Anyway, after that, things went pretty much downhill for my social life. I finally got a group of 3-4 guys together to play role-playing games (this grew to 7-8 during our Warhammer campaign in high school, which I am still most fond of). Girls remained a mystery to me with their strange curves, the fact they smelled nice, and strange way of behaving (I later learned this was courtesy), so me and my friends played the Temple of Elemental Evil for TWO years (no shit, longest campaign I ever ran, and we played weekly), then once we got bored of fantasy, we played a bunch of Superhero games (TWO more years of Superworld – thanks, Steve Perrin) and Hero Games, which seemed a little better thought-out rules-wise, and allowed for greater character customization. Throughout high school I sent a huge number of shitty submissions to Dragon magazine, Palladium, and GURPS that were sent back with generic form letters saying I needed to grow up. Even Hero Games did this, but I wore down the will of Monte Cook and Bruce Harlick (both of whom grew to hate the fact I kept submitting, and Monte even wrote me an angry mail to that effect, shortly before he capitulated). That is when I learned the most valuable lesson of my gaming career – persistence pays off.
I wrote a few supplements for Hero Games, discovered that I loved making characters for game worlds (Underworld Enemies for Hero Games had some of my favourite characters ever – including Ashtray Art, the pyrokinetic who was REALLY in love with fire and thought it was a real woman, the Hanged Man [no relation to the Fallout 3 character concept of the same name], the emotionally vampiric Saiettas Crime Family who didn’t care as much about the crimes they committed as they could feed on the misery it caused, and Mad Billy, who got stronger and tougher the more alcohol he drank – kind of like if the Hulk was fuelled by beer). All contributed to my social retardation, but my writing and design skills grew to level 3, and I added various Geeky Feats to my character until it was time to level up to Computer Game Designer Level One
Once at Interplay, I worked on a bunch of games. I made a lot of mistakes and a lot of friends. I got to meet Scott Bennie, who had worked at Hero Games before he levelled up. I met Steve Perrin, who had designed Superworld that our gaming group had played. I met Floyd Grubb and Bill Church, who took me to my first strip club. And I occasionally met Tim Cain, who I think still had that closely trimmed beard he always has, but he was too busy to tell any stories. While there, I envisioned Planescape: Torment, which I would argue was a huge mistake, but I loved doing it, so there was a period where I loved my job more than my own life, which my doctor later told me would not allow me to rise from the dead when the combination of stress and caffeine would cause my heart to stop beating (the last month of Torment was when I got this medical warning, but Annah was the last companion I had to write, so it was probably the best time for it to happen). This was the third thing I learned about game development – planting your ass in front of a computer game monitor is not conducive to your emotional and physical health.
The spiral of doom for Interplay was pretty evident around that time – Torment, Fallout, and other projects were the last of the 2-3 year development cycle within Dragonplay/Black Isle Games and the cycles became shorter and shorter as Interplay ran out of cash. I recovered from Fallout, lost some weight, gained a social life, lost more weight, actually learned more about Orange County, all against the backdrop of Interplay’s death throes. We kept laying people off. In some cases, this was a good thing. Black Isle remained relatively intact, but the demands and the pressure grew and grew until it cracked a few months after I left.
