What would you say to the older you?
Hi...
Can you tell us more about the game you and
Remy are making?
OMG...i was hoping someone would ask because I love talking about it, but I don't want to force it on people. I'll make a TLDR.
It started when I was 14 - remy was 9ish? We lived in Wisconsin but regularly traveled to pennsylvania and ohio, as we were planning on moving there soon. This was before the times of in-car dvd players etc, and my parents didnt like gameboys etc all that much. So there were us kids, all 8, in a van for 10+ hours at a time (River Falls, WI to Pittsburgh was 16 hours with 2 stops). So needless to say, we tried to find stuff to occupy our minds, and A'Lea was born. I had heard/read about D&D but had no friends or acquaintances who knew much about it or played it, so I attempted to make my own. I made a Map with crude drawings of cities, mountains, forests, caves, etc and then had my siblings create pencil and paper characters with random tidbits of info. Then they would roll dice and things happened! We were hooked.
Fast forward about 6 years, A'Lea had grown into less of a game, but was flourishing in a World Creation sense. We were writing things down, creating large notebooks full of information about the world and it's inhabitants. We had elves, orcs, dwarves and every other race that JRR tolkien had instructed us were necessary for epic adventures. Then began the arduous task of getting it all into Microsoft Word. Then things began to take off. Trade systems, cities, international relationships, weather patterns, architecture, fine art, multinational factions, and much much more began to take shape as we began to plug our ideas into an electronic format.
Fast forward another 6 years. A'Lea has existing infrastructure in just about every way you can ask about. History, Creation, Cataclysms, Heroes, Villains, Good guys, bad guys, neutral guys, a planned future, possible futures, planes of existance, the list goes on and on. Then Remy and I began writing short stories to further enrich our world(s). Then as we began to write, a problem popped up; Are orcs and elves copyright infringement? Well, probably not, but why are we copying off these stereotypical and 'tired' character/racial archetypes? So we tore down the existing racial infrastructure and rebuilt. Almost completely. The only thing left of typical medival fantasy type games as far as races are concerned? Dwarves and Humans. Everyhting else we renamed, re-cultured, and re-applied to OUR world to OUR liking. Elves are whiny tree hugging wimps? Well now the "Anin'Dari" are standoffish, imperialistic, magic fearing, golem creating, dooms-day prepping, egomaniacs. Why? Well, we wrote that into their history.
Then we tackled gods/creators. Every good fantasy world has a pantheon of gods that watch over/protect/smite everyone right? Wrong. We put forth into existence a race called the Tenassi, or as people of A'Lea refer to them - The Creators. The Tenassi are basically humans that have become so technologically advanced that they exist outside/apart from time, they create worlds as a hobby, they can dally with mortality and immortality.
Anyways, TLDR, I could go on for literally years, because that's how long My brother and I have been working on this project. It's a hobby that has brought him and me closer as brothers and gamers/fantasy enthusiasts alike, and has given me a passion and hobby that I think will last my lifetime.
and thanks for asking =)
