From 2007 to 2014 I evolved and ran a Live-Action Roleplaying Game, managing almost every aspect of the game:

Guidebook Edition ~ Webmaster ~ Logistics ~ Head of Plot ~ Marketing ~ Cartography ~ Props Creation

Guidebook Edition: Every year when changes were made, I managed production using the website entries on dozens of races with hundreds of abilities, maintaining consistent verbiage between the manual and the website. I provided hand-drawn examples as needed or used photographs taken from the live action at the events.

 

PHP-Nuke website:  I created and styled a customized player and staff logistical tracker with user and character administration, item crafting, materials, geography (reflected accurately on the maps), a coinless economy, and experiential logging by event.

Logistics: All the characters and their inventories were printed and organized by player prior to each game using color-coded, web-generated, standard playing-card-sized templates that folded to fit into a standard collectible card sleeve. I managed the website, evolving both stylistically and functionally as the game and its demands expanded.

 

Head of Plot: I managed a small creative team whose job it was to schedule and sequence events during a game, challenge the players, create intrigue, play roles as needed, build and/or set props, and create content–whether written in advance or dynamically as the story shifted in real time. We invented our own font out of a non-Latinate language to disguise the messages sent in the native tongue; it took the players three years to crack it.

Marketing: Business cards and fliers demographically targeted for conventions and local shops.

Cartography (World): The world map was created based on a print of a file that we lost electronically, and which I reproduced electronically with permission. The map is not technically mine to claim, but the electronic reproduction is, as it was something like a restoration effort…so we could make…

Cartography (Regions): These are loosely ordered to make easier the fitting together of the regions. Examples are not scaled for each other.

 

Props Creation: Whether it’s a giant spider with rope webs, being attacked by creatures of light, or the sputtering pipes and vents lining a mad scientist’s lab, building immersion always helps.

I became a pretty good Boffersmith. People commissioned me to make safe yet stylish–if not entirely realistic–weapons.