James Mathe

James Mathe, (born 1966 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as James Dicke) is an entrepreneur, computer programmer, and game designer. He attended University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1984.

Online History

Been online most of his life starting in the early 80's with an AppleCat Modem on an Apple //e. From programming an graphic Adventure style game on the Apple ][, to developing custom drivers in Assembly for a BBS with text graphic city map (City of Aldimar) where you could wander and sewers to attack monsters on my Apple //e computer in the late 80's.

During the BBS chat board era he developed an AI for intelligent NPCs in a completely original text based MUD (called Prophecy) written from scratch in Unix and using Oracle database in the 90's.

Owns the RPGHost Network of sites (created in 1999) which includes some great sites like RPG Gateway, RPGLife.com, RPGSheets,com, RPGNews.com, RPGStrategy.com and more...

He was the operator and code maintainer of WebRPG.com, one of the first online virtual table gaming software programs (written in Java). In 2001 and 2002 He hosted totally online gaming conventions at CyberCon with our own custom scheduling software and use of many virtual table tops. With hosts as grand as Gary Gygax, Tracy Hickman, Sean Reynolds, Steve Jackson and more. He created RPGRegistry.com to help players find players as well as a new site called PlayTesters.Net to help designers find play testers.

Programmer

He am a programmer (C, PHP, and Unix), designer, analyst, database admin (Oracle, Mysql, etc.) and more ... Wanting to make a living doing things a bit more interesting than consulting or cubical work he went back to his gaming roots. This page is about that part of his life.

Entrepreneur

Currently the owner and president of Minion Development Corporation, parent company of: Minion Games, Game Universe hobby stores, RPGShop.com online store, founder of RPGNow.com and co-owner of OneBookShelf, Inc (War Game Vault, DriveThru Comics, etc.).

Started one of the World's first LAN Gaming Centers in early 1994 (called the Virtual Gaming Center - first ever license for playing network Shareware Doom). He have always enjoyed the process of creating things original and released several popular deathmatch levels: DMCath24, Tourney3.wad, Tourney2.wad, and a DOOM DEATHMATCH WAD RANKING List.

Around 2001 he created RPGNow.com (pdf download store for gaming) which pioneered the paper and pen RPG download industry. Nominated in 2003 by Indie RPG Awards as Indie RPG "Human of the Year". In 2004 RPGNow expanded to provide Print on Demand services. In 2006 he merged with their first serious competitor DriveThruRPG - now we are the largest reseller of the most role-playing games in the world (in print and out of print). In 2011 DriveThurRPG introduced print on demand services and are now the exclusive site to purchase out of print books for many large publishers such as White Wolf.

In 2002 he started RPGShop.com for online sales. It grew enough that in late in 2003 He opened our first brick and mortar game store: Game Universe in the Greenfield, Wisconsin. A large store of board games, role-playing games, dice, CCGs, and miniatures. In 2009 we opened our second store location in Brookfield, Wisconsin! In 2012 a third store was opening in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin All stores are still open today.

Publisher

In 2009 he started a Board Game publishing company: Minion Games and later that year he completed my first full scale board game called Those Pesky Humans which was released at Origins 2010 with 3 other new games. In 2011 we published 7 great new games, and 2012 saw a few more games most notably the well reviewed Tahiti board game and The Manhattan Project board game.

Published a series of ePublisher Guides to help new startup companies. Also created and published a quick action sci-fi game system called Hyper-Killer.

External links

• The Spiel at Essen 2011" - Interview with James Mathe from Minion Games
• JamesMathe.com" - official site