I started playing games when I was 15 years old. See, I didn’t really grow up around this kind of stuff. I had video games, though, and I loved them. More than that, I loved making things with video games instead of just playing them. I got hooked creating things with games early on, like creating your own midi-style music back in Mario Paint for SNES.

I remember making my own maps and campaigns for StarCraft Broodwar thanks to their map editor software, which was included with the game. I wrote stories and found ways to make the game engine and editor tell them. Making things for the game, not just playing them, was probably the most fun I had engaging with it.

Then I came across TTRPG. In my very first post here, I talked about how this happened–how a chance encounter with someone I barely knew changed my life. Now, the game was the story. The engine that drove the experience also drove the story. No more awkward script languages I barely understood, no more limitations of tech. Just imagination, a few books of rules and lore, and good people who want to share in it all.

Before that, I never read any books. Just wasn’t into them. TV and video games and Transformers toys were my entertainment. But once I started reading TTRPG books, like Shadowrun and Vampire, I started to get the bug for the stories within them. Shortly after, I bought my first actual novels. Official Shadowrun novels, obviously. I didn’t know it then, but reading books would do the same to me as playing video games: eventually, I started making up my own stories. Wrote my own words down. A deep desire to create.

I don’t know, maybe it’s always been there. I think I always wanted to tell stories. And I think I was good at it, even when I was young. It’s just, no one saw it. No one took that potential and helped shape it into something. Once in school, we had six months to prepare for our final exam in German class, which was us having to write a short story. That story was 50% of our grade for the year. Six months to prepare and plan and write the whole thing if we wanted to. We just had to write it again, by hand, in a three or four our span. I didn’t prepare for it. Maybe I forgot. Maybe my punk-ass didn’t care. But here I was, the day of, and nothing to show for it. So I wrote. Something. Anything. Some sort of story of a dying world, with the last people of earth living under a dome to keep the harsh sun and dead air at bay. A story about the end, as the dome finally cracked. A story about a family during their last moments. Was it any good? Probably not all things considered, but I got full marks for the story itself. My spelling and grammar and handwriting brought down the grade, of course. But then again, I pulled an entire apocalyptic story out of thin air without a single thought ahead of it. And the story itself was good enough to so I would not fail that class that year. I think about that sometimes. About how someone could have said something, noticed something. Made me pursue writing at a younger age. Though, the asshole teenager that I was, I wouldn’t have listened anyways.

I turned 40 this year. In the last 25 years, I finished school, moved across the world, had jobs and friends and people to love, and lost just as much one way or another. I met my spouse, going on 13 years now, have a solid job, a place to live, and a great group of friends online that play games with me. And in all that time, I never stopped creating. I wrote stories, played games, made music, and I designed my own things. Homebrew content, entire systems stolen from one game and made work in another. The first steps of an entirely new game I hope to share with the world soon.

Now I’m here. This journey that started at the turn of century–millennium even–all led me to this post. The reason this blog exists is because I wanted to share my journey, my experiences, how I think and feel and make art. My art. My writing. My love for systems and stories, and the intersection of them, where the best games do the best work. Where I feel the most like myself.

My journey isn’t over. I have been making things since I can think. And, maybe, it’ll inspire someone else, someone reading my words or playing my games, to start a journey of their own some day. Like I wish I had all those years ago.