Hello, greetings, salutations, shalom, aloha, and namaste! Also... My name is Simon Fiasco. This, of course, is only a nom de plume. (Isn't that a great phrase? Say it with me. Nom de plume. You can feel the italics tickle your nasal passages, vibrating with arrogant titillation as the idiom instills a certain degree of superiority into the left frontal lobe of your cerebral cortex, can't you?) My real name is an unfortunate, bland, and pedestrian one, like Evan, Patrick, or Brian. No offense to those of you who bear those names (mine may very well be among them!), but nobody wants to be named Evan, Patrick, or Brian. Well, maybe a few people. Evan Rachel Wood, Patrick Stewart, and Patrick Warburton, who are actual physical manifestations of unadulterated awesome. And then there's Brian Blessed, who has really ruined the name for anyone else using it, what with his history of sparring with the Dalai Lama, climbing Mt. Everest, knocking Doctor Who out cold, and keeping a full grown grizzly bear hidden behind his massive beard. If you're going to be named Brian, you must be Brian Blessed. Otherwise, what's the point? I am neither of the aforementioned Patricks, nor Evan Rachel Wood. And while I am probably a Brian, I am not Brian Blessed. But since we're all going to be great friends, you are going to need to call me something. So... you might as well call me by my chosen name, the one with which I have introduced myself. Though I write in third person, I’m not fond of talking about myself in third person. I’m a writer, satirist, and full-time oddball, and have been doing the role playing games thing since 1981 when a neighbor kid introduced me to a world of dungeons and a couple dragons. Two years later, I traded a He-Man action figure for a handful of oddly-shaped dice and a D&D Basic rulebook that was missing its cover. It’s been my jam ever since. Did I mention I also write? Yes... yes, I did. My first introduction to LitRPG (is everyone still calling it that, in light of Aleron Kong's trademark?) was more cinematic than literary. TRON, viewed at a drive-in theater back in 1982, followed by the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon the next year. (The guy who played the evil Venger also voiced Eyeore from Winnie the Pooh for decades. Who knew?) Maybe neither of those are technically LitRPG, but they definitely formed some of the foundations for the genre. As far actual literary introductions go, Larry Niven's Dream Park is another one of those bedrock works. I read it sometime in the late eighties or early nineties - I can't recall which. Current LitRPG? As in the stuff that makes up the genre as it's understood now? I got nothin', save Ready Player One, Off to Be the Wizard, and NPCs and people apparently argue against all three of those being LitRPG. Probably the same people who decided Pluto isn't a planet. Right. I just found LitRPG, and I'll be playing some catch-up. I tried Kong's The Land, but at halfway in I've got no sympathy for the main character. Ascend Online (Luke Chmilenko) is on the iPad now, but I'm only fifty pages or so in. I'm also outlining a little tale of my own. More to come on that later, I guess. Anyway, once again... hello! And thanks for having me. Simon Fiasco