[Wade_Gustafson]

In my case I'd say that it was R. A. Salvatore's "The Crystal Shard" that first really brought me into "fantasy worlds". I read the book in what must have been my Freshman or Sophomore year in High School, then several others in the series. As I did, I began to recall bits and pieces of other fantasy stuff I'd been exposed to subtly growing up, Tolkien mostly.

While still in High School I began creating my own fantasy games and dabbling in Dungeons and Dragons source books to learn what was needed to make something complete enough to really be usable. That turned into a D&D group that soon disbanded, however I was inducted into a new group led by a friend's older brother, and soon found myself gaming weekly with guys ten years older than myself who had been playing since the days of monochrome source books and chits rather than dice.

My first MUD experience was through a friend of a friend's horrid attempt at starting a MUD (no clue what codebase it even was, but it sucked). I was then shown "A Good MUD" for Role-Playing. Harshlands. The game was in its first year when I came aboard. Those who know my MUD background know that I became the second director of HL, later founded Forever's End, and was involved in a few nowhere projects before founding the RPIMUD.com website.

I began writing again around that time, and have since acquired a literary agent to represent my work and am waiting for the manuscript to sell. (It's an industry that truly crawls along at a glacial pace).

Since then I had the fortune of meeting Matt Adcock and together we founded the Binary Forge and began work on our first project, Maiden Desmodus.

I remain a big supporter of text-based role-playing games and am always trying to bring new people over from graphicals.