Game Geek; Founder, D6 or Die
I began my gaming life the same way a lot of us nerds did – with cards and dice and playing "pretend." Then came the Dungeons & Dragons red-box set. I learned about it at school, saw ads in comic books, and of course I saw D&D in E.T. WOW! IT WAS SO AWESOME!
I begged my mother for it. This was at the height of the controversy over D&D and kids worshipping Satan and killing each other in storm drains. She hemmed and hawed. She delayed. She worried over it. And then, thankfully, she realized she was a caring mother involved in her son's life. So she bought me the red box, and away I went merrily into the make-believe world of gaming, ever under her watchful eye.
Fast forward from 1983 to now – thirty years later – and I have been gaming for all that time in some form or fashion. Be it pen and paper, tabletop miniature, board/dice/card games, online RPGs, and more, gaming has been a central part of my life all of that time. I've forged life-long friendships; I've had tons of happy and life-affirming experiences; I've gotten to know people from all over the world…all thanks to gaming.
I was blessed to have found, relatively early on, a fantastic group of gaming buddies, that eventually morphed into some of the longest running friendships I've had in my life – a theme I think most of us game geeks have in common.
Through that group, we crafted amazing and complex story lines with ever deepening character development and settings. Sure, we did our bug hunts and our dungeon crawls, but we also created sweeping dramas and action adventures across the spectrum of gaming genres.
I've played in a bunch of games and systems: D&D and its variants, Star Frontiers, FASA Star Trek, Champions/Hero, Cyberpunk, Rifts, WEG d6 Star Wars, Fuzion, Castle Falkenstein, and more. I've dabbled as a GM as well over the years; but I must admit most of my time was spent as a player.
We also collectively designed games as well. Including a renamped home-brew of a FASA-esque Star Trek system. And D6 System rules. Additionally, I put a lot of effort into Fuzion as a system when it released and self-published some content for it.
And now, I begin a new era in my gaming life – starting up a gaming organization focused around convention play to provide players both new and old access to one of the best games and systems ever designed: the West End Games D6 system.
Sure, all systems have their beautiful sides. Sure, all systems are worth playing. But Rick and I found that some of the best, most invigorating, most hilarious, most fulfilling story-telling gaming we ever did was as part of D6, and more specifically the WEG Star Wars First Edition ruleset.
So here I am.
Long live D6!
D6 Or Die!