In 2009 Sea Dog Studios took two major steps forward. First, Brian and his wife Elizabeth acquired his family’s 26 year old pewter line. This had previously been sold almost exclusively at Renaissance fairs under the name “Lizards Wizards and Ringz.” As re imagined, the line is being sold under the Lizards Wizards product name as a product line for Sea Dog’s new pewter brand Valkyrie pewter. It is sold not only at ren fairs, but also at conventions. Brian rightly envisioned that the Renaissance fantasy jewelry business was of great interest to his fellow geeks and gamers!

The second big step was the launch of a new game called TechCommander.  This is a sci fi action game that not only draws inspiration from the pages of science and technology journals and the latest thinking about high tech warfare, but from another geeky passion, the video game.  Originally planned for a quiet couple years of testing, the deathmatch became a very popular convention game wherever it was played. Origins 2010 marked the official launch of TechCommander.

The core of SDGS is creative people who believe that we can still make things that are unique, and not part of the big corporate franchised machine.  It is a labor of love to make that happen.  Our products are created by many of the people you can meet running the games at the shows (just ask them!). We make them mostly by hand and hope to provide original products and new ideas to fellow geeks and Renaissance fans!

Other Sea Dog Game Studios Personalities, Collaborators, and Retail partners

These are folks that you might meet at conventions or shows that are involved with making Sea Dog Game Studios  fun and creative.  Many of these folks are volunteers and all of them are most helpful in bringing great experiences to people at conventions and fairs.

Dave “Captain Cannon, Redbeard, The Duck, Don’t call me bubbles” Oberting

Dave is a geek with a passion for geek toys and pirates! He grew up playing D and D, building spaceships from legos, and taking robotics classes in high school. Today Dave is a Senior GM and Play tester, and coordinates GMs at major conventions.  In addition he runs SDGS’s molding and casting shop which produces resin ships, TechCommander units, and pewter renaissance jewelery.

Elizabeth “Valkyrie” Carnes

Also known to Brian as “the wife,” Elizabeth is a life long trekker, sci fi geek and bookworm. She enjoys going to Renaissance fairs and various conventions. She manages SDGS’s Ohio Renaissance shop, and handles all those crazy bookkeeping things her crazy husband is too busy to keep up with.

Ed “The Pirate” Wedig

Ed is our Graphics Designer, Volunteer Coordinator, Webmaster, and all around awesome gamer geek extraordinaire.  After seeing Ed’s passion for other games, we asked him to give Sailpower a try and we have enjoyed his hard work and professionalism ever since! Check out Ed’s  awesome Portfolio, or his irregular blog.

John Siemon

John is currently the lead TechCommander GM  for Origins, and a passionate TechCommander fan and student pilot at Ohio State. When not fragging noobs or scoring skulls he can be found driving buses about campus, or playing airsoft LARP games.

Josh “Major Disaster” Potter

Josh is from Moorehead Kentucky, where gaming is a somewhat new pursuit.  Josh works as a electrical contractor in the area, and in his spare time builds awesome gaming terrain. You might recognize his work at various SDGS events including the space cargo ship, the drop-ship, and many of the buildings. Josh also enjoys competitive air-soft and might be found at local air-soft haunts in the Ohio-Kentucky area.

Becky Allar

Becky is a master modeler, and a long time gamer also helped as proof editor on both the TechCommander and Cogs of Valor projects. She often engages in a bit oh treasure hunting with her customized Sailpower ships or quietly builds up a chip lead in TechCommander!

Ann Christy

Anne is faculty member at Ohio State, and a big fan of horses and old barns In addition to assisting at conventions, Ann helpded as a proof editor on the TechCommander and Sailpower projects.

Kent Boelling

Kent is the owner/operator of The Soldiery, a full service game store in Columbus Ohio.  Kent is a big supporter of Ohio based manufacturing and carries the full line of SDGS products. He also hosts regular games of Sailpower and TechCommander, and is the home venue of SDGS’s core design group. He has also agreed to help with distribution of the SDGS line of products! If you would like to carry TechCommander, Sailpower, or related kits at your retail game store, feel free to contact Kent 614-267-1957 or Fax: 614-267-0558  His email is mail@thesoldiery.com  The best hours to contact Kent are Tues – Thur 3 pm to 9 pm, Friday 3 pm to 1 am, Saturday 1 pm to 11 pm,Sunday 1 pm to 7 pm, CLOSED MONDAYS. All times are EST US. http://www.thesoldiery.com/

Our awesome GMs Past and Present (in no particular order)

Josh Epstein

Will Bennedetti

Paul Neher

Timothy Pertuset

Mike Christensen (also the former SDGS webmaster, and creator of the original Sailpower shipsheet application)

Sarah Christensen (A jeweler by trade, Sarah sculpted many of the small parts used in Sailpower kits from wax masters)

Chris “Admiral Tang” Neill (TechCommander Beta Senior playtester)

Scott “Pinja” Maddy (TechCommander Beta Senior playtester)

Brian Mccabe (TechCommander Beta Senior playtester)

Christina Titus

Melanie Gerhard

Scott Smith

Ken Head

Cassandra Angel

Jeff Greenwood

Evan Musheno

Christie Seibold

Andrew Beardsley

Carl Racke