Meguey Baker
Meguey Baker () is a roleplaying game designer, independent publisher and quilt historian. She has been a guest of honor at Lucca Comics & Games, I-CON, and was scheduled to be one at Arisia in 2014. Career. Game designer. Baker is the founding owner of Night Sky Games. Baker's most prominent works are "A Thousand and One Nights" (2006) and "Apocalypse World" (2010). The first, published through Night Sky Games, is a role-playing game based on the collection of Arabic stories, "The Book of One Thousand and One Nights". The latter is a post-apocalyptic game co -designed with her husband, Vincent Baker, published through Lumpley Games. "Apocalypse World" won multiple awards such as the 2010 Indie RPG Award for "Game of the Year" and the 2011 Lucca Comics & Games "Best Role-Playing Game" award. Powered by the Apocalypse, the game design framework created by the Bakers for "Apocalypse World", has made a lasting impact on role-playing game design. Baker co-wrote Fair Game, with Emily Care Boss a blog-style design and roleplaying theory journal from 2005 to 2011. Baker has also designed other indie role-playing games such as "Miss Schiffer's School for  Young Ladies of Quality" (2006), "Psi*Run" (2012) and "Valiant Girls" (2013); the latter were Night Sky Games' third and sixth publications respectively. She co-designed with her husband both "Firebrands" (2017), a romance TTRPG in a sci-fi setting focused on mobile frame pilots, and "Under Hollow Hills" (2021), an RPG about fairytales and a traveling circus. Jay Dragon, for "Polygon", wrote that ""Under Hollow Hills" is a game about how we treat each other when times are good and how we treat each other when times are bad — between its gorgeous prose, fascinating imaginative characters, countless treasures, and natural  flowing play style, "Under Hollow Hills" is the future of tabletop role-playing games, a unique and impossible treasure". Focus. Baker designs games that are intended to create a voice for the marginalised, and ones that take limited time and resources to play. She believes that everyone has a story to tell and that those stories should be heard. Textiles and quilting. She is a quilter and quilt historian, particularly interested in how the history of non-dominant voices gets transmitted in objects and oral tradition rather than the official written history. Baker highlighted that her first quilt block was  hand sewn at four years old; she wrote, "I checked with my mom. She says I was 4 because my sister was a newborn and sewing helped me keep quiet while she was napping. I'm guessing I did about one seam per nap". Baker now collects and restores antique and vintage textiles, as well as creates new works. Baker is a Collections Assistant for the Hatfield Historical Museum and is part of the curatorial team for the Historical Society of Greenfield. Personal life. She was born in 1971 in upstate New York, where she started playing roleplaying games in  1978, and she currently resides in Greenfield Massachusetts. She and her husband have three children. Baker studied American History at Hampshire College with a focus on early American textile history and material culture"." Baker was an activist providing advocacy and support for mothers via MotherWoman Inc.