I'm a Father, Geek, Artist, Storyteller, and Gamer... sometime streamer. That's me in a nutshell (help, help, I'm in a ... yeah, okay, let's not go there). I have been gaming since the days of Pong. Remember Pong? Oh, how far we've come. How about Meridian 59? Okay, we've established I'm also old.
Well, I've often been told that I am overly verbose (I will try to keep it under control though); however, since Novatek asked...
English was not my first language. I was born in Germany but now speak more Japanese than German. I have traveled the world but seen very little of the US that I have called home for well over half my life now. People, language and culture fascinate me. Communication and sharing... if only more of this happened, the world would be a whole lot more huggable. However, I digress.
Meridian 59 from Sierra Games, way back when, is where my MMO history began. I have ventured into just about every MMO that's been released since in some capacity or another: Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Everquest I & II, World of Warcraft (closed beta to present), City of Heroes & Villians (long live Justice Radio), Warhammer Online (brief, but those public quests!), Final Fantasy XI & XIV (1.0 and ARR), Star Wars Galaxies (Interior Designers of Sunrunner, how I miss thee), Star Wars The Old Republic, WildStar (so much potential!), and many others that have come and gone.
First and foremost, I'm a storyteller. I've been a tabletop RPG gamer ever since I was 8, coloring in the numbers on plastic dice and moving little miniatures around on a grease penciled dungeon grid map. I told my parents stories at bedtime and "corrected" the ones they told me so that the characters and endings were more to my liking. Later, I grew out of that and learned to appreciate others' stories as well.
Dungeons and Dragons (red box and on) to Pathfinder; Palladium Fantasy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ninjas and Superspies, Robotech; Star Frontiers; Gamma World; Fate RPGs of all flavors; Shadowrun (most editions); all those dark years of books for World of Darkness games; and countless other RPGs filled my bookshelves. I've also dabbled in art all my life, and have a modest amount of talent to show for it. However, art school was eclipsed by my love of technology until the two merged into graphic design and then later jumped the rails and landed right into systems engineering. That's my current day job at any rate. I still do design work on the side.
All that silliness aside, my first job is telling fanciful stories to two wonderful kiddos in their single digits. I've been a Dad for over seven years and that's probably the best darn job you could hope to ever have. Yeah, I'm probably a bit biased but there is something magical about having your daughter correct your bedtime stories and make up her own. The apple does not fall far from the tree. Her younger brother is a lego maniac and total Star Wars geek and it pleases me to no end that they're going to grow up with a whole new generation of Star Wars fans and major motion pictures. Sharing that love of my youth with them is going to be great.
When I find moments to myself, I enjoy the company of people. The more the merrier, and listening to the stories they have to tell while sharing a few of my own.
Be well. Live well. <-- I say this a lot.
