Basic info-- I live in South Bend, Indiana, married, 40 years old, have cats. I love coffee, have a sister who writes sci-fi and fantasy, and I studied in Egypt for a year in college. I taught writing for a number of years, worked as an acquisitions editor at a university press, and went to San Diego Comic Con once. I can't draw, am lactose intolerant, and am left-handed. I had a comic story published in a Spanish anthology, got my degree in anthropology and got knocked over by the fifth Dr. Who at a signing event.

And I run a lot of games.

Christmas of '75, my sister received a copy of the original D&D small box set (along with AH's Starship Troopers). I think my father had been hunting around trying to find anything that would appeal to her taste for sci-fi and fantasy. He'd been working up in Ann Arbor at Univ. of Michigan on a scholarly book and probably found them in a local bookstore. Five years older than me, my sister picked up right away on how cool RPGs could be. Luckily we had a dedicated game shop open locally the next year-- with pretty much everything that was available game-wise, including miniatures. I tagged along on her journey into this before she found her own group to play with and we ended up liking different things in games. Through grade school I picked up (and some times got to play) Gamma World, Boot Hill, Metamorphosis Alpha, Superhero 2044, Top Secret, Monsters! Monsters! and the like. I played and eventually ran a lot.

Through high school I ran Champions, AD&D, Rolemaster, James Bond and a number of other games. GURPS was probably the first game that felt like a real revelation to me-- a point based system that seemed easier to grasp than Hero and could do what I wanted. When I got to college I was still playing and running since I went to Notre Dame where my dad taught. I'd say everything I ran in the years leading up to that time was pretty scattershot: a number of one shots, episodic games and a few that lasted more than a dozen sessions or so. But we had a number of GMs and a lot of games to play. Then I finally really sat down and started thinking about stories and play. Out of that came what I'd consider my first really strong and complete campaigns, a two-year Fantasy GURPS game that pretty much shaped what I'd be running up to the present day and a Watchmen inspired low-powered supers game that lasted for several years.

After that, except for a couple of periods (grad school) and a break of a few months several years ago, I've been running games continuously. A while back I put together geeklists trying to reconstruct everything I've run (here and here). For a number of years I was assistant manager at a local game store, which included managing the upstairs game room. At one point I was running seven campaigns at the same time; three of them parallel and interrelated. While that kind of job might sound ideal, it was hard and the eventually the store and I parted ways. The best thing about that time was meeting my wife, who is at least as involved a gamer as I am. I'm running four campaigns right now, both because I enjoy running and because she wants more games. During the break I took from gaming she eventually pushed me back because I was so irritable and restless when I wasn't planning and thinking about stories.

Right now I'm running four campaigns. One's a wuxia style game using a homebrew that builds on the old Storyteller dice pool system. I'm also running a high fantasy game with elements of Glorantha; a Changeling: the Lost campaign; and a school-based Steampunk game that homages Harry Potter. These last three use a homebrew system based on cards that's gone other really well with the group. It has a strong narrative focus-- what Ken Hite calls low-detail, high-trust.

In general I prefer running to playing-- though I do try to play in shorter run local campaigns when I can. I like to see what other GMs do and see how other players handle things when I'm not managing the table. While I can run multiple games in parallel, I only like to play in a single game at a time. Of course I really enjoy boardgames as well-- mostly Euro games. I prefer parallel play and choice interaction over direct conflict games. I've been lucky enough to have a good solid group for board games, so I've been playing with pretty much once a week for the last seven years. I play video games as well, with a preference for rpgs and Civ-style games. Generally I like turn-based jrpgs and srpgs where I can go into collection and maximization mode. If the story is good, that's a plus, but I usually don't expect it. Instead I really prefer a more mindless and repetitive experience from those kinds of games. I'm not good enough to handle games which require aiming, twitch reflexes or the like. I've seen some games of that type I'd like to play, but I recognize my own limitations.

For my other interests, I enjoy reading. I follow sci-fi and fantasy, but I'll admit most of what I read is older stuff or more fringe authors writing today. I like non-fiction, especially history and cultural studies. I also try to read about writing, story structure and that kind of craft. I'll admit that most of the time when I'm reading something I'm thinking about how ideas, details and characters from what I read can be translated to the game table. Not directly-- but I try to mine for ideas and images which can enrich the story I'm telling. I used to track American poetry pretty closely, but now I just follow Albert Goldbarth when he publishes. I follow comics and manga as well-- on and off as I find some things I like. I had been following mainstream superhero comics in the last couple of years, but I got burnt out on that. Likewise what I read in terms of manga has narrowed significantly. I like movies, especially Asian cinema both more art house kinds of things as well as J-Horror. I veg when I watch conventional TV so I actually disconnected our cable and antenna. Instead if there's a series I want to watch I catch it later on DVD, Netflix or Hulu. That keeps me from just absolutely blanking out and getting nothing done when I'm home. Or at least it reduces the lure of it.

I like music quite a bit, though I can't read music or play an instrument. I'm a fan of classic music, primarily 20th Century (Shostakovich, Hindemith and Glass). From that I picked up a love of soundtrack music (Brian Tyler, Yasunori Mitsuda, Jeremy Soule) which expanded as I found it could be used well as background for games. I keep the laptop off to the side when I run with randomized playlists built around the game's tone and theme. I like indie music (Decemberists, New Pornographers, Modest Mouse) but I'm also fond of "wall of noise" acoustic rock (Godspeed You Black Emperor, Turning Machine, Mogwai). When we play Rock Band I sing or play bass.

I used to do more with miniatures gaming as well-- both historical and fantasy. I wrote a set of samurai skirmish rules, Ge Koku Jo, that I self published years ago and helped with another ACW set. I tried Napoleonics and WW2 for a time also. While not as into it as others around here, I have played WH40K and still have a Tyranid Army. My favorite games of that kind were Confrontation 3.0 and Man O'War. My wife and I used to paint miniatures quite a bit-- she was better than I at individual figures while I had some tricks for painting groups in bulk. We'd mix it up between painting things for fun, doing terrain and creating things for rpg games. We had a really nice collection of paints and high-end brushes.

But back in May of '07 we had a fire in the house that began with an electrical short down in the basement-- which of course was the game room. That pretty much wiped out out painting supplies and a ton of figures either just finished or in progress and all the terrain we'd carefully built over several years. It also took out most of my main game books, destroyed notes, and wrecked the whole place between the fire, the smoke and the water damage. Luckily my board games and some older rpg (Runequest and the like) materials were two floors up and were able to be cleaned. The painted figures survived, as they were across the room from the center of the fire, but had to be cleaned since the ash creates a caustic chemical. That cleaning took off the surface layer of a lot of those figures. But we survived the fire, only lost things (and our cats), and eventually got back into our house about six months later after restoration and cleaning. I went more minimal in buying rpg books after that-- replacing some lines (like L5R and Exalted) which I could find cheap, putting off some others until the future, and skipping games that I'd more picked up for sourcebooks. That's why if you look at my collection profile you'll see lots of previously owned items. I put up some images from the fire in my personal gallery if you want a moment of horror. I want to say we had a really good experience with our insurance and restoration companies in handling the fire, but advise everyone to check over your homeowner policies in case something like that happens to you.

I've really enjoyed rpggeek so far. I like the community and appreciate the structure set up for handling the data. I've found out about some obscure games, especially in genres I'm fond of. I blog about role-playing games and some of that I've reworked and posted here and some of it has gone the other direction. I've posted quite a bit about my ideas for games, as well as some files from games and campaigns I've run. I've enjoyed the back and forth and feedback I've gotten, both on articles and reviews.

I could go on, but I'll stop there and let the questions I get fill in the gaps.

But, two truths and a lie:

1. I have a problem with food textures and cake especially makes me want to gag. To my taste buds it isn't 'food', but something you shouldn't be eating at all.
2. I was served a subpoena and testified as an expert on role-playing games in a case involving a death threat against our local mayor.
3. I was once chased up several flights of stairs by a pack of feral ferrets.

1. What was your secret to get the Herculean badge?

2. About the fire, do you have any advice to those with huge collections to avoid that happening? Any storage tips, conservation?

3. And do you miss having a huge collection? And do you plan to have one again in the future?

No, really, how do you get the Herculean Badge? There are only so many RPGs in existence, and there are a lot of data enterers (I'm assuming, not actually knowing any stats).

I may have missed this, but are you playing in any games right now? What systems?

Even though you said you don't play in many games, tell me about your favorite character. No, really.

What's your favorite resolution mechanic?

What's one change you would make the RPG Geek if you could?

You said you met your wife gaming (as did I). Do you remember the specific game, and is there a story to be had there?

If money (and profitability) were no obstacle, what old, out of print game would you resurrect?

Most memorable gaming moment (other than meeting your wife )?

Did you purchase any games *just* to be able to enter into the database?

Are there any items you learned about from RPGGeek that you think are a must have for your collection?

1. You're the only other person to have all five RPG Geek - Destiny Micros.



Which color of those is your favorite?

You earned over 5000 in your quest for Herculean uploader which has taken you countless hours over the last 8 months. You've given away almost 4000 of that in tips!! Care to explain?

Do you play boardgames? Which ones you prefer?

You like reading, which authors do you like the most?

What was the most memorable exit one of you're characters ever made.

1. You're the only other person to have all five RPG Geek - Destiny Micros.

1. PDFs -- good, bad, or ugly?

2. Universal Systems -- have you tried either of the major ones (Hero or GURPS)? If you have tried them, what do you think they're good at and where do they need help? Since you've already mentioned you've dealt with both, anything you prefer in one over the other?

3. Have you tried any other universal systems? If so, which ones?

4. Experience Levels or Character Points?

5. Ever play Paranoia? For more than one session?

Congrats on being Geek of the Week.

But I see you have nearly as many board games as RPGs.

So... RPG Geek or BoardGameGeek ?

Congrats on RPG Geek of the Week Lowell!

I actually didn't realize you were a big jrpg video game fan and that you actually seem to prefer mechanics that I've seen others scoff at.

So questions along that line:

1. Favorite video game of all time?
2. Favorite system to play RPGs on?

Anyways. I'll try to think of more later.

1. You write a lot of session reports. Which is your favourite one, the one you're most proud of and that tells the story of the session best?

2. Have you played Planescape: Torment (I assume you did...), and have you liked it? What was the weakest point of the game for you?

3. I know that you use music during your gaming sessions. What band or track do you like to listen to the most outside gaming, from those you use (or use most often)?

4. What is your favourite genre of RPG's? I'd assume it's horror, just based on your long series of reports from Changeling and Planescape...

5. When you are a player, what kind of characters do you feel most comfortable playing?

So, since you brought this up, what is the favorite PC you've run for?

Favorite NPC you've run?

How many dice do you own?

What is your favorite type of die?

What RPG did you wish you owned (not the book, the license)?

So, being in South Bend, do you get to GenCon at all?

Have you don't many conventions? As GM or player? If so, any favorite stories?

Any pet related gaming stories? You wrote above you lost cats in the fire - my condolences. Hurts like hell to lose a pet.