• Name: CarlCravens
• Email: raven@phoenyx .net

About Me

(Updated 10 May 2006 - 16:49)

I'm Carl Cravens, and I'm a lot of things.

I'm a regular guy...

I'm a late-thirty-something husband, and father to a 5-year-old boy. I'm a software developer by trade (I work in Hesston, http://www.hustlerturf.com/). I'm just like a whole lot of other computer and gaming geeks out there, except that I married a gal I met online, on a computer bulletin board devoted to play-by-email RPGs... the great-grandfather of the internet-based Phoenyx.net. We've been happily married for over fourteen years and it's been a blast.

I've been roleplaying since the seventh grade... over two-thirds of my life. My current play style is rules-light, character-driven, and story-oriented. Or something like that... I'm very much in an exploratory mode, trying to figure out what I really want out of gaming and what does and doesn't work for me. That's a lot of what my blog is about... exploring roleplaying. I'll talk about the Forge and indie games, but I'm not a Forgeite or a fan of the Narrativist approach.

I primarily play Fudge, as you can see by my activities listed below, but I've grown more and more dissatisfied with it over time. I've been looking at a lot of indie "new-style" game systems for ideas. Fudge needs a good rewrite to clean it up and incorporate some of the great ideas that have come up in the past ten years.

...and would-be game writer...

I've only got a couple minor publishing credits with Grey Ghost Games, and a few articles on RPGNet and Fudge Factor magazine.

• "The Gramarye," a magic system for the roleplaying game Fudge, published in A Magical Medley and now available online (link above).
• "Department 13," a mini-setting based loosely on a mash-up of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and SciFi Channel's Invisible Man.

...who runs too many projects...

• I'm the owner of the Fudge List, which is dedicated to the Fudge Roleplaying Game. I'm in the process of moving the management of the list to a volunteer leadership team, so I can get out of the day-to-day work.
• I'm co-founder, Editor-in-Chief and acting Managing Editor of Fudge Factor, a webzine for Fudge. Due to lack of submissions, FF is closing up shop soon. That's one project off my list.
• I'm the organizer of the Wichita Roleplayers, a face-to-face roleplaying club based around a Yahoo Group message board, and this site, the Wichita Gamers.
• I'm co-owner of The Phoenyx, which is a free discussion forum server for the play-by-messaging roleplaying community. (The Phoenyx is in transition at the moment, so it's kind of quiet. The new software is in early beta and is looking promising.)

Fortunately, I'm working my way out of some of these projects to make room for something "big" I'm working on. Can't say more about that until I have something ready to show the public.

...and still tries to find time to game.

I'm a dedicated gamer who hasn't gotten to game much in the past few years because of getting a bachelor's degree, having a kid, getting a second bachelors degree, and having trouble putting together a group of people. But I'm gaming regularly now, which is great.

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