Aggregate Cognizance was just a cool sounding name I came up with that felt like it meant a dumping ground for ideas. Rivetgeek is a handle I’ve been using for quite a long time on various social media. It’s a play on rivethead, a slang term for someone who is into industrial music and the related scene.

I’ve always made my own content and mixing and matching elements from games. I used to make board game versions of arcade games based on reading about them in magazines and game guides. Some of those games I never actually saw up close in an arcade! I began converting computer games such as Epyx’s Temple of Apshai series for use with D&D and other campaigns. I once really upset my mom by asking to borrow her Bible so I could photocopy a map of a temple for an adventure I was writing.

I’ve played the gamut of games from extremely rules light to extremely crunchy (Living Steel, I’m looking at you). Interlock – used in Cyberpunk 2020 and Mekton – was my favorite for a very long time. Right next to that was Silhouette, used by Dream Pod 9 in Heavy Gear, Tribe 8, and Jovian Chronicles. I bounced really hard off of Exalted, despite loving the setting, and that started my trajectory toward more narrative systems. For the past 7-8 years or so, I’ve focused games such as Fate, Cortex, Forged in the Dark, and others.