what was your name again?
your face looks familiar
have we met?
Zach Reyburn is an experiential entrepreneur in the tabletop game industry from Las Vegas, Nevada. His initiatives include:
•Join In Games, a publisher that creates its games in collaboration with its audience.
•TableTopolis, a creative gaming community that helps ideas for games become reality.
•Tabletop Bakeshop, an immersive experience baking up gaming goodies.
Zach is also the original game designer of So Many Problems and other upcoming titles from Join In Games.
Previously, Zach served as a Judge and Event Manager for some of the largest Magic the Gathering tournaments, a retail game store manager, and the Global Organized Play Manager at Asmodee and Fantasy Flight Games.
As a consultant, Zach shares his experiential marketing expertise with companies seeking to innovate in the areas of customer engagement and gamification. He has also advised on multiple campaigns that promote healthy competition and build camaraderie through shared experience, both for external customers and internal teams.
At speaking engagements, Zach communicates the critical need for empathy as a tool for creating better products, better marketing, and a better world. He teaches techniques to assume the best of others, both for our own benefit and to invite them to rise to that ideal. Zach crafts a unique experience for every audience, demonstrating how empathy improves customer service outcomes and fosters professional relationships.
For professional inquiries, please contact pro@nonbasicman.com.
Put simply, I was born lucky, and have been ever since.
Lucky to have been born in a country which sits somewhat atop the current hierarchy of power and commerce. Lucky I was born on the right schedule to absorb upcoming technological advances as they rapidly developed. Lucky that my parents were genuinely good, kind, and loving. Lucky that my younger brother and sister are two of the best people I know, and have been their whole lives.
I noticed that the luck was a trend when I somehow found it in everything I did. I was lucky in school, lucky finding friends who shared my passions, lucky in hobbies, and lucky at work. Around the time that I started getting lucky in love, I realized why I kept having such good luck as I moved through the world: I was lucky that the society around me was built by people like me to cater to people with my skin color, my gender, and my social class. I now know that type of luck is called privilege, and it contributed greatly to much of the other luck I had.
Coming to that realization required me to learn to experience authentic empathy for the first time, informed by witnessing the struggles of people I cared about who did not enjoy the same level of privilege I did. This probably saved my life. I now endeavor to enrich and save as many lives as I can using the talents and passions I developed along the way. My secret mission is to reach people who are still in the same shoes I used to be in, who haven’t needed to learn empathy.
A lot of those passions and talents were around gaming. Some video games, but mainly tabletop gaming: card games, board games, and role-playing games. Not just playing them, but also developing them, talking about them, teaching them, running events, selling product, organizing global competitions, coordinating conventions, and managing a creative team.
The communities of passionate people around games they love are decidedly the best aspect of tabletop gaming. Nearly every friendship I have formed in my adult life has been with a fellow gamer.
I fully intend to spend as much time as possible, both professionally and personally, in these spaces with these amazing people for the rest of my life. To make sure we all have good and plentiful company, I work to make these spaces as welcoming and inclusive as possible to diverse audiences. I hope to see you here soon.