Over all those years my focus slowly shifted from one area to the next. Here is kind of a way I took. Please regard the dates only as rough guidelines as I really do not remember them exactly.
| 1981 | DSA | A German role playing game: 'Das schwarze Auge' In school I started RPG with this system. At that time it was quite simple. But we and my group played it very often. I found out quite early thet I seem to have kind of a sadistic (masochistic?) mind because from the beginning I liked game mastering much more than playing. |
| 1983 | Midgard | Much more sophisticated tahn DSA despite the fact that it was one of the earliest ruleset. It already had some new concepts like fatigue. But still character classes were prevalent. My group and me we had a really great campaign and a lot of fun. |
| 1985 | Harn | Produced by Columbia Games I stumbled about it and fell in love at once. I liked the mundane medieval approach of HarnWorld. The magic and monster weak environment where mankind is it's deadliest fow. Shortly thereafter I got HarnMaster the RPG for HarnWorld. Again I liked it right from the start. At least a RPG that has no fixed classes but a logical and realistic simulation like style. But this RPG required quite some bookkeeping and so the idea of HarnManager was born. |
| 1988 | Games Workshop | Yes, I admit it. But for my defense I have to say that at that time the company was a lot more interested in producing good games then in making money. At the same time my RPG group broke as everyone took a different way in live. So the focus shifted from RPG to Tabletop gaming. |
| 1992 | Twilight Games | For some time I took part in managing one of the biggest gaming clubs of my area. |
| 1995 | The House | We start building a house and every one who has ever done such a big 'game' knews that your spare time has gone. So I lay down my membership in the club and concentrated for the next years on building my home. |
| 1999 | Napoleonic | Slowly but steadily I got more free time. So I started to take a look at the lokal gaming scene again. It had changed dramatically: RPG were nearly gone; GW and Trading Cards dominated everything. I finally found a group of tabletop gamers. They introduced me to tabletop games in the napoleonic era. So I didn't liked the rules (Newburry) they played I liked they visual appeal of the battalions marching around on the table. So my search for a better rule system took me quite some time. Now I am the owner of a big Prussian army and also have quite some French, Spanish and Wuerthembergs. |
| 2002 | Harn again | Some day I stumbled about a forum in which Harnic things were discussed. My love inflamed anew. So no longer playing Harn actively I dream to finally complete a program to support the GM. You can find some infos about my effort at this web site. Together with a friend we also took a deeper look into the medieval skirmish area and science fiction (Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles) |
| 2004 | Grande Armee | In my never ending quest about the perfect Napoleonic rules a friend told me about 'Grande Armee'. I finally found it. It is simply perfect: playable fast, realistic and simply 'feeling' napoleonic. The only problem are the figure basing. We finally decided to go for the 2mm scale and 3cm bases. Yes it is kind of crazy but if you see at the 'tabletop' it looks like a picture from that era. It is not the perfect solution, but the only we found to be manageable. Nonetheless the rules were the first since Corps Command and Big Battalion that worked for me. |
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Here you can find some pictures of my Heavy Gear minis and some info about our campaign. |
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Some info about Corps Command and some pictures of my figures. |
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This explains what I have in mind for my HarnManager program. |
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If I have some time left I like to play arounf with 3D redering. Here are some results. |
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My latest big project. Building a castle to play out a big siege. |