I grew up on the Game of Life, Stock Ticker, Masterpiece, Monopoly and Clue as well as card games like Crazy Eights, Rummy and Hearts. My sister, brother and I would make up our own games using paper, crayons and stuff we found around the house.

I had a subscription to Games magazine and excitedly ordered the very first Dungeons & Dragons module when it came out. Pored over the instructions when they came, spent hours designing my own dungeon adventure. Played it once (ONCE!) with my family, but my parents forbade us from playing it again when my scary story frightened one of my young siblings to tears. Heard the wargames club at my school was playing D&D, so decided to go to a meeting. Quit the club after one session when it became clear that having a girl in their midst was too confusing for the guys.

My brother & I took turns reading code from GAMES magazine into our TRS-80. I got hooked on text-based adventure games, and wrote my own. In fact, it was trying out the Crowther & Woods Colossal Cave on Computer Science Day at the University of Waterloo that convinced me to go into CSC at the University of Toronto.

In university, of course, I found all kinds of kindred spirits like Tom West, clith, poslfit and aiabx who would play board games like Nuclear War, Junta, Talisman and Paranoia. And of course role-playing games like D&D, yay! My favourite D&D character: Charity the Hobbit in aiabx's campaign.

To keep this as short as possible (ha), I'll skip over my obsessions with computer games like Rogue (the good ol' ASCII text version), Civilization, SimCity, and Myst.

I met Jeff (jridpath) while at the University of Toronto. We've been married 18 years, and I'm still madly in love with him. He games with friends most Friday nights but I don't usually participate because I'm SO not a night person, and they sometimes don't actually start playing until 8 or 9 pm. Occasionally I'd get together for a daytime gaming session, but only for special occasions.

Then Jeff introduced me to BGG. He told me about all the cool people on the forums (and yes, he specifically mentioned YOU) and how much he enjoyed going to BGG.con every year.

Me and BGG:

Curious, I joined BGG and also attended my first BGG.con last year. You can see my BGG.con report here. Wow. I was in heaven. No matter how early I woke up, I could wander down to the games rooms and find people playing! Ok, so many of them had been up all night but STILL(!). Plus, unlike my experience back in high school, females were welcome AND just as enthusiastic as the guys.

Though I didn't think it possible,I enjoyed this year's BGG.con even more. After the convention, I made an attempt to explain to my non-gamer blog readers why I love boardgaming so much. It's not just the gaming, it's the community. Everyone's just so darned friendly and welcoming -- reminds me a lot of the filk community. I've had fun posting comics but I've been gradually being pulled into other areas of BGG, plus I'm starting to investigate the Toronto Area Boardgaming Society more because of jridpath, belash and others.

Oh, ack. I've gone on WAY longer than I expected. wargamer55 is going to kill me. You can learn more about my current tastes in games on my profile page.

Super-condensed non-gaming info:

I graduated from the University of Toronto with majors in CSC and PSY. Worked as a programmer/analyst at Toronto-Dominion (COBOL! ugh) for two years before quitting the corporate world and hurling myself into the arts, encouraged and supported by jridpath. Built a website. Sold a website. Wrote a book. I'm currently writing novels for young people and have a literary agent at Curtis Brown in NYC. I write songs for & perform with my filk group; we have several albums out & have performed concerts in Germany, England, U.S. and Canada. You can hear samples of our songs on our MySpace page. I'm a writer and cartoonist and post info and comics for writers in my Inkygirl blog.

And here are my two truths and a lie:

I jammed with Richard Hatch (Tom Zarek in the new Battlestar series / Apollo in the original BSG). He played drums, I played my flute. Seemed like a nice guy.

I brunched with Steve Riggio (now CEO of Barnes & Noble) on 5th Avenue. I was really, really nervous. He wore brown corduroy pants and talked fast.

When Deep Space Nine ended, I wrote a tribute to Captain Janeway that ended up getting printed in the TV Guide Collector's Edition: FAREWELL TO STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE. My music group recorded the song for one of our CDs.

When Deep Space Nine ended, I wrote a tribute to Captain Janeway that ended up getting printed in the TV Guide Collector's Edition: FAREWELL TO STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE. My music group recorded the song for one of our CDs.

Some questions to get you started:

1. You're not a night person, so when DO you get to play games?
2. Has your love of gaming affected your art?
3. Are you good at Pictionary?
4. Have you ever played a wargame? If so, which one? And would you do it again?
5. There was a big controversy this week over Games Workshop's intellectual property policy. As an artist who creates copyrighted work and a gamer who might like to make fair use of copyrighted works, where do you think the line should be drawn?

Congrats!

Have fun with your week!

So do you play with the undercover cop? (Ca$h-n-Gun$)

Congrats and enjoy your week in the sun (or snow!).

Congrats on making GotW, I always enjoy your contests.

Janeway? On Deep Space Nine?
Liar, liar pants on fire.

Question!
Text Adventures; do you still play them and do you prefer their 'successors', the point and click games with their graphics (like Myst) or do you prefer to let your imagination run wild with the text based descriptions?

Great choice Seth; congrats Debbie!

Love your cartoons. I see you write novels as well as cartoon AND perform in a folk (I assume!) music group. Again, I could use the non-existent jealous emoticon here.

Rogue, eh? What was the toughest letter to kill?

Enjoy your week. We expect to see a cartoon about the GOTW experience!

Congrats! I enjoy reading your cartoons! (and, it's nice to have other females around...)

I like trees, dice, and food.

Great choice for GoW. The comics are great!

And here's a question for YOU:

I see from your profile you used to play D&D. What was your favourite character?

Nice! Congratulations Debbie!

Inkygirl was the first user I subscribed to. (No, I'm not stalking her!) I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't miss any of the cartoon caption contests. Too bad I can't always think of something clever to say.

4. Until very recently, I used to refuse to play any wargames. But jridpath and several of my friends love wargames, and JUST TONIGHT on the way home from TABScon, I was asking jridpath about Advanced Squad Leader, a game our friend aiabx adores. I rolled my eyes and dismissed as something that sounded dull, but then Jeff explained why he enjoyed it. And you know, the narrative/storytelling aspect sounded pretty cool. I've already decided to ask aiabx if he'll teach me Squad Leader sometime. So my question for you wargamers out there: What wargames would you suggest to a wargame newbie?

Question:

What is your most and least favorite game mechanic and why?

Congrats Debbie!

I'm a Studio Ghibli fan, too, by the way. My favourite is My Neighbor Totoro. Haven't seen Ponyo yet -- did you you like it?