It began in a manner that I suspect is rather common in our small corner of the blogosphere: I started a blog as a means of staying connected with the hobby world when the pressures of real life otherwise intervened. Sounds familiar.
….excepting that in my case, this humble blog created a curiously unanticipated (perhaps ironic?) effect. Rather than echoing my relative hobby isolation, A Gentleman’s Ones has actually catapulted me further and further and then even further into the larger hobby world, to the point that I now have some extraordinarily grand news about a tremendously exciting new project. Here is how it happened:
First, I got hooked up with Dark Templar in a transatlantic game in a much-missed series Hailed v Hated. That was tremendous fun, and the benefits of that particular friendship resonate in remarkable ways even today. Dark Templar is a true talent and ace individual. He has been instrumental in that project I mentioned.
Some people here and there noticed, and I soon found myself mixed up with Big Jim’s extraordinary brain-child, Special Operations: Killzone. This had two direct consequences: First, it taught me that I could (with a suitcase full of hard work) help produce a very solid gaming product if I put my time and attention to the idea. Second, it put me in front of people who are making particularly grand hobby dreams a reality. [Big Jim has kept the Killzone experience simmering on a low flame, but has recently called for some assistance to bring it back to its proper boil. click the link above to find more on that].
Killzone put me in the path of the good people at AdeptiCon –a massive convention for gamers created and run by gamers. Again, here are a group of ordinary guys who have relentlessly dedicated themselves for 11 years running to the creation of a superlative and extraordinary hobby weekend. Since being invited to participate, the AdeptiCon weekend has become a pivot of any calendar year.
So for two years, I ran Killzone through AdeptiCon, helped develop, refine, and produce the rules for said event, and created some extremely fun scenery upon which it was all meant to happen. Glorious.
Immediately after my second run with Killzone at AdpetiCon (2012) however, I began to think through what it might take to build a world and game of my own. I left that weekend content and exhausted, but also rather restless. I felt somehow that I was shilling for The Man. If I were to spend so much time, effort, money on this kind of project, why do it all for someone else (Killzone) who was in turn really doing it for someone else (40K). I spent the weekend surrounded by creative people who were making their own worlds real, and I left that convention feeling proud of what I had helped build, but also knowing sincerely that I could something more personal and rewarding, and do it on my own terms.
AdeptiCon put me in the path of Hyacinth Games. Though it was an odd fit (I only worked there for the latter half of 2012), my experience with the company showed me that, in fact, I could do this. There were no hidden avenues of knowledge, or secret labyrinthine path to glory. The tenure was brief, but the mental and practical invigoration was suggestive to greater things to come.
Nevertheless, I returned to AdeptiCon 2013 having produced some tables for Hyacinth Games, and also for the Zone Mortalis (whose games I helped run). At this point, the blog started to taper off, but only because there was so. very. much. happening behind the scenes with the development of a brand new company and the structuring of a brand new game.
And so, almost two years exactly after I first got the gumption, I am extraordinarily pleased to write here of a collective called Anvil Eight Games –a brand new company that will be bringing a brand new game to the world toward the end of March. At long last, it’s all happening.
Prepare yourself, o blogosphere, for what awaits.