To say Shane has led an interesting life is an understatement, but a lifelong love for adventure, storytelling, and strategy fit very well into the world of gaming.

Axis & Allies was the first board game that proved to him that board games could be more than just dice luck and chance (not his strong points) and his love of RPGs stemmed from original NES games like Final Fantasy, The Legend of Zelda, and Crystalis while his strategic mind made him a nightmare in games like Medieval Total War II…or the Civilization series.

Braden introduced Shane to D&D nearly 10 years ago and he fell in love with TTRPGs instantly; no surprise for a fiction writer and avid storyteller. This table is where he also met Callahan with the two bonding instantly over twisted senses of humor and both having been professional poker players.

Shane is an avid player, DM, and loves creating TTRPG content and worlds. While he still loves great RPG video games, he spends most his time in the cozy farm-sim games like Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia, and dozens of others you may or may not have ever heard of.

Shane is author of the book My Brother’s Keeper and his gaming articles have also been featured on Level Skip and Hobby Lark, among others.

When I find a hobby I enjoy, I tend to throw myself into it with abandon. As a kid, this involved video games, board games, trading card games, and reading (and I guess it still does). The Goosebumps series were my favorite books, and I’d be clamoring for a chance to go to the library each week to read the new ones and reread old favorites.

When I found out about a chance to meet the author, R.L. Stine, through the Brain Juice Terrifying Title Contest, I jumped at the opportunity, entering the title “Dead Dogs Still Fetch”. A few months later I was paid a surprise visit by the legendary author himself, an experience I was able to relive recently after successfully tracking down lost footage of the event. I’m even still writing to this day.

In the gaming space, no game has quite captured my attention like Magic: The Gathering. I spent several years with the Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card games before I found it, but the creativity of the Commander format has been a major part of what keeps me coming back for more.

While my interest in card games evolved as I got older, my favorite video games remained in the 8 and 16-bit eras. I’ve even gotten into speedrunning randomized versions of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in addition to playing retro games on Twitch, so come say hi if you see me online!

I first started gaming with Anno 1602 and never stopped. City builders, shooters, every Total War game since Rome, I was even one of the early adopters of Minecraft. For most of my early life if I had any downtime it was spent on the family computer playing whatever I could get my hands on. Despite my love of video games I almost never played board games. My experiences were limited to things like Monopoly, dominoes, and chess, which I enjoyed but rarely felt a desire to return to more than once or twice a year.

That began to change in my first year of college when, while out for a walk around campus, a friend emerged from one of the residence halls and asked if I wanted to play a game. When I agreed I promptly found myself thrown into the midst of my first game of Dark Heresy knowing only one of the nine people in the room and having at best a vague idea of what a TTRPG was. Since that day I have, aside from a few months spent learning to drive a semi, been continuously gaming with various groups.

I first met Braden at TTRPG night and through him discovered the immense variety of board gaming, a world I had barely seen the fringes of before. Nearly every week something new, to me at least, and fascinating hits the table. I may not know the old tricks, but I know how to learn from the people who do.

I first cut my chops playing Tripoley with my grandparents in the early 1980’s (and they would take your hard-earned pennies too, make no mistake). I mixed that with other classic games such as Monopoly and Risk, and would willingly spend hours a day every day on such endeavors.

Soon came Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2^nd Edition, and at that moment, I was truly lost to the void of gaming. Games increased in complexity and number over the years, but it was with chess I began to truly appreciate the ability to anticipate the moves of my opponents based on my actions. This eventually led to my playing poker full-time to pay the bills after college. The hours were terrible and my associates were questionable, but I never missed a house payment in 2 years, nor did I during the years I was a poker dealer afterward.

Woodworking and 3D printing have also been major interests over the years, expanding what I can do in the gaming space exponentially (in fact, most shots that you’ll see of us playing board games occur over a solid oak gaming table that I built for Braden). Current/future projects include designing and building wooden board game boxes, printing miniatures (I highly recommend the Elegoo Mars v1 resin printer), 3D modeling of inserts, and writing material for use in fantasy TTRPG’s.