Hey, look! A corner of the Writer-verse that I haven't seen before! And it's not even my birthday!

Greetings and salutations, folks. I'm Raker, and it is my distinct honor and pleasure to make your digital acquaintance. Seems like every passing year I seem to find fewer and fewer fun and funky people to scribble down a tale or twenty with. Stories are my drug of choice, you see. And...well, I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, with that in mind, I'm an old-hat DM from the days when Elf was a character class. I pen and paper as often as I can, because it keeps my crazy-stupid-marvelous writer brain limber...because characters that are actively working against you tend to make you pretty good at improvising. And that rather leads me to RP. I love collaborative story-telling, at the end of the day. And when I'm surrounded by a bunch of people who share that passion for telling a compelling story, I'm happy.

So...let's see. What else do you need to know to put this random name into its appropriate slot in the ol' memory? I was a nationally ranked fencer in my college days, a bartender to afford fencing classes (and a fencing instructor to afford alcohol...), a modestly successful local rock star there for a minute, a military aviator, and now a happily-married father of two trying to beat my sword into a ploughshare on a small, sustainable family farm.

I like the sound of old guitars, the taste of old whiskey, and the smell of old books.

"Well and good, but what are your tastes, man!?" I hear absolutely none of you screaming. Well, I'm glad you asked, completely fabricated straw-man type person. I tend toward the old Sword and Sorcery sorts of games first and foremost. I shepherd groups on Roll20 as often as I'm able. But for writing, I tend toward anything with an interesting premise. Free-form as a preference (I prefer roles to rolls), but if there are dice to be rolled, I can roll them. If you're looking for one more, keep me in mind.

I'll be trying to figure this place out.


That ought to get us started. Let's make some magic.

From one old gamer to another, welcome home.
You will find a few of us relic types wandering these litterary halls and we welcome all who want to come on in, sit by the virtual fire and swap stories and games.
Look in the Help and FAQs files (top right of the browser) and glance around the forums. We got some interesting people here some of whom even play the old and odd AD&D or BD&D.
Got a good crew of helpful sorts and even the Moderators are pretty nice.
Rpol has been around a long time and of it's sort of site it's lasted the longest and gained more people as we tend to advertise to like minded sorts when we find them. (At least I do, bookstores gaming sections seem to be the best place to find people like us, a little creative, a touch crazy and almost always interesting.)

In reply to ShadoPrism (msg # 2):

Ah! Another dinosaur! I am, hereby and forthwith, so welcomed.

Three parts muse, one part manic, and all magic. That's me. Well, us. There's an us, now.

I'll see you out on the grid, Shado.

Welcome to the madness!

What ShadoPrism said, in spades, vulnerable, doubled and redoubled.  You'll be pleased to know you are far from the only old-school gamer here.

What sort of exquisite corpse are you looking to build?  When you want that spark of life injected in it, when you're ready to throw that big switch, give us a shout out.

In reply to horus (msg # 4):

I'm getting that feeling, perusing the boards. I'm seeing a lot of old-gem systems, some new faves, and some that I've actually never heard of. Talk about refreshing!

Apparently, I'm not allowed to be an adult yet, and a lot of the fluffier story-forward games seem to be under that "A" tag. So I'm crawling over the game descriptions and biding my time for the nonce. When I get my feet under me, I'll be trying out a rules-light spin on the classic fantasy adventure told through "playable flashbacks." If you've heard of Fall of Magic, that'll get you in the vein.

But that should by no means serve to indicate that I won't be slinging RTJs at some of these other games. Looks like there's a riot of fun floating around here.

In reply to Raker (msg # 5):

Yup, lots of fun to be had all 'round.  Nothing says that if you intend to run a game or join that you can't work on those things offline.

Use any text editor (e.g., Notepad, KATE, etc.) and build what will become your Notices, posts, make notes on how you will structure things, etc.

That, or create a sandbox non-adult/non-mature game just to get familiar with the GM's toolkit.  You can keep the sandbox or recycle it for other uses when you're done.  The only drawback to this approach is that a sandbox game like this will count against your limit of games open concurrently (default value of five games, I believe).

That way, when your access is approved you can rip-n-run.

Bone up on RuBB Code in the Help system, and you can insert the correct tags to do formatting.

Gotta run.  I work tonight.

Another "old timer" checking in. I started with "Chainmail", "Eldritch Wizardry" and "Blackmoore" ... so I have done my time in the barrel !

Welcome aboard !

In reply to Raker (msg # 1):

"...when Elf was a character class" made me smile with pleasure. I'm a 2nd edition AD&D weaned guy myself, but back then Original D&D was still going pretty strong, and Mystara was a fun place for an AD&D party to mess around even if the desriptions had to be adapted.

Nice to meet you.

^^ See this? These are my people.

Looking forward to seeing you all out in the world!

Another old timer here. Started out with D&D and 3-book Traveller, carried on with Traveller for decades, but I haven't played more than a couple of Fantasy games since college - just sort of drifted away from it. Mainly into rules-lite historical stuff now. Welcome to the care-home, Raker, come and warm you old bones by the storytelling fire. :)

Since everyone is sharing first experiences, mine was in Tekumel, but the rule system was Arduin Grimoire, not Empire of The Petal Throne.

I played a Vietnamese Terroist named Phred (yeah, I was into Doonesbury back then) who fell through a dimensional vortex into Tekumel's universe transformed into a Pe Choi (which wound up being a Phraint under Arduin rules.)

That was some freaky stuff for a first-timer, but I was hooked.  My DM was nearly blind and made Japanese ring mail for a living (for SCA use), and was a heck of a good DM and storyteller, to boot.

About three years later I found Traveller.  The rest is future history.