I’m Going on an Adventure – How I got my Nerd Card

For those that don’t know me, or don’t yet recognize my slightly quirky, always sarcastic personality, I’m Kelly. I’m the behind the scenes “face” of Silver Gryphon Games social media and community. I’m the one that discovered that all of you are obsessed with pictures of cats, that squirrels playing with dice make you giddy and that you really like it when I make sure you have something to do on Friday afternoons to avoid that mountain of paperwork I just KNOW is sitting on your desk. I also realized that there aren’t NEARLY enough gaming dogs. Get on that gamers!

I create your newsletter, respond to you on Facebook, Tweet when I remember (I’m really too wordy for Twitter) and pin stuff on Pinterest. I love that this has let me get to know so many of you in the last 14 or so months I’ve been in this role… and I’ve learned so much from all of you. This brings me to my point.

My background is in sales, marketing, international and global communication, call centers, corporate training and operations management. So um… confession time.

I knew almost nothing about gaming or the industry when I started doing this. I used to have to ask Ben and Kevin, Grant, Yuki and the rest of the team if things were funny before I shared them. I might have thought that they were hilarious, but there was subtext and nuance that I was completely clueless about. Yikes. I started to read everything I could. I asked questions and began to get a feel for the hobby, for the community as a whole and realized that I could finally answer questions, that I could relate to much of what was being said, asked and posted about, and yet… I’ve only recently begun to “get it.”

My entire experience with RPGs was in college when I had a crush on a guy who played D&D every weekend. I played once, sort of. I was really much more interested in his pretty blue eyes than what was going on with the dice at that point. Fail Kelly… because truly the hobby would have been a much better time investment than that guy. Hey, live and learn right? I wasn’t exposed to the industry again until I began helping out with SGG last April. What I found out then was that this community is something I want to be part of. An amazing group of people who care about each other, have fun and aren’t afraid to be creative and use their imagination; to have adventures and explore with friends.

I think it’s time for me to learn… don’t you? I’d like to invite all of you to share my adventure with me. I’m going to have the SGG team (and any of you that would like to share as well!) teach me how to game. Everything from vocabulary & lingo, to character creation, what goes on a con and we’ll do it step by step! I’m going to blog about it, and I’m sure parts are going to be VERY funny. The questions I come up with will probably be really out there sometimes. I’m not known for being the most patient or focused student.

My hope is that there are others out there, who are either too intimidated to ask questions (I’ll take care of that part!), have always wanted to learn but didn’t have a group to hang out with, or who didn’t think it was for them that might be intrigued by this journey. I’m going to have all my lessons geared in a very simple format so that any gaming parents with kids that are learning to game can follow along as well. I’m sure there will be references to shoes and how sparkly my dice are… because let’s face, I’m a girly girl… but I won’t be writing it GEARED just for girls and women. Why not ask see if someone you know wants to give it a shot along with me? Is there someone in your life you’ve always wanted to game with? Why not ask them to join me on my adventure? Eventually I think we’re going to try and have an online game night JUST for the newly captured… I mean introduced.
So who’s with me? It’s going to be quite the adventure!