In the beginning

Welcome to my first blog, well first in years.  This is a tale of two guys trying to write a role playing game in the basement while trying to maintain normal careers and sanity on the side. 

My story starts with one that really isn’t mine to tell, it belongs to my best buddy, my bro in everything but blood.  It seems like long ago he dreamed of publishing a RPG in the heady days just prior to d20 revolution. 

Ahh..90's RPGs we miss you...don't we?

It was a different world, the internet was in its infancy and RPG companies seemed few and in-between.  Even when we met in college he expressed interest into getting into the business at least causally, setting his sights on being a writer for a certain company (that will not be mentioned by name).  Like most games of it time, it was clunky, illogical and sometimes unstable in mechanics. The number of house rules we made was insane, but in retrospect was good practice for what was to come.  It was the world and “feel” of the game that we appreciated and drove my bro to write for it.  The rest of the story I leave for him, since at that time I was just a fan and player.  Let’s just say the industry threw my bro a curveball, but he was not out. 

Years of just playing and collecting RPGs, all the while watching the d20 revelation dominate the scene, slowly spawned the idea in my bro…what if he made his own RPG using this new system?  And even more ambitious, what about forming his own company?!  Again this is another tale that is not my own, but sticking to my baseball analogy (even though not really liking the sport), my bro was hit with a knuckleball but was not allowed to advance to first base.  

Standing back up, brushing off the dust and brandishing a nasty bruise my bro took a bit of time before the next pitch came.  He wasn’t finished at bat yet.

This is finally where my story finally comes in.  My bro had continued to build his game as self-therapy, though the idea wasn’t completely dead that one day it could be published, so I offered to take serious look at it, just for giggles.

Visual Approximation of my Bro and I; hard at work 

Well…obsession suddenly became a new word for me.