My publishing career started in 1984, with a 4-paragraph “capsule review” of Wizard’s Realm in Space Gamer magazine, and bought rights to my Mind Duel board game.
That led to part-time proofreading, then a full-time design job, for Game Designers Workshop in 1986. Which led to TSR, Comico, Fast Forward Games, and freelance design and editing, and even occasional Spanish translation.
Now retired, I continue writing, editing, and self-publishing for the joy of it!
D6xD6 RPG
One fan kept insisting that I “Republish Zero!” So I revisited the game mechanic, a couple dozen novelists let me represent their worlds as 6-pages settings, fans Kickstarted publication and some specialty “doubledice,” and the D6xD6 RPG was born!
D13 RPG
This was a dream project 20 years in the making. It started with a few exploratory play-test sessions, became a public example of writing an RPG from scratch, and finally saw publication as a premium limited edition book. (It’s not your typical “kill the monsters” horror. The D13 RPG can scar, maim, and kill players’ characters without killing an adventure campaign.
Bookmark HP RPG
A Facebook post wondered if there were any role-playing games that didn’t use “hit points” (HP) for damage. Most of the comments cited games with “damage level” words, or number penalties, etc., basically just different terms for HP. The next morning I woke up with an idea for promoting and demoting dice sizes in action, using a 1-10 scale for action difficulty, and fitting it all on a bookmark. This Bookmark HP RPG worked! Even for campaign play! I’m fairly obsessed with it right now.
Card Games
Ages ago, before even the D13 RPG idea, I found a way to represent my old fencing lessons with a poker deck; the Clashing Blades! game. That sort of opened up a floodgate of other poker deck card games. My first Kickstarter project funded illustration and printing of Invasion of the Saucer People! and Wolf Man’s Curse!. Others funded a group of four Monster Con titles, Creatures and Cards “dungeon delving,” and Bill Connors’ Heroes of Pterro. And, of course, an illustrated edition of Clashing Blades!
More Games to Come?
Hells yeah! I ain’t dead yet!