An Abominable Fancy

John Stater is the prolific creator of Blood & Treasure, Pars Fortuna, Mystery Men!, and Tales of the Space Princess. He wrote Hex Crawl Chronicles for Frog God Games, and is docmenting his own massive hex crawl setting in the magazine, NOD. He has several new projects coming out, including Tome of Monsters (for which I provided some drawings), Grit & Vigor, and a series of Basic-style iterations of Blood & Treasure designed to emulate specific fantasy genres. His blog, The Land of NOD, is a wonderful resource for gaming ideas, thought experiments, and truly peculiar character classes. What is your history as a gamer? John Stater: I began gaming in 6th grade—so about 12 years old. A friend of mine had seen his brother play Moldvay basic with some friends, and we tried to recreate the game ourselves based on his memory of what he'd seen. We probably didn't get it quite right, but I loved it and got my mother to buy me Basic D&D (from Toys 'R&#

There is such a wonderful profusion of creativity that has emerged from the OGL and the SRD, and I thought it would be interesting to chat with some of the creators involved, beginning with designers of the game I'm gearing up to run this summer. Peter Williams and John Cocking, of Flatland Games , are the designers of Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures. What are your histories as gamers? Peter: Like many of my generation, I started playing with the original Red Box, which my older brother got for a present at some point when I was quite young. I remember having a 1st Edition Monster Manual in the house much earlier, which I believe our parents picked up for us on a whim, knowing that we liked mythology and monsters. From there it was on to other early favorites, particularly Stormbringer. I've been gaming ever since. John: It may sound like a line, but around the same time I learned to read, my friend and I played AD&D in a tower. We just