About Me

This would be the obligatory bio page. I was born in 1969, so I am barely a 60’s baby. I’ve always had an interest in reading, mainly science fiction and fantasy. As I grew older, I discovered role-playing games and then wargames.

Erik L. Owner of Arkayn Game Designs

Over the years, I’ve played most of the role-playing games that have been published, though with the recent explosion of indie publishing that percentage has decreased. Around the year 2000, I decided that the wargames in my favorite category (science fiction) did not fully encompass what I wanted from a game. This led to me starting work on Astra Imperia. Six years later I decided to self-publish what I had through Lulu.com. I immediately started on a version 2 as soon as it was out as there were things I was not entirely happy with.

Writing a wargame was interesting. But it was a lot simpler than writing a role-playing game, which was my next brilliant idea. Why not write my own rpg? Everyone else was doing it, so I thought it would be easy enough to do so myself. I delved into two areas, science fiction and my other favorite, fantasy. For the science fiction game, Via Astrum, I decided that since I already had a world/universe in Astra Imperia I would go with that. The fantasy entry though suffered from not having a world setting in mind. I also wanted a game that would be able to replicate pretty much anything that a player or GM wanted. As it is, Eldritch Adventures lags in development hell.

Going back in time, I graduated high school in 1987. I toyed with college, attending classes at UNO and Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, Nebraska. Both of these endeavors ended in failure. By 1991, I was deeply embedded into the fast food industry and the prospect of flipping burgers and scooping fries for a living scared the shit out of me. So I started classes at ITT. 1993 saw me graduate from ITT with a shiny new AA in Electronic Engineering Technology. This lead to a job with Gateway 2000 in South Dakota. After nearly a year in phone tech support, I moved to the engineering department. This is where I would spend the remainder of my tenure with Gateway. In the engineering department, I sort of fell into a programming position with two of my colleagues. This led to my next career, programming.

In late 1998, Gateway and I parted ways. My parents had moved to the Chicago area in 1996, so I moved there as well. I started work with the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation as an internal programmer. Over the next two decades, I had jobs with various Chicagoland companies, always as a programmer or IT position.  I also flirted with self-contract positions.

This interest in programming led to me starting to write a computer aid for Astra Imperia. Work on this has had fits and starts. And stops. But work does continue on it slowly.

Anyway, that’s me. Programmer, IT person, Gamer, Game Author.