Who is Chgowiz?

Hello, I'm Michael Shorten, aka Chgowiz, and I'm one of the guys here kicking off Three-Headed Monster Games. I'm a full-time Dad, Grandfather, ex-amateur stock car racer, professional IT guy by day and RPG gamer in the evening. In my ever-decreasing spare time, I do a lot of writing for my blog "Old Guy RPG". I've been published in Fight On! and Knockspell magazines. I've also authored some original edition D&D gaming aids and accessories as well as working for Examiner.com as the Chicago Dungeons & Dragons (D&D)/RPG columnist. I'm also the co-creator of the 2009 One Page Dungeon Contest.

In Spring 2009, it seemed like the world was on fire and everyone wanted to write new content for their favorite fantasy RPG - especially those of us who like playing the original or older versions of D&D. Two new magazines were reaching critical mass, several new rulesets had been released and there was a vibrancy in the air that hadn't been felt in awhile. That was when Dave (Sham) of the blog Sham's Grog 'n Blog, Mike (Amityville Mike) of the blog The Society for the Torch, Pole and Rope and I got the bright idea to rub our brain cells together and see what we could come up with to ride this wave.

Dave and I had already collaborated in late 2008 on a project called the "One Page Dungeon" key. Dave had been looking for a way to produce dungeon maps and levels in a simple, succinct format and I helped put together a simple Word template to do just that. The philosophy that we had towards the "one pagers" sparked the imagination of quite a few amateur writers, including Mike who started producing the "Stonehell" dungeon series. Together, we put together a few dungeons and materials.

We decided that the way we had worked - collaborating, advising, critiquing, commenting and supporting each other with our talents really worked well. We debated on the best way we could open up those talents to each other - not to try and limit each other or somehow be co-employees, but rather collaborate on our own unique projects while getting help from other enthusiastic authors. Mike's punk rock attitude, Dave's thoughtful critique and my own obsessive nature to "git-er-done!" resulted in what you see today: the Three-Header Monster Games co-op.

Where are we going? Well, we're kinda like those adventurers we play in our games - we're carefully poking down the corridor, with a 10 foot pole in hand, carefully mapping with our eye on the goal - to help each other make some really awesome materials that we'd like to share with the world. We hope you enjoy the journey along with us... and if you're so inclined, perhaps you'd like to help out too!