VITAL STATISTICS Date of Birth 10 days past the Ides of March, Year of the Metal Monkey RPGamer Hire Date August 14, 2005 RPGamer Position Reviewer/Minion Location West Texas Personal Homepage tylerwillis.com Anime Ranma 1/2 Mononoke Hime Cowboy Bebop Movies Matrix LOTR The Rock Authors Robert Jordan JRR Tolkein Raymond E. Feist Mercedes Lackey JK Rowling George RR Martin RPGs FFX/FFVI Lunar:SSC Disgaea Tales of Symphonia Skies of Arcadia SMT:Nocturne Non-RPGs Super Bust-A-Move Burnout 3 Worms World Party Soul Calibur Crazy Taxi Collections 692 Games 552 Books 893 DVDs

This pic is a bit old; I am somewhat different now. My hair reaches my shoulders and is no longer green. I have also lost the ability to make the world blur around me.

My name is Tyler, and this is my story.

Or, at least, this is part of my story. The whole of the story would be at once pedantic, drawn out, and somewhat repulsive; we'll hit the highlights.

Hi, I'm Tyler, and I play RPGs.

Somewhere there is a support group for such people; RPGs Anonymous, which gives out little pamphlets detailing the 7 Steps To Weaning Yourself From Mindlessly Addicting RPGs. I only go because my Fight Club got shut down.

My first foray into the world of RPGs was in the early 1980s, a text based adventure whose name I could not summon for all the crystals in the world. Our Atari didn't have any RPGs, but the NES brought home goodness: Final Fantasy, two Zeldas, and an Ultima title. There was never any question of whether I liked them or not: I still have all four with their accompanying manuals/boxes, but the Nintendo Power strategy guide for Final Fantasy was used so much that it is now in several pieces.

Though I continued to play some PC RPGs (mmmm… Quest for Glory), I underwent a console drought during the SNES/PSX years. This is a period of my life that I generally refrain from mentioning; it was a Dark Age.

Luckily I had a college roommate who believed in the old-style goodness (SNES/Genesis) and the (then) new-fangled technology (Dreamcast). I slapped myself upside the head and resumed playing as if entering a Renaissance. I am now in the Golden Age of RPGing and am attempting to rectify the serious gaps in my RPG education.

The Pedantic Heading of Curriculum Vitae

Unfortunately, I do occasionally have a life that interferes with game-playing.

I have always been a nerd of the worst sort: academically gifted. I was valedictorian of my high school and graduated with a triple BA in religion, classics, and history from Baylor University. I have several years of graduate work under my belt, but I have come to the realization that the academic path is not for me despite my proficiency. I am currently engaged in trying to find my life's purpose.

I am a writer at heart, and I am attempting to write a fantasy novel. This takes up a good bit of time but seems to be heading nowhere fast. Maybe I'll finish it someday. Maybe not.

I am a collector. The sidebar indicates my three biggest collections: games, DVDs, and fiction books. Yes, those are real honest-to-goodness numbers. No, I am not rich. For several years I have run an eBay business designed to finance my various collecting efforts. Though I have no training in such, I have enjoyed both the business aspect and the very tangible rewards. Hopefully my living space will eventually allow me to make a Room of Doom and show off the home theatre, gaming systems, DVDs, etc.

Webs Away!

I've been visiting RPGamer for some time, and I randomly decided that I ought to start writing reviews of the games that I play. A few submissions later, I had the privilege of being asked to become a staff reviewer.

I'm also the designer/operator/slave of tylerwillis.com - a blog full of my ramblings. Feel free to check it out; my non-RPG reviews are posted there.

If you are not oddly bored, feel free to read further about me in either the tylerwillis.com bio, the Breaking Windows bio, or the Baylor College of Arts & Sciences bio. The Baylor link has a really bad pic of me.

   Last Updated: September 13th, 2005