I do so love to game. My first electronic ‘gaming’ is probably familiar to most people; consoles. Nintendo was my preference, which blended into a game boy era, then computer games. Technically computers came first, but I was using them to program on before I got distracted by using them for games. Frankly, consoles back in the day were MUCH better at gaming than computers were. Alongside that I’ve been an avid board game player since I could pick up die. It all started with Monopoly, then Life, then Risk, a well trod path of each game leading to something more complex and challenging. In my teens it was Axis and Allies, the only game I still revisit from that era on a semi-regular basis. Then there came Dungeons and Dragons and my life was forever altered. I don’t have to be the nerdy kid; I can be a cleric wielding the power of Gods! Yeah, still a nerd. Oh, but no, not just that! I can be the creator of worlds! The Dungeon Master! LOL, yeah, I still play to this very day. Computer games have gone more by the wayside, I tend to pick up computer games if they are remakes of board games I like, but don’t feel like taking the time to set up. Seriously have you played Eldritch Horror? That game needs a computer version to save me the hour long set up time.

Creating content has always been a fun pastime for me, so D&D really hits the spot. I’ve never had a moment where I wasn’t thinking of the next game and wondering how the players would react to what I placed before them. I wandered up editions of the game from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1E) to 5E and these days I’ve gone back to running what the kids call ‘OSR’ or ‘OSRIC’. Some of these editions are just AD&D with the serial numbers filed off, others have more in-depth rule changes; I read any I can get and have played many of them. Right now Hyperborea is my rule set de jour. Gritty, human focused a la ‘Conan’, set in a mostly desert world with a mix of ancient civilizations and fantasy. You would think that with my book writing I would have a fantasy novel or two out there in the wild. I’m not sure why I don’t actually. I have written the better part of one book and started several others, but…I dunno, I look at the classics (Tolkien, Brooks) and the current writers (Sanders, Butcher) and I enjoy reading them all, so much so that I almost feel writing my own series would take some of the enjoyment out of the process. This is probably why I will never write a ‘hard’ sci-fi novel, which is and always has been, my first choice in fiction reading. Maybe there is room in my writing for a fantasy novel after all. I’ve alluded to the Zombie Fantasy book I’m working on, it isn’t what I would call ‘true’ fantasy, it’s more of undead legions trying to destroy humanity, set in the modern age with ‘magic’. What is magic, really? Zombies are magic, there is no rhyme or reason for undead to be up and about seeking to eat our brains.  I’ll keep working on it and see where it takes me, it is good distraction from other things going on IRL right now, one I sorely need.