Staff
Jon
Simpson
Matias Timm
The Intro
Once upon a time (January - 2001)
a brave, helpful, friendly, sexy, charming (not to
mention modest) young man by the name of Jon Simpson
had a dream. The dream was about the Internet and
how its mighty power could be used to give the world
a place (well, another place) to come when they wanted
roleplaying stuff. This dream was mixed with a smattering
of web design skills, a mammoth library of roleplaying
books, many sleepless nights and a bloke who looked
like Clyde from the Clint Eastwood films as a “yes”
man…
KMANT is aiming to spread the roleplaying
word to the masses and hopefully promote gaming to
new players, as well as keeping the veterans interested.
We have tried to keep our reviews interesting, entertaining
and above all simple. We always tend to write in a
positive manner, and rather than tear a bad game to
pieces we hope to offer some insight into its good
points, and then you can decide if you can live with
the problems.
We are a totally non-profit organisation,
with little old me paying for the domain and hosting
out of my own pocket. This can help in many ways as
it allows KMANT to go wherever it wants, without trying
to please any particular factions (go ahead test me...
post me money... as much as you like... I will not
be $way£d).
The Name
KMANT - Killing Monsters And Nicking
Treasure – is kind of a homage to the stereotypical
games of old where a group of (usually) bearded, sweaty
know-it-all’s would sit round murmuring about
+4 socks of legging it, Chain mail bikinis and who
would win in a fight between Captain Kirk and King
Arthur. This was just part of the gaming life though,
adventuring was where it really kicked in, leaving
no dungeon safe or monster un-mugged - and God help
anyone who suggested a break from the usual...
“You meet a giant rat”
“My 21st level Paladin will smite it”
“OK, with your ‘+5 sword of making thing’s
dead’ you kill it”
“Just as in real life, I will search the body
of the dead rat”
“You find ten gold pieces and a packet of Tic
Tacs”
“Great I’ll take everything”
“You travel on for another few hours and meet
a Cyclops, I assume you want to kill him and take
his wallet, watch, mobile and car keys?”
“Yes.”
And so on and so on. Yes, some people
really played games like this, very little thought
just random encounter after random encounter until
the madness sets and everything starts to go red.
Two days later we read about several more roleplayers
dying needlessly from vicious pencil inflicted wounds.
But, this was where the hobby was born and it has
its place in the history of RPG's.
Nowadays roleplaying has become
far more mainstream in many ways (though it is still
not quite as popular as say football or mints). It
is now kind of 'cool' in its own different orignial
way and to an extent the commercialism has helped
to bring it out of the shadows and introduce more
first time gamers to the hobby. With various games
now promoting a little more actual roleplaying
and with hundreds of new settings in thousands of
new world’s things look pretty good.
The News
We decided to lose the ‘news’
idea as the Gaming Report website does it so well,
that we looked a bit like an ugly donkey (with fleas
and a limp) standing next to a prize race horse. But
we’re not bitter – instead we have added
some nifty HTML and now we have the best bits of their
news on our site (yes, it’s legal; I checked
and best of all they like you doing it, thanks guys!)
The Reviews
KMANT today has been trimmed down
into a lean mean review machine... kind of. It gets
less attention than it should (don’t we all?),
but is still alive and kicking.
I feel I must also mention the numero uno right hand
man of KMANT, a god among men, a chief among Indians,
the man all men want to be and all women want to bed
– Matías Timm – Without Matt things
would have gone downhill long ago. He was discovered
while I was looking for reviewers (he runs the Yahoo!
Call of Cthulhu Group) and has since become part of
the family here at KMANT. Thanks Matt.
The one thing I wanted KMANT to
do above all else was give reviews of the various
RPG products that were available in the UK. Let’s
be honest, most RPG reviews are kind of poo (as in
not good, just in case you like poo). They don’t
usually dissuade anyone who was actually planning
to buy a product and some complete stranger telling
you something is ‘great’ also holds very
little for most free thinking folk. BUT, something
most of us do enjoy is:
a) Reading what someone else thinks
of something so we can either agree and feel warm
inside as part of a greater group, or get angry and
slag off a stranger for holding views other than our
own.
b) Finding out what a potential
purchase has in store for us and going ‘ooh’
and ‘aah’ and ‘hey it tells you
about the pants of Ravnos’, so we become excited
and are able to justify the money we should really
be using to pay for that elderly relatives hip operation.
The Art 2005
I am going to take this opportunity
to say a HUGE Thank You again to
- Karen
Cardinal, Steve
T. Laws, Camille
Kuo and Ruben
de Vela whose artwork has now been on KMANT for
over a year. I am also very pleased to add four brilliant
new artists to the list as well - Claire
Waller, Helen
Rich, Helen
Woodroffe and James
Boulton. All of whom have shown generosity and
kindness, not to mention exceptional talent and skill
in their drawings and paintings. I have added some
of the full images used in the design of KMANT to
the artwork section of the site and I'm sure you won't
be disappointed if you drop by and take a look. Thanks
again guys.
The Now
KMANT is now five years old and
we have reached an average of 160,000 unique visitors
a month. We are hoping to continue doing what we do
and have no plans of stopping anytime soon. We still
love roleplaying and everything about it (except stepping
on D4’s) and KMANT will continue to grow with
reviews as and when we add them. If you like them
come back and read more, if you don’t like them
come back anyway – you can always get angry
at how wrong I am and call me bad names. Take care
and stay happy.
Happy Gaming Amigos!
Jon Simpson
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