James Mathe

I am a programmer (C, PHP, and Unix), designer, analyst, database admin (Oracle, Mysql, etc) and more ... but when I can, I try to make my living doing things a bit more interesting than consulting or cubical work. This site is more about those other things I have done that are gaming related.

I am owner and president of Minion Development Corporation and co-founder of OneBookShelf, Inc which has been responsible for many projects and stores over the years.

I've been an entrepreneur and developer all my life, from my early childhood days of modifying the Pathfinder to include weapons and monsters, to creating my own Adventure style game on the Applie ][, to making my own dungeon tiles/corridors/doors out of wood in the mid 80's, to developing my own BBS with text graphic city map (City of Aldimar) you could wander and sewers to attack monsters on my Apple //e computer in the late 80's.

During the BBS chat board era I developed an AI for intellegent NPCs in a completly original MUD written from scratch in Unix and using Oracle database in the 90's. These were the days of GemStone on Genie where it cost $6 per minute (yes minute) to play. I also owned Abyss.com for a few years before the Internet took off - rats should have kept that one eh?

I started one of the first LAN Gaming Centers in early 1994 (called the Virtual Gaming Center - first ever license for playing network Shareware Doom). I have always enjoyed the process of creating things original and released several popular deathmatch levels: DMCath24, Tourney3.wad, Tourney2.wad, and more for the VGC tournaments.

I own the RPGHost Network of sites (created in 1999) which includes some great sites like RPGLife.com, RPGSheets, RPGNews.com, RPGRegistry.com, RPGStrategy.com and more...

In 2001 and 2002 I hosted totally online gaming conventions at CyberCon with our own custom scheduling software and use of many virutal table tops. With hosts as grand as Gary Gygax, Tracy Hickman, Sean Reynolds, Steve Jackson and more.

Around 2001 I created RPGNow.com (pdf download store for gaming) which pioneered the paper and pen RPG download industry. Years later I merged with our fisrt serious competitor DriveThruRPG - now we are the largest reseller of the most role-playing games in the world (in print and out of print).

I published a series of ePublisher Guides to help new startup companies. Also created and published a quick action sci-fi game system called Hyper-Killer.

Late in 2003 I opened a brick and mortar game store: Game Universe in the Milwaukee, WI area. A large store of board games, role-playing games, dice, CCGs, and miniatures. Also RPGShop.com for online sales and clearance items at RPGOverstock.

Recently (2010) I started a Board Game company: Minion Games and (2009) I've been working on a board game called "Those Pesky Humans" which you can find more about in my blog and gallery on Board Game Geek. Also a new site called PlayTesters.Net to help designers find play testers.

If you're looking to contact me, it's best to do so by email at: W E B M A S T E R @ R P G S H O P . C O M.

Happy gaming!