I grew up gaming, and honestly, it changed my life. There are a ton of misconceptions about RPGs, and the people that play them. It’s a shame they carry such a stigma. With the right group, it is a crazy fun pastime. Not all gaming groups are comprised of socially awkward basement dwellers.
Personally, I had a number of close friends that I started gaming with in the mid 80's, and we remain close as brothers to this day.
Five years ago, I decided to start with our old homebrewed game system, and to create a complete Fantasy tabletop RPG. I like game design, and this had always been something that I wanted to do. Mostly because of the good times I had gaming. Also, RPGs have changed since I began playing, and the type of fantasy game that we played wasn't currently available. So, over the course of a year, with the help of my old gaming group and a few new friends, I created the Wayfarers Fantasy RPG. My old GM jumped in on the project too, and he compiled more than 20 years of his world building into the World of Twylos campaign setting for the game.
We released Wayfarers in fall of 2008. Shortly after the release, I was very happy to actually sign a deal to distribute the game. The market isn’t a big one, but it was exciting to get the game out into stores. However, the day after the books printed, I got word that our distributor was going out of business. This was right in the middle of the market crash. At the last minute I redirected 200 books to my parent’s house. For the next couple of years, I shipped the books myself, ran a website, created some supplemental material, and slowly a community began to form around our game. For some reason I’ve shipped a large number of books to France...
Anyway, last year, one of our players brought to my attention that Mongoose Publishing (a fairly large RPG publisher) was planning on releasing a game called 'Wayfarer'. I contacted them, and after some discussion, not only did they agree not to use the similar name, but they offered to distribute Wayfarers for us.
We had been playing the game, and others have given feedback, and we were excited to make some improvements.
Today, the revised game is available.
Here are the books on Mongoose's site.
A pretty cool day.
BTW, my pen name is Jimmy Swill. Since I publish scientific papers, I thought it best not to use the same name.
I think we're all in the same boat...
Also, I mentioned it to a neighbor recently and they said they know the owner of a gaming store in Durham that might be interested in selling it. Shall I give you their info, or are you washing your hands of distribution and letting mongoose handle that? Congrats Swill, it's a really great accomplishment!