Another Introduction

On the spot as I now am, I suppose my own introduction is in order.

As Pedro has so graciously noted, my name’s Kevin. I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons for about fifteen years. Before that, I was watching my father act as Dungeon Master for a number of his old friends, wishing I was “old enough” to join them. In between those gaming sessions, which were often separated by months of real time, I begged to stay up late to watch him play Pools of Darkness on the PC and Final Fantasy on the original Nintendo. At the age of ten, the recommended age according to the cover, I gained clearance for the Red Box Player’s Manual for the original basic Dungeons and Dragons game. My first character was a Thief whose name I can no longer remember because he soon gave way to greater things: the Player’s Handbook and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

My first real character was a human magic-user named Damon with a hoopak, ripped whole-heartedly from Dragonlance (like so many of my future first ventures into world-building would be) and a pseudodragon familiar, which I earned by rolling on the familiar table until I got the result I wanted. He was a slayer of goblin women and children, crushing them by the hundreds with a powerful fireball scroll, and when he died, his body was carried in a backpack full of all manner of maces, spears, and swords because we were adventurers unbound by petty rules of encumbrance. In time, I gained access to the secrets of Gygax’s original Dungeon Master’s Guide, and armed with a secondhand copy of the 2nd Edition Player’s Handbook, took my first stumbling steps into running my own games for my friends, which were a hodgepodge of rules from 1st Edition, 2nd Edition, and my Dad’s own house rules.

My passion for the game really took off, though, with the shift to 3rd Edition, by invitation to a game run by the creator of a graphical Multi-User Dungeon. After the unfortunate end of the game, he reached out to prominent members of its community to participate in a campaign set in that same universe, played online via IRC. Somehow, one of them thought to contact me (though it was my father with the prominence, rather than myself!), and soon I was spending large amounts of disposable income on this new edition of the game and playing sometimes as often as six days a week between three or four different campaigns.

Ten years later, I’ve since moved on to Paizo’s Pathfinder, which continues to carry the torch of the game’s traditions that I feel was set aside by 4th Edition. I can, at times, be something of an edition purist, and I’m far less wandered in my experiences than Pedro. Aside from Dungeons and Dragons, I’ve dabbled in a handful of other d20 games, and I’m a strong proponent of the Open Gaming License. Open content will be crucial for the continued survival of the RPG industry, and with that in mind I may occasionally contribute to it here. I’m fascinated by nearly all aspects of tabletop gaming, and you’ll probably see me writing about everything from design theory and mechanics to character development and world-building. From time to time, I may delve into console gaming, with an emphasis on role-playing games in general, to supplement topics in tabletop gaming that I find interesting.