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