A bit about me

 

I always wanted to be a gamer.

No, really. I didn't have the luxury of growing up with gamer parents, but some of the first things I ever remember reading were Marvel comics. If you read comics in the 1980's, you'll surely remember all the advertising TSR threw around. For those of you that didn't read comics back then, just imagine little islands of excited young teenagers gathered around a table having the time of their lives, nestled next to a large illustration of, like, a big red dragon, or a wizard, or a barbarian guy with great, hulking thews. Now, just for good measure, imagine those same ads amidst a sea of ads for Charleston Chew mail order promos and various Hostess snacks.

No wonder I'm now a gamer!

Actually...

No wonder I'm now diabetic.

Anyway, the ads in the comics told me there was some kind of game that involved dragons and swords, and people played this game with a lot of friends. I knew I liked swords and dragons and stuff from the Legend of Zelda, the Hobbit and He-Man, and I knew I liked friends, so I assumed that I'd like this Dungeons & Dragons thing. I never found it anywhere though, and it was years before I found anyone else who played it.

In the meantime, I kept myself busy with more He-Man and Zelda. Over the years, this turned into M:tG, diceless storytime stuff at recess, Warcraft II, chatroom-based RP, and even collecting a few RPG books, even though no one wanted to play them. Oh, and the Hero Quest board game, though technically, I think I only ever convinced anyone to play it with me, like, maybe once.

Their loss, man. Look at this shit!

It wasn't until high school that I found a group to play D&D with, and once I did, I did so with gusto. I waded hip-deep into AD&D 2nd Edition and never looked back. I spent every single paycheck I got at my first job on comics and D&D books, and I don't regret a single cent of it.

I only regret that I didn't get to use every book. None of my unplayed wemics, kobolds and mongrelmen will ever forgive you, Rusty.

We played 2nd Ed, until 3rd came out, and then we played 3rd for a good, long while. We eventually moved on to playing White Wolf stuff. My first love there was Mage, but I both played and ran more V:tM than M:tA. Then I found Aberrant and ran a 2-3 year game of it. I then followed that up with about four years of Exalted... and then, after relocating to finally go to college, probably a little over 2 more years of Exalted's nearly unplayable 2nd edition. There was, of course, a ton of other stuff along the way (like W:tA, In Nomine, Deadlands, Feng Shui, Unknown Armies, BESM, 7th Sea, L5R, FASERIP, Spyrcraft, and some hilariously amoral Star Wars... ) but those are probably the most significant games that I've run.

More recent history is much, much less varied, though. Not counting a single con game of Hollow Earth Expedition and maybe two playtest sessions of D&D Next, I don't think I've *played* anything other than Pathfinder since at least... 2011? That sounds about right. I thought it was about 2009, but my wife reminded me about a short L5R game we were in for a while. Said wife (who I desperately want to refer to as Ms. Damage) is currently running a Pathfinder game using Paizo's Shattered Star adventure path, and while I have a great time with that game, I feel like a lot of that is in spite of the system, rather than because of it. It's her dedication to running the game that makes it worthwhile. I can safely say that I'm really, really burned out on the system, though.

Life on the other side of the screen has been pretty fruitful, though. Since right before last Gen Con, I've become one of the great many people enamored with 13th Age. Intellectually, I know the game has faults, somewhere, and I might even be able to name them if I tried... but it feels just about perfect, like coherent, well-blended cocktail of 3.x and 4th ed (which I loved, but didn't quite sit well with my group) with all kinds of bells and whistles. There's also just something about it that reminds me of 2nd ed, which just gives me all kinds of difficult-to-describe warm 'n' fuzzies. So, needless to say, a lot of the stuff I post will be 13th Age-focused.

So... that's pretty much the cliffnotes of my gamer autobiography. You should probably walk away before I start droning on about characters I've played.

No, really, you should go.

Okay, so... I had this dwarven wild mage, right? ...