So this bio is way too long, so in lieu of hitting you with it all at once, I’m going to show you some pictures first…
My dog, Coco, getting comfortable
Coco, eating sheepsheep
A real Peep Show (I stole this pic off the internets)
My Gaming bookshelves about 3 months ago (They have even MORE stuff on them now)
Okay, now on to the real bio parts…
Hi there, and welcome to our site. I wanted to give our listeners/readers a short blurb about my gaming background and it turned out way longer than I thought it would – I hope it’s not too boring of a story to tell.
I have been gaming since I was about 8 years old, when my brother received the Dungeons & Dragons Expert Set (first edition, 1981) for Christmas. We quickly realized that we needed the Basic Set and convinced our parents to take us on a mission to find one and buy it (we begged and promised to do extra chores for two weeks, but it was worth it). We got it and we played so much that the books fell apart, literally.
Of course, at 8 years old I wasn’t the best player and my brother would get so mad when I ran his plans off the rails. That’s sort of what happens when you have an 11 year old DM and an 8 year old playing a Dwarf PC (yep, Dwarf was a class!). We played the heck out of The Keep on the Borderlands and The Isle of Dread. Eventually one of us got the World of Greyhawk boxed set and we pinned the map up on the wall in my brother’s room. Greyhawk was my world of choice for many years after that.
I don’t remember much of the following 4 to 6 years, other than the fact that I played D&D as much as I could. The first module I ever bought with my own money was B1: In Search of the Unknown. Of course, in the ensuing years I played all manner of games, not just D&D, including Top Secret, Twilight 2000, Gamma World, Star Trek, many Palladium Products (e.g. Robotech and TMNT), Car Wars, Boot Hill, Warhammer, Traveller, Star Frontiers, AD&D, and MERPS. Through it all, my favorite system was always Dungeons and Dragons. I knew it had flaws, but I loved it, warts and all.
Time moved on and by the time I was graduating high school I was not playing as many RPGs nor was I playing as often as I had for so many of the previous years. By the time second edition D&D was getting along in years I had stopped playing RPGs altogether. When 3rd edition came out (and also, er, 3.5) I had no time or money to devote to the gaming hobby and so squelched my interest in it completely. That interest lay dormant until about 4 years ago, when I decided that I wanted to get back into role-playing.
I started looking into the old games I had loved so much and I found a whole new set of games had come into being while I was away. I discovered Dogs in the Vineyard, Spirit of the Century, d20 Modern, Burning Wheel, and Star Wars Saga Edition. I then rediscovered Call of Cthulhu, Earthdawn, and Warhammer (2e). I also discovered that 4e D&D was going to be released in the (then) near future. I decided to take the opportunity to get back into the hobby that I loved so much when I was younger. I started rebuilding my old RPG collection in earnest, adding new things to the bookshelves next to the old books I was gathering. I’m also a dice junkie, map junkie, and dungeon tile junkie. Oh yeah, and I have over 700 miniatures too. When I decided to build an RPG collection I didn’t mess around!
Along the way, I met a truly awesome woman who was into boardgames. I like boardgames as well and we started to amass a collection of boardgames to rival my still growing RPG collection (I recently acquired Geist, Star Trek (TNG), Diaspora, Mouse Guard, and WFRP3, and added them all to my collection, which I track on RPGGeek.com). Upon release, I bought the three core 4e rulebooks (PH, DMG, MM) and began my search for a gaming group. I started DMing a game about 2 years ago and I am completely 100% hooked on it again. This podcast will count as yet another outlet for me to express my gaming zeal.
Welcome – and I hope you enjoy what you find here. If not, please leave us a comment expressing what we can do to improve the show.