Who am I?

As a way of easing into this Gaming Blog world I am suddenly fascinated with, I thought I would introduce myself.  What follows is an excerpt from the introduction to my recent project.  I’ll talk about what that is later, once it’s a little further along, and I’m sure I’m not just duplicating others’ efforts.  Suffice it to say, it’s an OSR “book” of sorts.  Anyways, on to me…

I began my life-long journey in Role-Playing Games with Moldvay’s 1980 version of the Basic Rulebook.  I was 11 years old and in the sixth grade.  I had just moved back to my hometown in Northern California to stay with my grandparents while my mom went into the Air Force.  One day a new friend of mine, Richard Schmidt, asked me “Do you play D&D?”  To which I responded “What’s that?”

Since then I have played every edition of D&D, and have found that 3.5e seems to be my favorite.  In addition, I have played a whole laundry list of other RPG’s in just about every genre.  These days I play in a regular game of D&D with other 40-somethings who refused to outgrow our beloved hobby.  We bring our kids and let them play together while we sit at the table and have grand adventures with minis and a battle mat.  Each session has food provided by one of the families.  We are the new breed of Domesticated Geek.

Yet, despite the 30 years of gaming experience I have, that old Moldvay red book still holds a certain amount of charm for me.  I can crack that ancient tome open (though the copy I have isn’t my original one), and I am instantly transported back to the 6^th grade, when the whole idea of fantasy role-playing was new and wondrous.  I sometimes long to just roll up a fighter, and explore the Caves of Chaos™.

So, where does that bring me today?  Well, from a gaming standpoint, I do a lot of thinking and tinkering, but not a lot of actual playing.  I like to write new rules, rules variations, and even gaming systems.  But I usually have to rely on others to play test and critique them.  So far, this hasn’t worked out too well.  But, I still enjoy the process of writing stuff for games.

Among my current projects are Life of Rage, an RPG where the characters are all orcs, a soon-to-be revealed addition to the Basic rules, using Moldvay’s book (and Cook’s Expert Rules) as the basis, and then a few odds and ends of gaming.  I always seem to have some irons in the gaming fire, despite being busy with school (getting my Masters in History), writing fiction of various lengths and genres, working a full-time job,  and having a full family life.

Yep, life does indeed move pretty fast, Ferris.