Hello world!
Welcome to the launch of Blue Rune Games!
This is a dream project and a labor of love that is decades in the making.
My name is Cody Cheves and ever since I was 7 years old and I forced my parents to help me mail my notebook paper drawings of level designs for a Sonic the Hedgehog game to SEGA (and receiving a letter back!) I have dreamed of making games and telling stories.
From that starting point I proceeded to create a mash-up of the Oregon Trail computer game and the Monopoly board game called Oregon-opoly for a school project. I was heavily invested in RPG maker 95 and 2000 in my middle school career (to age myself...) along with making my own version of Magic the Gathering/Pokemon TCG with my friends. We would trade our summer RPG maker projects back and forth on floppy disks and try to sell our crudely drawn stapled notebook paper comics to our class mates.
Later, when I was 13 years old, I stumbled across a glorious PC game box at some big box store while being dragged along on a shopping excursion with my parents. The back of the box declared, "It would be a damn shame to spend $60 on Diablo [instead of this game.]" I am, of course, talking about Baldur's Gate 2. I wasn't sure if it would even run on the family computer that I had to earn 30 minute increments of play time on by doing my chores and homework but I begged my parents until they let me buy it (must have been with allowance I had saved up?). I came home and when it was my turn for 30 minutes on that old creamy shell colored CRT Dell monitor I watched as the tiny page icons flew by and the blue install bar crept to the end of that window frame.
Dun DUUUUN DUN DUUUN!
Some strange and angelic choir whispered to me as the strange logo of an androgynous face with a headdress, two heads attached - one above and one below - greeted my eyes. I had never heard music like that in a video game. I had never heard the characters in my games speaking to me with different voices and personalities. I had no idea what all of these strange statistics like THAC0 were or why there was an unknowable string of texts in a window at the bottom yelling at me about 1d6s and critical hits. This was something called Dungeons and Dragons. It was strange. It was really funny and *spoilers* when I found out in the first 30 minutes that one of my new travelling companions' husband had been tortured and murdered and that my childhood friend had been kidnapped by their murderer I was at once deeply sad and furious.
13 year old Cody was going to do whatever it took to raise 20,000 gold pieces and rescue my best friend and help find peace or perhaps at least vengeance for this poor woman who had been broken before my young and naïve eyes.
This wasn't real but it made me feel things and think about things I had never considered before as a preteen American boy growing up in rural, conservative Texas/Oklahoma.
I didn't know of anybody in my schools who actually played tabletop Dungeons and Dragons or any RPG for that matter. They may have existed but I was already a pretty shy, nerdy, outsider kid. Maybe it was a well kept treasure that I failed my perception roll to discover. I would eventually find my way to my first tabletop experience but I had a few detours first.
I couldn't get enough of this type of experience and so I continued on with every new iteration. Perhaps it was Icewind Dale or maybe even that first disk of Baldur's Gate 2 that had a low resolution trailer for Neverwinter Nights, but either way - three dimensions of Dungeons and Dragons! I watched that trailer over and over. I had to get it.
Neverwinter Nights came along and I LOVED IT! Not only could I explore this world I fell in love with in 3D, I could make my own adventures! The beautiful and magnificent module editor! I found the forums. I downloaded every community expansion pack and module I could fit on my poor, little hard drive. I tried out a persistent world server and freaked out when somebody came to roleplay with me the first 5 minutes I logged on. You see, I had previously purchased the original Everquest with my saved up allowance as well. I installed it and played the demo and was so excited to hop on and play with my friends who had shown me the game at their houses after school. But, I had kind of not told my parents that it required a subscription. I wasn't really sure how that kind of thing worked anyway but I had hoped dearly that my parents would understand my excitement and sign me right up just like they had for Boy Scouts or kid's soccer league.
Alas, it was a sad day that I had to seal that fantastical box back up and take it back to Best Buy or wherever it was I had dragged my parents to and purchased it. I think I got my money back but I felt pretty dejected. I had to go to school and tell my friends I couldn't join them on their adventures. My level 1 EQ druid would live on only in my memory.
Fast forward to 15 or 16 year old Cody. He was making modules and quests. Sculpting outdoor zones from tiles or the very flat plains of virtual existence in the case of Neverwinter Nights 2! He was obsessed with fantastical deserts and tombs full of strange mystical cults or gangs of robbers because he finally had played Diablo 2 anyway, despite the warning on the back of Baldur's Gate 2. He never was brave enough to publish any of these modules on the forums and after the great hard drive failure and loss of his RPG Maker magnum opus from an entire summer of collaboration with his friends in high school, it would be a long time before he finished any such project again.
Eventually college came for me like it does to many. What is an 18 year old to do? I tried to combine the things I loved into what would presumably be a lucrative and fulfilling career. I studied Communication Design and sought to combine my love for painting and doodling with my computer skills I had accumulated with all of these fantasy game hobbies. It seemed to be going well and I convinced my parents to support me in a study abroad summer course that my friends and fellow art students were going on in Florence, Italy! I would be going on a real adventure! I applied for all the grants I could find and it didn't quite work out as easily as it could have but I figured out how to take out a loan to add to my current school bills. Just in time, I finished my application and dropped that whopping check for my first adventure outside of the United States.
I was young, dumb, and twenty-one! I could buy wine and smoke cigarettes! I thought I was cool in my bulky leather travelling sandals I bought for the trip that mixed very strangely with my black skinny jeans and mirrored aviator sunglasses that I was issued as a standard art school punk. I borrowed a big cheap DSLR "style" camera from a co-worker at the photography studio I did summer jobs for. Long story short - I became an adventurer. Perhaps one day I will write about this side quest but for now suffice it to say I could not return to a normal life. I was like Bilbo Baggins returning to The Shire after helping a troupe of dwarves fight a dragon and reclaim their home.
Nobody back home understood. The crotchety curmudgeon hobbits of my small hometown thought me strange and different. I no longer shared the same language of life with many of my friends and family. I was thus doomed to wanderlust as all good curmudgeons warn their children about when they sense they are starting to get fancy ideas and itches of "otherness."
It was this same time that I, along with my core friend group, was finally asked by a new good friend I met at college orientation, "Hey, do you guys want to play Dungeons and Dragons?" I looked at everyone and was the first to say "Absolutely!" I explained that I had always loved and played every PC game I could get my hands on based on tabletop Dungeons and Dragons but had never actually played pen-and-paper before. We all decided that Thursday would be the day and we started playing every week.
It was magic. It was better than I could have ever imagined! The first session we all managed to attract an entire town guard and were barricaded on the top floor of an Inn that had been harboring some sort of dark rogue or wizard. We never found out exactly because I had accidentally killed a guard and attempted to turn his face into a disguise to talk my way out of the Inn. This, of course, backfired gloriously and we ended up setting the place on fire, backflipping out the windows of the second floor and charging down the street with a good 20 guards running after us attempting to shoot us down with arrows and crossbow bolts. I'm pretty sure the DM concocted some spontaneous portal that we were whisked into just to save us from a session one total party kill on our first night of ever playing Dungeons and Dragons.
This, along with many other memories, will stick with me forever.
The time our monk slayed a dragon with 3 unconventional narrative tactics that the DM allowed, on the grounds he rolled a natural 20, which he did three times in a row!
The time we had to rescue a group of new first timers from our terrible group mate who insisted on torturing them by stealing all their loot and threatening to leave them trapped in some magical crystal trap thus losing their brand new first time characters. This led to the first and only time I have ever killed one of my fellow party members (Arrow of Smiting, baby!).
Eventually, I was asked if I wanted to try my hand at being a DM. I now understand the plight of the forever DM and the hopes that our glorious leader had set upon me. I had so much fun. I drew some forest maps on this giant piece of sketch paper I got from the art supply section of my school bookstore. My characters were always druids and rangers so I of course created a story of some strange deaths at a hunting lodge in the middle of an obscure forest. It was definitely some kind of werewolf mystery and my players successfully found the body I had hidden and navigated their way to the cave system deeper in the woods slaying their quarry in heroic fashion! All of those modules I had created for Neverwinter Nights left collecting virtual and REAL dust on some long forgotten hard drive had finally led to one of my creations being enjoyed by my friends.
Eventually, people graduated or moved away, but somehow I inherited the old Third Edition starter box of maps, character sheets, and odd assortments of tiny metal figures, LEGO men, and eraser nubs with faces drawn on them that used to represent everything in our games. It is sitting two feet away from me as I type this story now along with all the maps and manuals from the games that represent some of my most treasured fantasy memories growing up.
The story of my side quests between college and starting my own business in the wake of a global pandemic is a tale for another time, but as somebody who struggled a long time with my identity as a fantasy geek and gamer in a culture that made it shameful or a "waste of time," I have found a new joie de vivre. I can watch and learn from other people on Twitch, YouTube, and every other imaginable form of communication brought on through the promise of the internet. I am not alone and neither are my compatriots out there. When I hear stories of other people having had the same experiences impact them like they did me, I have hope for us all. I read these stories on personal blogs. I hear them being told by the cast of Critical Role, a pretty much mainstream establishment at this point. Stories of people who were jocks and sports stars in high school who also loved musical theatre and fantasy games finally being free to have both of these identities accepted and even applauded. It is a golden age with new ideas and challenges for fantasy gaming enthusiasts and beyond! There is an infrastructure for us to share what we love and the stories that come about because of that love. There are traditional and non-traditional paths to being successful in an industry that was at one point secluded and hidden because of harmful stereotypes and judgment passed on its participants. I have never been happier than these past years reclaiming my love and passion and preparing to present my stories and experiences with this spirited little slice of the world.
Cheers, gamers and adventurers! I can't wait to share this journey with all of you!
Cody Cheves
Blue Rune Games
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