It is no secret that role-playing games are an important part of my life.
There have been three big influences on my RPG life that’ve come from this part of the world.
First, GM magazine, the late-80s-early-90s independent magazine about roleplaying games. It came out of the UK and introduced me to a whole bunch of things I’d never contemplated before. The three Aliens weekends (for which I’m mildly infamous in Welly RPG circles) are directly descended from articles about freeforms and live action roleplaying that appeared in GM (and its descendent GM International).
Second, Critical Miss, the online webzine for dysfunctional roleplayers. I liked this because it was just cool, and because it was so rooted in the reality of a lot of gaming – messy, flawed, sometimes deeply frustrating. (In a sense it’s the exact opposite of the improve-your-gaming-experience Forge.)
Third, the Irish gamer crowd, specifically as represented by GameEire.com. This site and the community it represented were a key component in making me, for a time, chief agitator for a Wellington RPG community. I like to think I was one of the factors that got things moving, but the amazing stuff happening there now is all the work of a very fine bunch of people who aren’t me.
Well, I’ve had the fortune over the last year to meet key figures in all of the above. A bunch of names I recognise from GameEire – Brian and Gar to take two prominent examples – have become friends. At Gaelcon last year I met Wayne of GM and had a lovely conversation. And at Conpulsion this weekend past I met Jonny Nexus and Bubba, of Critical Miss.
Bloody marvellous.
(An honourable mention should go to the Interactive Fantasy journal, proprietor Andrew Rilstone. I’ve had too little contact with it for it to rate up there with the above three in the influence stakes, but it was pretty cool.)
(Anyway, I’ve traded pithy humour with Mr Rilstone on RPG.net so I’ve sort of ticked him off anyway.)