Well... I started gaming as a snot-nosed 8 year old, with my first character... An Elven Ranger by the name of Elrohir (yes, I had read The Lord of the Rings, and thought that Elrohir, and Elladan were vastly underwritten, and thus I set about writing Elrohir's story). After playing him for 8 years, and having taken him to Godhood, and having given up his divinity, a few times, I finally retired him as an Elven God. I went through several characters in those times, most of them based on characters in books I had read. I played Aragorn Elessar, Meriadoc Brandybuck, Pippin Took, Allanon, Shea Ohmsford, and others who were quite original. I have run the gamut from Halflings to a Half Dragon Minotaur, and most of everything in-between. From Dwarven Rogues, to Halfling Paladins. We rid ourselves of the racial level caps in the '70s, and with those went the rules for racial class restrictions. A preponderance of house rules were adopted, adapted, and/or discarded after playtesting. We created tables for everything, and then played freeform, incorporated aspects of other gaming systems (I once played an Ogre with mutant powers a-la Marvel Super Heroes).

My DMing career started quite soon after my playing career. After having a taste of portraying someone completely fantastical, I couldn't wait to actually be GOD of my own gaming world. Like all new DMs, I made a few rookie blunders, but being God, I was able to sweep them under the carpet, as it were, by rectifying my initial Monty Haulism with sadistic and ruthless sapping of their resources. It didn't take long to locate that happy medium wherein everyone had fun. That is, after all, THE #1 Rule to Gaming: Have Fun. Whether you are the DM, or a player, Rule #1 is: Have Fun.

In around 1985, I went through a particularly potent phase of creativity. Not necessarily originality, but certainly creativity. It was during this time, that I created the world’s most in-depth targeting table for Humanoids, based on D100. You needed to be either a Med Student, Body-Builder, or a Martial Artist to understand the entire thing. Luckily, I fell into group #3. We playtested the thing, and found that it afforded us hours and hours of extra enjoyment from the game. No longer was it, "Cool, I hit!", It was "DUDE! I pierced him through his lung!" This also provided a lot of In-Game interaction between the PCs, and a track-list of scars, with particularly nasty wounds being written down for future reference, in character, in taverns, and such... "Hey, man... you remember when that Orc pierced my calf with his long-spear? We ended up kicking butt on THAT group, eh?" It was also around this time, that I created my lasting Game World: Earth. Billions of years in the future... Earth. I started placing the different gaming 'Worlds' onto MY world. It is called, 'Second Chance'.

Well, we’ve (okay, I’ve) been playing that world for right at 17 years, now, it’s gone from Bakersfield, California; to Orange County, California; and now up around the Fresno, California area. It was not, at first, known as ‘Second Chance’… it started as ‘The new campaign’, in Bakersfield, those many years ago. Since that time, I have only created one other gaming world, and it can encompass any other gaming worlds I wish to create in the future… It is set in, and on, a Dyson Sphere… More on that at another time…

So, there it is… in a highly compacted nutshell, the condensed version of the Gaming Bio of C. Baize.