What's my design philosophy?
Who are my most memorable PCs?
What campaigns have I run?

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Pintrest

I am a freelance game designer, who has been dreaming up games for as long as I can remember. Growing up in San Jose, my passion for game design was fostered at a young age by a babysitter who brought his own Wild West game over one night. From that moment, my creative spark was lit. So what if no game met expectations, just create your own!

How would I describe myself? Restless Imagineer, Ancient World Academic, Rocket Scientist, D&D Devotee, National Park Lover, Vintage Trailer Enthusiast, and All-Around Geek Girl.

My spare time is spent playing and GM’ing RPGs (especially various flavors of D&D) and tending to my vegetable garden. Sadly, the last of my pets, twenty-year-old cat Dakota, has now passed into that great, grassy field in the sky.

What's in my RPG bookshelf?   What's in my games library?   What fantasy art & books do I love?

Game Design Philosophy

Where did Dream, Build, Play, Learn come from?

It’s how I describe my creativity cycle, so to speak. By my nature, first and foremost I’m a dreamer. I am constantly coming up with ideas of all sorts – from game ideas to kitchen organization. Basically, my imagination is on overdrive the majority of the time. However, I also have a strong desire to bring things to fruition. So, building is important to me too; I want to put my ideas into action. From creation, I can then enact the remainder of the cycle – play and learn. Interaction or playing with the creation generates perspective. Through perspective, I learn. Learning then triggers dreaming; and the cycle begins anew. It’s an iterative and generative cycle, one that is at the core of my approach to game design (well, and so much more in my life).

I will note that two transitions – dream-to-build and play-to-learn – are quite difficult. The first transition is explicitly difficult. That is to say that there is great risk inherent in daring to breathe life into any dream. You leave yourself open to criticism from your own voice and those of others. The second transition is more implicitly challenging. Once you’ve produced something, can you then engage with it honestly enough to learn? Talk to any game designer who took a game through serious playtesting. You have to set aside personal investment and really listen. It’s harder than you may think. But it’s where the real satisfaction is – making something not just for your own expressiveness, but to engage other people too. Perhaps that’s the engineer speaking in me, perhaps it’s just the humanist.

My D&D Heroines

Campaigns Run