As someone who very often finds himself behind the GMs screen, I'm always excited to get the chance to just play. I had great fun at the last DC Gameday where I made a concerted effort to get in some dungeon crawling adventures. Recently, I was invited to play in a Pathfinder game. First game isn't until next weekend but I already have my character written up. Here, let me tell you about my character.

For whatever reason, when I first started getting into Dungeons and Dragons it was the AD&D Books that caught my eye. I remember using my allowance to pick up all of the old yellow spined 1st Edition AD&D books. My first experience with the original Red Box (which came out at the same time as 1st Ed AD&D according to Wikipedia) was when my next door neighbor inherited it. I remember that it was used because whoever had had it before had created a whole bunch of index cards for each of the rooms of their dungeons all in pencil.

When playing an RPG, one of the things I find myself looking for after the game is over is the shining moments of the game. Those times when your character got a chance to 'do his thing' and either succeeded or failed spectacularly. Some of my best moments have been my character's death but that's another story. This past weekend I went to DC Gameday and got to try out a few games that I hadn't played before. Here are a few shining moments from this weekend.

Back in 2002, Wizards of the Coast had a contest in which they invited players of the game to create a new setting for the Dungeons and Dragons game. In 2004, this resulted in the Eberron Campaign Setting. The contest was the chance of a lifetime and even if you didn't have something BRILLIANT to submit, there was a sense that you'd be missing out if you didn't at least submit something. In retrospect, my submission wasn't particularly fabulous.. what hurts me the most is my overuse of hyperbole. For those of you interested in a read, here is what I came up with:

Quite a while ago, when the Blue Rose RPG came out, I created a character sheet for the system that covered just about everything in a single page. If I remember correctly, I tweaked it through about six different iterations up to and including a couple that were editable within adobe acrobat.

I've been going through and cleaning out my rather extensive collection of files. Today it was all of my old RPG files. Hidden amongst those files was an e-mail I sent out to the players of my old RPG around the time that I officially retired from the game. It was basically a retrospective of my time playing the game and the various times I didn't play it safe. I found it rather amusing. Perhaps I should add in a discussion on some of the fun I've had playing M&M where I didn't play it safe and how it turned out all the more awesome. Anyway, this might mean very little unless you played the game.. and even then it might be funny only to me. Oh yeah, its also a semi-parody on Mary Schmich's 1997 Article: "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young" (AKA: The Sunscreen Speach).

The good folks at AGD Interactive have after much time and effort, released their remake of Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire. This is the group of programmers who have previously created remakes of King's Quest I and II. Their version of King's Quest II was notable in particular in that there was an entirely new subplot added to what was otherwise a fairly simple 'collect all the goodies' game. I don't believe that they added anything to the plot of Quest for Glory II but fortunately Trial by Fire was already a very nicely plotted game.

I've set this section of the site apart for 'Community' yet it is really about who I am outside of the 'gamer' section. Sure there is a forum section for talking with people (and hopefully maybe running a game).

Besides all that however is a chance to see who I am. The current mapping has a personal blog in there plus some picture galleries of me, my family, and of course some characters. Finally, links to related sites, friends, and maybe a web ring or two.

Enjoy.