Gaming

Computer Games

I jumped into the computer gaming industry in college and spend a lot of time there as well, focusing mostly on RPGs and strategy or tactics titles. Racing games and flight simulators have nostalgia value but have mostly fallen out of regular gaming. FPS type games no longer interest me much, but I did spend a lot of time with the first few Quake games. Mass effect is enough of a crossbreed that I really enjoyed the first, was OK with the 2nd, and hated the third. MMOs are theoretically interesting, but in practice rarely enjoyable for long, and I hate the time sink they become.

Tabletop Games

I’ve been a tabletop roleplaying gamer since the early days of the industry, all the way back to the Basic D&D Red Box. I emjoy gaming using the AD&D 1st edition ruleset the most, though 3.5 and Pathfinder have some appeal in computer formats, and 5th edition is popular and tolerable. Lately there has been a lot of attention around the Old School Renaissance ruleset, which works well to combine and organize much of the basic and 1st edition rules into a coherent reference. I’ve dabbled with many systems other than D&D, but most notably the World of Darkness from White Wolf.

Realms of the Old School Renaissance

A small, weekly game run by a friend on Roll20.

Out of the Abyss

An in-person game run every other week by one of my local gamer friends.

Mission Apocalypse

An in-person Shadowrun game run every other week by one of my local gamer friends. Failed after a few sessions mostly because people were still too worried about the pandemic.

The Lost Mines of Phandelver

I ran my local group of players through this module as an experiment to learn the 5e system and how to DM on Roll20 during the pandemic, when in person meetings were considered too risky.

The Evil Overlord

A 1st Edition game based on exploring as many of the original modules I could get my hands on.