About Me
I am a family man, computer programmer, board game player, and hobbyist game designer. I'm analytical, creative, artistic, strategic, and generally considered introverted, although if you get me in the right situation, I can talk until your eyes glaze over.
In High School, I started programming in Apple Basic. I did well with it at that point, but stepped away for a while. While in the military, I got a Windows 98 PC and started building my website on GeoCities. I have moved it around and upgraded some things over the years, although you'll probably come across some things that I never got around to changing if you look enough.
I have worked in IT since 2000 and have done system support in addition to web design and development. My experience includes project management, specification gathering, interactive web application development, database design and administration, Linux server administration, and Windows network administration.
In 2015, I started designing a game called Operation Camper. It's an abstract game, primarily based on the use of Looney Pyramids (which I had purchased to play Homeworlds). I liked that I could use the pyramid pieces alone to indicate facing along with different statuses based on the orientation of the pieces. The game was also inspired by Carcassonne and Robber Knights, as a tile-placing, area-control game. The name of my game was also inspired by a somewhat insulting term for video game players who would just wait at a strategic position to stop other players from getting through - an idea that I actually wanted to implement in my board game.
In 2019, I self-published my first board game through The Game Crafter. Farting Cows And The End Of The World was designed and refined over years of playing Operation Camper, but with a comical-theme. The first batch of my game sold out, but the game is still available on The Game Crafter for print-on-demand orders. It has been a lifetime dream for me to create a board game, and I'm excited that I was finally able have something to show as the result of my efforts.
As a follow up, in 2021, Rival Troops was published via The Game Crafter. This is another update to Operation Camper, using a different theme, but also using different rules for movement which make the game play faster. I've been considering renaming the game to Campground Rivals, because some people have said that the title makes them think it's more of a war game. The theme was inspired by Boy Scouts. However, I do still have some copies of the game on hand if you'd like to purchase a copy directly from me.
Although I don't often work on other game designs, I do have more that I've started, including two more variations of Operation Camper, a golfing game, Gosser's Golf, and a dexterity game, Snakebite.
More recently I've been getting back into Lego kits, especially Lego Spike, and other mechanical and electrical stuff, so the content on this site can range a bit from one page to another. Each area on this site focuses on different hobbies that I've had. They often are representative of different time periods in my life. This, of course is not a complete list of my interests, but is probably the most extensive found online about me, if you've come here for an autobiography.
Thanks for taking the time to check out my site.
--Nathaniel