[from Conclave32 bio as Fan Guest of Honor]
Richard Tucholka [Tah-HULL-kah](born February 9, 1954[1]) is a writer, game designer and publisher, best known for his work in the creation of Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic, an RPG that snagged Best Fantasy RPG of 1991 by the RPGA Network at Gen Con. He is slightly lesser known as Uncle Richard, that whimsical, huggable fellow down in the Dealer Room[citation needed]. A love child of the Fifty Foot Woman and Prince Vultan the Hawk Man, Richard has been genetically engineered to design entertaining games[citation needed]. While this talent did much to sustain his life on this simple and yet cozy three-dimensional world, a side-career as a Wide-area network bomb squad operative was a necessary addition to accumulate enough history as a human to throw off the government[citation needed].
For the social end of this ruse, designed to protect him til the age of maturity or fifty-three Earth years, the cosmos selected Richard as the bringer of wretched movies to Science Fiction Conventions, for which the populace accepted him readily - even referring to him now and again as some sort of ‘uncle’. Each of these personas has rendered a complete and functional profile of ‘the most interesting collection of RNA within a single specimen’ on the planet since L.Ron Hubbard[citation needed badly].
A side benefit which has developed from Richard Tucholka’s neverending quest to meet new and interesting people is that we ourselves have been gifted with a brilliant man in return, who has literally torn the IV’s from his arm[sedative needed] to attend a convention, driven hundreds of miles in all directions in a Chrysler Fifth Avenue with no back seat and very little remaining floor[oh, that one’s true believe me] and even leaves his cats pacing in the dark at all hours in the morning every Memorial Day Weekend while he sniffs through stamps in Columbus and his security clone sells his books and games at Marcon[you just have to be there].
A conversation with Richard Tucholka pulls you into a continuum where there is no passage of time. Draw him aside. Say one of four magic words: STARDUST, FRINGEWORTHY, POSSUM or MODELAIRPLANECEMENT, and prepare to be transported[product safety disclaimer needed].
As his moment of transcendence draws near, we urge you to take every opportunity to meet this man and share in the energy that drives him. We are proud to bring this fellow volunteer, maven of SF/F, creator of worlds and great compadre as an honored Guest at last. Conclave might happen once a year but Rich is a once-in-a-lifetime experience every time you see him, and besides, the better he feels about himself, the more he feeds us.
Richard’s Cats, translation from standard FtMrowr by Michael ‘Freon’ Andaluz
[from wikipedia.org]
Tucholka has been called “one of the unsung heroes of Role Playing” “Voted One of the Good Guys by Knights of the Dinner Table and called “Michigan’s Gaming Guru”. He is known best for his work in the creation of the role-playing game Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic, which was voted Best Fantasy RPG of 1991 by the RPGA Network at Gencon. Others works include The Morrow Project, Fringeworthy, FTL:2448, and the upcoming Hardwired Hinterland. Modules include Invasion U.S., Rogue 417, Hellsnight, Haunts, Bureau 13: Lost Files 1 & 2, COP 2448 and the DM’s Book Of Nasty Tricks & Misfit Magic. There are a bunch of young adult Tri Tac Micro Games like Monster Squash, Geriatric Wars, Pterroductyl, The Viral Vegetable Wars, Drive By, War on High, Escape From Westerville State, Baby Boomer, Duck Trooper, and Beach Bunny Bimbos with Blasters. and HOLES, a different kind of SF Miniatures Combat Game.
Rich has been a comic book publisher, book reviewer, staff writer for STARDATE and STARDRIVE Magazine, and always a Science Fiction Fan. Richard is 53, single, and lives in Pontiac, Michigan where he manages Tri Tac Games and is a Senior Technician on the Network Help Team for 300 Restaurants. Hobbies include stamp collecting, selling on eBay, house restoration, publishing, writing, reading (science fiction, anthropology, psychology, sociology, paleontology, and military history), and trying to index his 18,000+ books and B Budget Movies. He packed rooms when he did “Uncle Richard’s Trash Video Roundup” across the Midwest for a number of years at many Science Fiction Conventions. Rich also mentions he is owned by several cats.
“Undetermined” is the influence he’s personally effected to popular culture science fiction. Notably, plot elements from the Stargate franchise seem suspiciously similar to themes expressed earlier in the decade in Fringeworthy[1] and the X-Files television series shares some characteristics of Bureau 13.