Pigmy: Describe how your pilot name came to be your pilot name
Verran: When I was younger, I wanted to be a writer. I was very interested in the sci fi/fantasy (Tolkien-ish) genre.
Verran was the name of a character I had created in a series of short stories. I also used the name in several D&D sessions. I liked the name so much, it stuck with me.
Pigmy: What drew you to the Descent Rangers in the first place, and who recommended you, if applicable?
Verran: Back in the 90's, my brother,
Wolf, would have me skip class with him every once and awhile. We, and other friends, would go to the city's new LAN center to play Descent. I was horrible at first, and truly hated the game; until I changed my keyboard configuration (I was a keyboard-only player up until about 1998). After that, I could hold my own. Over time, the LAN center was getting expensive and harder to get to, so we eventually got online. In 1996,
Wolf discovered the Rangers and brought me along for the ride. We were attracted to the group-style play and overall integrity of the members.
KoolBear was my sponsor (you only needed a sponsor at the time).
Shortly after joining, we became friends with
Cemada and started helping out. Game reports used to be emailed to admins and entered into a spreadsheet. Medal awards were also calculated manually. It got to a point where it would easily take an entire weekend to do all of the calculations. It was not fun. Luckily,
PFunk stepped in and automated the game reporting process. If this hadn't been done, the Rangers would have probably shut down a long time ago.
I also made most of the medal graphics, except for Activity (used to be Leadership), Excellence and Service medals.
As
PFunk got busy, I ended up teaching myself programming, in an effort to add more features to the website.
Gritz added Descent 3 support in 1999.
Over time, I learned enough to start a career in web and software development. I have been lucky enough to be pretty successful and feel like I owe the Rangers for providing a context to something so profound in my life.
I retired sometime in 2006 and left the Descent community, thinking never to return. When the Rangers were "brought back" in 2011, a series of members emailed me, asking to return as an administrator again. So, on behalf of these friends, I decided to come back and help stabilize the group.
So, the old website was poorly designed and not very scalable. I made it a priority to fix this. A lot of
Icewolf's ideas were integrated into the new website.
Icewolf,
Sirius,
Tylosaurous,
Ryusei117,
Whoskyd and several other members were very helpful with testing the site. I was very happy to finally launch it in early 2013. It was a lot of work and took about two years to build.
Pigmy: How long have you been playing Descent for?
Verran: Since late 1995.
Pigmy: What other kinds of games are you interested in?
Verran: Descent is the only competitive game I play. I am not a very competitive person and generally do not enjoy games where people fight against each other. I prefer cooperative games, especially RPGs. I really enjoyed playing Neverwinter Nights 1 (Bioware) for quite some time. In more recent years, I've enjoyed Left 4 Dead.
Pigmy: What hobbies interest you outside of Descent/Gaming?
Verran: Programming and web development. Composing music. Fishing and camping. Graphic design.
Pigmy: Would you recommend Descent to other people and would you recommend the Rangers to other people?
Verran: Absolutely. I would recommend the Rangers to folks who enjoy group-play and structure. Those that don't may not enjoy the group as much as others.
