Cut it out. Too much awesome to read.

[SheikhJahbooty]

Everyone has to stop writing role playing games while I catch up on reading them.

On a more serious note.

Does anybody remember when Chris Johnstone showed up in the forum and I was super impressed, like, "The Chris Johnstone!"? And the rest of you were totally unimpressed, like, "So what?"

That's happened to me a bunch of times. I was on a file sharing network downloading Shadow comics from like the 1960s, and people started talking about role playing games, because it's an overlapping geekdom. And they got on the topic of Die Chucker. They were really impressed, "Plays like a wargame, but has no stat blocks. You could fill the table with miniatures and be OK. Super slick." So when Bobby Wallen showed up in RPGLaboratory, I thought, "Oh wow! He's someone that people talk about. And he's here in the lab."

So who are the guys that you feel this way about?

I'm not talking about Vince Baker or Clinton Nixon. We all know who they are.

And I'm not talking about Jeff Moore or Andrew Peregrine. You may be totally impressed with them, but we know who those guys are too. They hang out here all the time.

I'm talking about people that don't hang out here, and aren't well known, but in your mind, they should be well known.

Someone like .

And if you can, provide links.

[Rob Lang]

Great question! And an easy one...

Apart from Our Glorious Benefactor, the person I'd pull in John H. Kim. He is sort of well known because of his absolutely EPIC and original but because he's quietly got on with supporting free RPGs by hosting them for years.

I also think that who writes the JAGS RPG needs more love. JAGS has been going for years and has been a free download for AGES! The books are of a high quality and he's .

Also, I'd like to take this opportunity to give out some love to our moderators - Jason 'Chainsaw Aardvark' Kline, Elliot 'Kumakami' Brown and Gordon 'Misterecho' McKerrell. Without their care, attention and enthusiasm, the free RPG community would be a much darker place!

[misterecho]

I love his games. His free stuff and professional stuff is awesome. Sadly never hangs out here on 1km1kt.

I'm sure he lurks though.

[kumakami]

I do say Rob, CA, and Mr. E are hi on my want to meet list as well...

[misterecho]

awww shucks...

[Onix]

Maybe there's something wrong with my circuitry, there are plenty of games that I adore but I've never considered knowing or tracking certain writers. I remember liking a few artists at Palladium and recognizing their style from book to book. I don't know if I ever looked at the credits to a book.

I have met the guys that made Battlelords. ODS was based in Kenmore NY and I used to live down the street. Other than that, this seems like a oddly foreign concept to me. One that I acknowledge is probably my weirdness and not everyone else's (I think it has to go that way since I'm in the minority).

[SheikhJahbooty]

You know who's high on my list of would-like-to-meet people?

Jaqueline Pearce

I downloaded Simon Washbourne and Dave Sharrock's Blakes7 RPG without much in the way of expectation. On one hand Simon is impressive. On the other, it's always a challenge to capture what made a TV show good in an improvisational medium, like a RPG.

"For this to be good," I thought, "it would have to have some system in place that rewards players for using Terry Nation's insane technobabble. I have actually watched an episode of Blakes7 that had no substantive dialog for the first ten minutes, using only technobabble. It was almost performance art. If Simon didn't... Oh he did. There are lists of genre keywords and you get bonuses for mentioning them and checking them off the lists.

"But what about inter-protagonist conflicts? What guarantees that aspect of the show? Oh, right here. You get to determine how brave, callous, idealistic, greedy, etc. your character is. So if you roll that your Vila-type-character is paralyzed by fear, and I roll that my Avon-type-character is not and moreover has absolutely no sympathy, then even good and cooperative friends feel obligated to role-play a scene in which their two characters have a conflict."

Well damn! He covered all the reasons I watched that show, except... I did watch that show to see Jacqueline Pearce. She was such an extreme stone cold fox, that I'd bet she is still a pretty cute old lady. Perhaps Dr. Lang, being such a well respected figure in British sci-fi can put a short campaign together that I could fly in for? I'll get the first round.