My trail to New Horizon

Geek

New Horizon Geek

For those of you who have been living in your parent’s basement so long you forgot what the sun looks like, and what century it is, welcome to the new year. So that happened. It is now 2015, and I have decided to start off the year with a blog detailing my metamorphosis from a strange little kid to a person actively trying to make it in the world of tabletop RPG writing and development. Like most stories, this one starts with our hero’s past. The hero being me, obviously. Born and raised in small town Montana, I somehow managed to become a massive geek, while retaining just enough country to occasionally make it look like I belong here. I have been a storyteller since I was little, and most of my other hobbies stem from this in one way or another. I enjoyed the typical kid game of pretending that I was Batman, Spiderman, or any other descriptor with the word man tacked on. While most children are happy to pretend to be their favorite superhero at recess, that wasn’t good enough for me and a few of my friends. Instead of becoming someone else’s hero, we became our own. We made our own stories and powers, and had wonderful battles amongst the many characters that each of us created. **Side Note* At what age is it considered LARPing, and not simply playing the same game you have been playing since you were six? Whatever the case, these games continued into High school, and still rear their head on occasion to this very day.** We of course took inspiration from our favorite heroes, but we added the flair that only a child’s mind could. Our heroes lacked something that the ‘official’ ones had, imagery. This was about the time I started drawing, something I have continued to do in some form or another ever since. I am not a professional artist, but I know enough to get by when needed. No matter how terrible the drawing, the sprite, or the Warhammer 40k conversion, there is something about having an image for your creation that brings it to life. In third grade I had my first experience with Dungeons & Dragons. One of my friends had played it over the weekend with an older male family member to guide him. We didn’t have that guide at recess, and my first game went horribly as my barbarian lost his pet pixie when a dragon ate it. I did not rediscover D&D until middle school, when I had access to the books myself. I have been tweaking rules ever since. I acquired internet access around 5th grade. Not knowing what else to do at the time, I looked up a game I had recently played at a friend’s house, Mega Man X. I discovered the likes of Pixel Boy and the spriting community. My meager art skills were transferred from paper to MS paint, and I spent my middle school years making sprites for every character I could imagine. I choose the nickname Mega Bass X, which I changed to Alto three years later. At this time I was busy making sprites and writing my own stories. I became familiar with the names Lysekoid and Sabbre (later Gren), but didn’t know them well yet. Lysekoid was a spriter who came to the game quickly, and put all of my work to shame within a few months. Sabbre (Gren) was a storyteller like myself, often utilizing Lysekoid to create sprites for his stories. After a few few years of floating around the periphery of each other, we collided on a Mega Man forum RPG. I found the Veomeshed forums my freshman year of high school, and immersed myself in the RP there. It wasn’t long before I was one of the regulars in the RP, with Alto as my character. Gren and Lysekoid were also characters in the RP (played by Ian Stewart and Michal Lysek for those who have not guessed yet). We got to know each other while running our imaginative characters around one another for the next several years. Once the dedicated core of players sorted themselves out, we began shaping this RP world to our own storylines, molding it ever further from the original roots. The forum RP had a split when I was in college, and Ian went on to begin thinking about turning it into something new while Myself and another veteran player limped along with what was left from the original. Sadly, I lost contact with Ian and Michal about the time the RP started to morph into something of its own beast Post college, I was working in a graphics design job at a beer distributor when I stumbled upon Michal once again. We began chatting about the old days, and about our current hobbies. He introduced me to the current iteration of New Horizon, one that looked similar to the work I had seen Ian doing last, but more refined after a few years. At least it was as refined as Ian’s work gets most of the time. I came on board to edit the current material, and soon found myself as Ian’s spitballing partner. Since returning, I have rewritten much of Ian’s work (usually for the better) and refined most of what was left. The seeds of my old Alto stories were still in the world. I have expanded upon those, and added new stories in other directions. Now I am no longer simply a player giving worldly input, I am living in this world as one of the forces that shapes it. I have lived in New Horizon for over a decade now, and I can’t wait until the rest of the world sees what we have all seen.

#geekery #RPG #NewHorizon

About the Author:

Stephen Mayo lives in Montana with his wife, daughter, and three cats.

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