Hi, I'm Merric, and I'm a gamer.

** all: Hi, Merric! **

At the time I'm writing this, I'm 35 years old and have been playing games, of one sort or another, for most of my life. My primary gaming hobby is Dungeons & Dragons, which I started playing back in 1982 or so, but in the last few years I've been playing a lot of boardgames as well.

The earliest "non-traditional" boardgame I played was Doctor Who: the Game of Time and Space, which you can find on the 'Geek if you look hard enough. A year later, and I was a Talisman fanatic. We played a lot of that. I've never actually owned any of the expansions - didn't have the money to get them, alas! - but, for the most part, I don't think I missed much. Played them with my friends anyway.

In 1990, I finished school and started going to Melbourne University. Whilst I was there I did two notable things: I played a lot of D&D, and I joined the wargaming club. I don't think I actually played _that_ many wargames, as the club was pretty small and failing, but it did introduce me to Diplomacy, Axis and Allies, and Dune, all of which gave me great pleasure and none of which I play today.

University was primarily interesting for the gaming opportunities it brought me rather than the studying. I'm fairly bright, but I hate academic work. That explains why I never actually quite finished my degree. During a year off (whilst I also got my first job), my world was shaken by the release of Magic: the Gathering. And boy, was I hooked. The fact that it came at the same time as my first job meant I had the money to spend on it... although, as it turned out, I didn't buy enough packs when I first started (during the days of Antiquities and Unlimited).

I was somewhat held back in my desire to do more with Magic by living in Australia, and even more when I moved from Melbourne to Ballarat. Still, I can credit Magic with one big revelation in my life: I enjoy writing about games. If you look back into the depths of the UseNET archives, you'll find the fan articles I wrote about playing Magic. They're not actually very good, but I enjoyed writing them.

Things haven't changed that much. I still enjoy writing and commenting on games, and I'm still probably not very good at it.

The next few years were living in Ballarat, unemployed. They weren't much fun from the money perspective, nor from the perspective that I no longer could see most of my friends. I made new friends through a local club where I could play a bunch of Magic. As 2000 approached, I began to play D&D again, and in 2000, with the release of 3rd edition, I started to play D&D once more on a weekly basis.

Sometime in the next few years, I bought Settlers of Catan, and so I began to move back towards boardgames. We'd play Settlers before each session of D&D. Carcassonne came next. Then San Marco. My game collection was slowly expanding, though my spending on it was far less than what I was spending on D&D.

2003 brought D&D Miniatures, and I loved them. Indeed, for the next three years I maintained a website that gathered together as much news as I could find about DDM, which made me "semi-famous". (That tag was actually used to describe me once).

Friends that really loved boardgames allowed me to start up a series of semi-regular boardgame days, which then became regular boardgame days once we didn't obsess about everyone coming at once. My boardgame collection began to really grow once this happened. I stopped playing Magic; the players weren't in the area any more.

The big bonus to my gaming life came in the form of Randy (Genesteeler), who I knew through my Magic days. Somehow we worked out we both enjoyed boardgames, and since then we've played each other almost as much as we've gamed with other people. Randy's a wargamer (and a Canadian) from way, way back, so his wargame collection finally got me interested in playing a wargame or two. Of course, being who I am, I dived into the deep end... my first serious wargame is Advanced Squad Leader, which I'm loving more and more. Randy doesn't play it, though. We tend to play Memoir '44, Combat Commander and Twilight Struggle together, although some more serious wargames will be in the near future, I expect.

I did get a job, as well. Started out as volunteer work at the local school, moved up to casual work, and is currently at part-time (3-1/2 days a week). I do computer stuff. More correctly, I'm responsible for seeing that the software that prints the reports works, and that the reports get printed. Occasionally, I even get to do a bit of programming. I've now been working at this school for about 10 years.

Oh yes, and there's a special "Ad Astra" program that has certain people teaching the brightest students about things not on the regular school curriculum. I was volunteered to help last year, so for the past year-and-a-half, I've been introducing those students to the best Eurogames and Ameritheme games I can find that can be played in about an hour. It's been very successful - from my initial group of 2, I'm now up to two groups of 4 students, and more waiting to join.

So, that's a small portion of my life. My name's Merric Blackman, I'm a 35 year old Australian gamer, single, and still living with his father. But my father's a great cook, and we live in a bluestone house (with tower) that he built himself. We get by.

Ok, two truths and a lie:

#1: My father and mother are (or were) both amazing linguists; my mother taught the Chinese language and did a lot for introducing Chinese into Australian schools, my father speaks over six different languages fairly well. I'm not a linguist, speaking only English well (and possibly not even that).

#2: My father taught my brother and me Euchre when we were in China. I also learnt blackjack there, and my most prized early possession was a old copy of "According to Hoyle".

#3: My brother (a year-and-a-half younger than me) was the bane of my early existence. He is a mad-keen sporty type who would drag me away from a nice book or game to play cricket with him. He doesn't understand boardgames, and he certainly doesn't understand D&D, leaving me to play a lot of D&D games solo using the charts in the back of the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide.