Q: Why is your avatar an astonished, partially decomposed
rodent?
or, in other words:- Christ on a stick, what the hell is that?!
- WTF, are you
a plushie-necrophiliac or what?
- I'm calling the ASPCA on you!
You are sick, sick, sick!
A:
The truth of the matter is that, yes, I have a zombie hamster as my avatar. Why? Well that's requires some
explanation:
I had belatedly re-discovered gaming a bit later in life than
most. Several years ago, I was collecting old AD&D stuff on Amazon and eBay. Looking through the search results,
out popped an image that looked kinda right. It was the Hackmaster Player's Handbook on Amazon.
I flipped out. I had played AD&D starting back in the 70's, and I had the original books still on a
shelf somewhere. I bought the PHB and GM Guide in less time than it takes to type it. Before I knew it, I was
getting a gaming group together, pissing off my wife by inviting groups of strange dudes over to the house, eating Pringles,
drinking Mountain Dew, and all the rest that comes with a middle-aged gaming lifestyle.
Still, all this nerd-vana took a while to gel: it was hard to find players, a process that took me several months.
To facilitate this, I joined the KenzerCo discussion forums (here) to post on the "Seeking Players" forum. So, to be on the forum as more than a visitor, I needed an avatar
name. Stumped I was, yesss precious... It turns out that every time I attempted to type the word hackmaster in
my browser, I dyslexically screwed up the M and the A, or various other letters, so I continually ended up with Hackamster,
Hamcaster, Hackhamster, and other less sensible combinations. I was always having to go back and fix
it.
Hmm, now that I think of it, Hamcaster would have been a great
rpg name: Hamcaster the Pork Mage! The Baconator!
Anyways, I
chose Hackhamster, thinking that a confluence of fate and crappy gtyping skills (see?) gave me
the perfect name. And thus was history made.
Oh, the avatar?
Well, I had an animated nunchuk-wielding ninja hamster for a while, but then I stumbled across actual freaking zombie hamster dolls that could be your very own for... well, not like I'd buy one, like for myself, maybe for my kids*, but
they were still pretty awesome for a lstrange values of awesomeness. And so I stole the image. And more history
was made!
Notice: no actual hamsters where harmed during the production of this web-site
* Yes, the hamsters are eye-stabbingly awful, but my kids like grilled octopus and blood-sausage,
so a hamster doll like this wouldn't faze them much.
