An Ancient Mariner Of The RM Seas Emerges

Hello all,

I am new here, but I have been making free RPGs with RPG Maker since 2001. Up until 2006 I went by Legion. During 2006 I was briefly known as Count_Zero. Upon rejoining the community in 2008 I chose the handle of Max McGee. If you have not heard of me, well, what can I say. You must be fairly new. Because I have been around this scene forever and I have not been quiet. My fourteen continuous years of immersion in the RM scene have made me crusty, crotchety, and cantankerous old man at the ripe age of 28.

Over that time I have also made quite a few games. Like, going on two dozen or something now (they're not all hosted online anymore). Like many of us, most of my projects over the years have ended in abandonment and/or cancellation. They were good as a learning experience, but unfortunately nothing more. When I was younger, however, earlier in my RM "career" I actually managed to release three complete games by the end of 2006. Those games have been available for free on the internet continuously for nearly a decade now and by modern standards they are ancient relics built with engines that are themselves ancient relics. I am still extremely proud of them. I have won Misao awards. I have served as a judge on the Misaos. If you don't know what a Misao is, I don't hold it against you. We can't all be godless weaboos XD.

I fondly hope to complete the development of a full length game again one day. My current active project is a story-focused dark fantasy RPG called Lionheart, a reboot of a project called The Tower that I abandoned way back in 2002, a time during which some of you may literally have been toddlers. My old bones...they ache.

I have been considering going commercial with my projects since 2008 or 2009. Every single game I have released has been free thus far. Six years is a long time to be on the fence, waffling about going commercial. During that entire time I have continued releasing stuff for free. While I fully intend to transition to making commercial games one day soon, I worry that my doubts about being "good enough" may cause me to fall back on the "hobbyist" side of the fence.

My day job is as a professional game designer. But not the kind of games that involve pixels and bytes. I am the creator/co-owner/publisher of End Transmission Games, a purveyor of fine indie tabletop roleplaying games. I have also been working as a freelance writer in the tabletop RPG industry since 2011. If any of you are into the kinds of RPGs that involve paper and dice instead of pixels and bytes, this stuff may be exciting to you. For most of you, it will mean nothing, I'm sure.

My legion (lol) of RM games and I mainly hang out, as you can probably tell from the above links, on RPGMaker.net where I have like four hundred bajillion posts and where you can find reams and reams and reams of evidence that I have absolutely no life. This site seems much bigger and more active, so I'd love to hang out here to in order to increase my potential audience as a maker and purveyor of fine free vidyagames. It just remains to be seen if I can overcome my habit of checking Penny Arcade, RMN and literally nothing else on the internet. It is hard for old soldiers to change their ways. So if I disappear, that is why--it is just another example of an old dog failing to learn new tricks.

I have not been an active member of an RM-focused forum where "game topics" were allowed in the forums since 2008. Heck, I can't even remember the last time I made an introduction topic anyplace. It is certainly going to take me some time to adjust back to the culture of signatures and 'support' banners and game topics. I ask that you be patient with this veteran of the chapset wars.

A green text box has informed me that this is the only post I am allowed to make today, so I will see you tomorrow!