I started playing RPG when I was twelve. My mother gave The Riddling Reaver by Steve Jackson to me, mistaken for a gamebook - which it almost is. I remember trying to get my family to play and failing miserably. Later I spend every night of a winter's camp with 5 friends and the English teacher that was with us, going through all of the book.
After that I bought GURPS. My father went with me to the local game shop on a Saturday morning, when people used to hang out to play. That was way before card games took the scene completely. We asked a guy for good starting books. This same guy, Wal, became one of my best friends and game companion a couple of years later.
GURPS was a good acquisition. I played and GMed every type of game with that old system, from fantasy to science fiction (based on Isaac Asimov's Foundation), passing through super heroes and BattleTech. There seemed to be no reason for another system.
Of course, I was young and didn't care to deal with allthose rules. And I hadn't grasped the interconection between a game system and a universe. Or just didn't care: it was easy to get involved anyway. RPG was my main hobby, fun fountain and community of friends. That was the time of xerocracy, of playing all the weekend, night and day, of a lot of soda and groceries - till we were seeing sparkling lights from so much sugar.
After that, I played a little of AD&D. And then the World Of Darkness hitted. It changed the way RPG was perceived and described, if not the actual way we played it. I think I was always into good and deep roleplaying, but Vampire The Masquerade made that conscious.
I've tryed almost all the WoD titles. We even played some Live Action sessions. Vampire was the standard, but I fell in love with Changeling The Dreaming. I actually narrated something around five sessions with an intimate group and a lot or props around us to set the scene.
Then WoD was getting too filled with all those supernatural beings. It was rare to find a human - even around the game tables at the local shop. Card games were starting to take all the place from RPG on them as well.
That was around the time when we started the longest (and one of the greatest) campaigns I ever played in. It was Dragonlance Fifth Age, with the SAGA system. Five years into it. The Gamemaster, Leonel Caldela (who actually writes fantasy novels nowadays), was a genious narrator. He kept two groups going, interweaving them. It was amazing. I still play with part of that great group (in terms of quality and of quantity: we were 11, adding the two groups together).
SAGA made clear that the search for "alternative" system was worthwhile. I had games using Fusion (and Mekton specifically), Legend of Fire Rings (the original), The Window (an amazing free system that you can get online, that is also a manifest for roleplaying that influences me a lot to this day), Castle Falkenstein (one of my favorites still)...
And then came the One System To Rule Them All: D&D 3rd Edition. It seemed great at first. I was never too much into AD&D, but I loved the different universes for it, Dragonlance, Dark Sun and Ravenloft specially. And you could feel the energy of the playing community that dwelved in AD&D: such passion... GURPS was thinner in that aspect, I guess... At least around here.
But soon we were all feeling a kind of homogeneity. Sure, there were customizations of the D20 that were being released, taking it to newer grounds: Modern, Spycraft, even A Game of Thrones... and you could take the system and play in different universes. But it all seemed too square. Sure, you had a lot of options for your character, and nevertheless the feeling that there was a straight line for each PC to evolve was there. Other than that, the mechanics took A LOT of the attention. You almost couldn't think the story without measuring it with pros and cons the system would give you for each choice. It was already closer to a videogame as I ever experienced RPG.
I completely dropped out with 3.5. I had been gamemastering a couple of campaigns even. But the dullness got the better of me, and I just gave up.
And then a friend talked about Warhammer Fantasy RPG. It was late into the Second Edition era. I was doubtful, tired of playing for system rather than the story.
Of course, I fell in love with it.
I got my hand in all the books I could afford. The dark fantasy setting, with a lot of mystery, the possibility of playing adventures that were rather low fantasy, all the complexity... I didn't got in touch with the more battle like line of the universe, it didn't occured to me it was first conceived to be the background scenario for a miniatures game. I was eagerly going for the minor aspects of living in the Empire, even if they took the characters and the story through connections with greater aspects of the world.
That was my inspiration when I started to GM the Paths of the Damned campaign. We had gone through the first part, Ashes of Middenheim, when Third Edition was announced.
I was mortified. I loved Second Edition so much (still do)! The Third looked like a board game takeover! Would Warhamme Fantasy RPG pass through something like a D20 effect?
So I was really relieved when it started to be clear that the answear was "no". And then I was really amazed by Third Edition mechanics. The way the rules mingle with the story, and the practical aspects of having so much of them so easily accessible in each card, opened for me the possibility of shared storytelling in the Warhammer world.
And that's where I am right now. I'm playing the released adventures for 3rd Ed, and I'm also witing my own stuff, starting by converting what I had written for 2nd Ed. I'm really into the possibility of sharing more with the WHFR international community, and that's why I write in English and am interested in MapTools and other ways to play online.
Other than RPG, I have graduated in psychology, and I'm currently going through a master's postgraduation in social psychology (I dig into Deleuze, Foucault and Hannah Arendt). I have worked with people that have different mental organizations, the ones that are usually referred to as "mentally ill" or other even worse terms. I had some experience with children and youth who were going through drug abuse. And I worked with corporal therapy (Reich, Lowen and oriental medicine) and as an educator with teenagers in an NGO.
I was into theatre for a time, coordinating an experimental theatre group of amateur enthusiats for four years. I'm an apprendice of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) through the work of Dominic Barter. I live in the state capital, but I'm also a member at an ecovillage that is 2:30 hours away. I'm really into environmental issues and I'm an engaged activist in trying to change the disconnected aspects of our society (both in human relations and the care of the Earth). I'm mostly immersed in bicycle use as a form of transportation, community affinity and what I consider a better way to be in the city (it actually helped me stay in the city).
I'm also a self oriented photography student. If you are interested in any of these, please check my other sites:
- http://heartsbybikes.blogspot.com (On bike activism and political issues)
