I'm a gamer and i'm proud to be a gamer. I started playing during my sophomore year in High School (early 80's) when I was introduced to AD&D in gym class by a couple of guys that ended up being my best friends for many years to come. We started playing with no books and had only our imaginations to work with. I was the one that had the bright idea of saying, 'Let's see how we're SUPPOSED to play this thing.' I bought my first hardback - The Dungeon Master's Guide (ordered it from Sears of all places) and after we read through it, we were hooked and then it was just a matter of saving our pennies to buy The Player's Handbook, The Monster Manual and a couple of Modules to really get us started.

The years went by and I've had the privilege of playing in several groups - both small and larger and we played several different systems including AD&D (1e), Marvel Super Heroes and others that weren't as popular at the time. We all had our systems that we preferred and whenever it was my turn to run a session, I always used AD&D. There's just something magical (no pun intended) about taking an idea, getting the framework down on paper and then seeing how the players will react. In my book there's no such thing as a 'complete' adventure - only the framework that the DM and players use to mold things the way that they see fit.

I quit playing for several years when I started college the first time and didn't really start picking back up until I started getting onto the internet. I found there was a treasure trove of information that was out there and I started feeling the 'need' to play once again - especially when I found ways to play online. It really encouraged me when I found that you didn't have to try and get people together in the same place at the same time, you only had to deal with different time zones. Location was no longer the issue.

And here we are...

I know there are MANY sites out there that are HUGE and have tons of users (I'm a member on some of them) and these sites provide a wealth of information. What I'm trying to build here is a Community of people that want to 'get together' (in the internet sense) and play some games. I also would like to be a central site for various systems as well as utilities and extras that we can use to play the games.

While my games focus on certain systems, I'm not a zealot and won't tell someone that just because they play something different than I do, that their rules suck and mine are the best. We have the space and bandwidth to pretty much handle as much information that we need to.

I've also adopted the idea of using the computer for a lot of my game development (for obvious reasons) using such programs as Dundjinni (for map creation) and Battlegrounds (playing both locally and across the internet).

The bottom line is that I want to run a 'Mom & Pop Store' of the old-skool gaming realms and hope to find people that would enjoy such an atmosphere - just trying to bring back the old ways of playing using the newer technologies - and hey, this way there's no crumbs on the floor, pizza in the sofa or spilled soda all over the character sheets. :D