I am a 71-year-old gamer from Ohio. I cut my teeth on the Original D&D White Box edition while I was stationed in Misawa, Japan in the 70’s. At one point in time, I had an autographed copy of the White Box edition with EGG and Dave Arneson’s autographs. I’ll discuss what happened to it later on. I’ve never really lost my love for the Original version. While I have played versions up to 3.5 and even dipped my toes in Pathfinder, I really enjoy the simplicity that was the Original D&D.   Over the years, mainly due to the travel that was involved in my military career, I also ventured into Tabletop Boxed Games, i.e. those by Avalon Hill. My interest in history, primarily military history and re-enactment, led me to the military miniatures arena. I painted complete miniature armies for the Ancient period and the Seven Years War. It was about that time that my first child was born and needless to say, gaming became difficult due to a lack of time.   So for about 4 years, most of my stuff was set in some boxes stored away in a closet. That’s when disaster struck. Our place was pretty small and available storage area was even smaller. I had about 10 boxes of books, miniatures, terrain, etc. that I had collected and so my parents had offered to store it at their place in an empty closet in a bedroom that wasn’t used.   Things went fine for a couple of years and then I got a call one morning that there had been a fire at my parents’ home. The loss was pretty devastating. As I went through the boxes praying I could salvage something I realized all was a loss when my miniatures were just puddles of solid lead mixed with the different colors from the paint.   I think it was that loss that woke me up to what I was missing, the camaraderie that was found in tabletop gaming. Slowly I worked my way through eBay, conventions, local gaming stores, regaining copies of everything I had lost. Aside from the Original White Box version, there had also been a complete collection of everything that was Judges Guild. It had been the basis for my very first campaign world and would become my favorite of all those around at that time.   In 1975, I attended GenCon VIII, the year after D&D was published. It was there that I was able to get the autographs of both EGG and Dave Arneson. In 1979, I had been such a fan of the Judges Guild material during my PCS return to the U.S. from Japan, I included a stop at their location in Decatur, Illinois and had the opportunity to meet several of the original creators while I was there.   In 1996, I attended the very first Origins that was held in Columbus, OH. Every year since then I have been in attendance from beginning to end. I have played an unbelievable cross-section of games there from miniatures to collectible card games to playtesting new games, i.e. HackMaster.   In 2017, I attended my first GaryCon. My intention is to attend everyone from now till the day I pass on.   Currently, I run most of my games online but would like to get a small group together on a monthly or semi-monthly basis for some Old School Gaming. I’m currently working on two projects: one is an OSRIC-compatible Dungeon project located in the Wilderlands of High Fantasy in an area southwest of the City State of the Invincible Overlord. The second is an expansion of the original Tegel Manor. This will either include additions to the initial structure or newly found entrances to previously unknown underground areas. It will also include a conversion to the OSRIC 2.2 Rules.   I’ve also decided to focus my work on the Swords & Wizardry as well as the OSRIC rules systems. I feel that’s the best way forward to make my work compatible with most of the OSR rules systems. There is very limited access to the Original D&D rules and OSRIC is very comparable to the 1st edition rules, it should make it easier for anything I develop to be used with any of the OSR systems. Where possible my projects will be System-Neutral.