About Nebular

"Who is this Nebular guy" you ask? Perhaps it's time I tell you all a little about myself.

I'm 30 and am an application developer for a health assessment software company. All of my programming knowledge is self-taught. I did some teaching at a local university for a year before actually getting into professional development. I have certifications in application development, database administration, and Microsoft CRM Customization.

I started playing D&D when I was 17 when a friend of mine turned me on to it. It sounded neat and I played with them for a couple of weeks, but I just didn't get it. "What a stupid game!" I thought. "Who the hell would find this fun?" A few months later, for whatever reason, I had a nasty itch to play the game again. So I found a local group and suddenly got hooked. After a couple of years I started to toy around with the idea of DMing, but the idea scared the hell out of me. Eventually I moved away and found another group. But there was a catch. There were three players including myself, and neither of them wanted to be the DM. Thus began my DMing career. I ran one of the Wizard's modules from their site. I'm pretty sure I butchered it. Badly. I didn't know what I was doing. After running a few more I actually go the hang of it. So we picked up a few more players and I went from running short, pre-built modules, to writing a whole campaign. But I always hated those stupid little do-gooders. I cheered for Megatron and booed Optimus Prime. I laughed when Serpentor poisoned Duke. Skeletor was my hero. Why can't the bad guys have fun? Why do all of the D&D materials say Evil is an un-playable alignment? Screw that! So I pitched the idea of an Evil-aligned group to the players. "They'll never go for it" I thought, expecting resounding laughter. But no! No sooner did I finish the sentence and people are shouting out which class they're taking, giggling with glee! The campaign went from level 1 straight through to 20 and only ended because I ended up moving back to my home town. Everyone loved it and hated to see it end. The final night's crowing achievement was beating the Tarrasque. We were all wondering if it could be done, but they actually managed to drag it down in 7 (count 'em, 7) rounds and permanently slay it.

My last D&D campaign was an extension of the previous one. The original campaign provideded the background story for it, with the old PCs being prominent NPCs that play important roles in the Zhentarim and Church of Bane and gave the PCs access to new knowledge and resources. This campaign also went from level 1 straight through to 20 but eventually ended due to a bad case of writer's block.

I tend to let my players play what they want. The previous campaigns had an undead anti-paladin (we altered the paladin class), a half-dragon Zhentarim Skymage with a blue dragon for a mount, a vampire corrupter (another paladin variant) and a lich cleric. I've found it's more enjoyable for everyone if the players get to play really interesting characters that they want to try out, and gives me new and interesting ways of challenging them.

My new project is a slight departure from the Dungeons & Dragons universe. The group tried out 4th Edition and liked some of the changes, but we still prefer more of the old ideas from 3.5. We gave Pathfinder a try shortly after it came out and decided that this was the way we wanted to go. I'm now in the process of crafting a world for my new campaign where magic has been outlawed after a recent calamity that reshaped the world. The idea came from a combination of laziness and inspiration. I didn't want to create an entire world from scratch right at the start, but I wanted a defined land mass that had the flexibility of letting me add new locations as I need them. It was also important that the player's didn't need to assume they had all of this knowledge of a world that had existed for ages - they should discover it as I discover it. As part of creating their characters, the players were asked to create back stories and make up locations as needed. This has helped both sides. The players become part of the world creation process and gain an understanding of part of the world by describing it, and I, as the GM, get interesting adventure ideas and unique locations that I would likely never had come up with.

I stumbled upon an ad for RPGXplorer in early 2005 and couldn't wait to get my hands on it. I hated the applications that were available at the time, and I had been writing a character management tool on-again/off-again for quite some time and made little progress. So I took my chances with it, pre-ordering in May, eagerly awaiting the release. Since its official launch I've been writing companion tools for it such as RPGXHelp and FeatXplorer to make my life easier, and decided to share it with anyone else who was interested. I have spent countless hours entering feats and spells from all of my books into RPGX to make my DMing life easier. After much debate, I decided to start packing this material into datasets for others to download. When custom character sheets became a possibility with the introduction of XML Workshop, I slapped together my first sheet - the DMG Stat Block. It was painful. I had tried to work with XSLT before but could never really understand it. It took me about 3 weeks to cobble the little thing together, but I did it. And much to my surprise - people loved it and wanted more. Thankfully writing the sheets has become much easier now that I've actually done some practical work with XSLT and finally understand it. The amount positive response to everything I have written has amazed me. So thanks to everyone who throws feedback and ideas at me. :)

What do I do that's not D&D- or programming-related? Well, games are a huge passion - especially horror. I'm a slave to the Silent Hill series, and have started playing Warhammer (fantasy). I also play bass guitar and while I'm far from going pro, I am hoping to find an 80s-style band to hook up with in the near future (yes, I love 80s rock and metal). I also play a few songs every couple of weeks with a country band at a local bar. I also love wacky cartoons like Invader Zim, Angry Beavers, and Duckman, as well as a number of British comedies.