Bryan Santamore

Building Things That Last

I have always been drawn to building things, but for me, that has never been just about systems, processes, or technology. It has always been about people.

I started working at Burger King when I was sixteen, and even then I cared about how a team worked, how people were treated, and how much better things could become when someone took the time to help others grow.

That mindset followed me into the Marine Corps, into technology and leadership, and eventually into the worlds, characters, games, and communities Reed and I have created together.

7th Reality Games feels like a natural extension of all of it.

Nearly Four Decades of Creating Together

That first day of second grade, Reed and his twin brother saved me from one of those "new-kid welcome parties" where the new kid ends up at the nurse and someone else ends up in detention.

We've been stuck together ever since.

Console games, computer games, TTRPGs, we played them all. We played them the way they were intended to be played, and then we turned the rules upside down and "made them better."

No matter what we were doing, we were creating memories, memorable characters, and always dreaming about the day when we could say, "We have our own game."

It took a few decades, but we finally got there.

Oxivius and the Baku-verse

Whether he was a rat-person raising the dead, a pasty white, spiky-headed evil space wizard wielding a red laser sword, or a human with a heavy leaning toward the dark arts, Oxivius has lived in my head rent free for almost my entire life.

He has followed me from game to game and world to world. And if I had Oxivius, Reed had Xlina.

The two of them were the duo that, according to "the way things should be done," should never have worked. It just never seemed to matter.

They survived things they probably should not have survived and somehow kept finding ways to thrive.

So when Reed first mentioned bringing the two of them together in the Baku-verse, I was beyond excited.

For most of our lives, Xlina and Oxivius existed at our tables, on our screens, and in stories shared between friends.

Now people around the world get to meet them too.

Mausoleum Alliance Wrestling

Mausoleum Alliance Wrestling, or MAW for short, started during the early days of COVID, when everyone was stuck at home and looking for something to do.

I had been streaming on Twitch for a while without much direction when one night the "what if" crossed my mind.

What if I took a big-name wrestling game and created an e-fed where everyone I talked with in Discord could get together, talk trash, create wrestlers, and challenge each other to simulated matches?

They loved the idea.

We built the roster one person at a time. Before long, people were writing their own promos, rivalries were forming, and storylines were growing naturally from whatever happened in the matches.

Friday Night MAW became something people genuinely looked forward to.

People would tell me, "Friday Night MAW is a better show than what those professional guys are putting on." Some even stopped watching professional wrestling shows in favor of MAW.

What started as a random "what if" during a time when people were isolated became a community where people from all over could come together every week, laugh, talk trash, create stories, and become invested in characters they helped bring to life.

Mistfall: Armageddon

By the time Mistfall: Armageddon started taking shape, Reed and I already had decades of gaming, characters, house rules, bad ideas, great ideas, and arguments about how things "should" work behind us.

Reed started with the mechanics and brought me into it with a simple, "What do you think of this concept?"

From there, we did what we had always done.

We dissected every aspect of Mistfall: Armageddon during our hour-long commutes to work every morning. We jokingly called them our "Executive Business Meetings," not realizing that a few years later they would actually become exactly that.

The questions were almost always the same.

How do we make this meaningful to the players?

How do we do it without overcomplicating things?

Do we really even need this?

That same philosophy shaped the way we thought about the role traditionally called the Game Master.

In Mistfall: Armageddon, we call that person the Narrator.

The Narrator is not there to beat the players or control the story. The Narrator sets the stage and gives the world a voice. The players bring their characters, choices, and reactions.

The story comes from both sides of the table.

That collective narrative has always been the point.

7th Reality Games

7th Reality Games did not start with a business plan.

It started with decades of "what if?"

What if we made our own game?

What if we created a world people wanted to spend time in?

What if we could create the kinds of experiences we had spent most of our lives looking for at our own tables?

Eventually, "what if" turned into "why not?"

After years of friendship, gaming, storytelling, building communities, tearing apart rules, rebuilding them, and talking about someday creating something of our own, Reed and I finally stopped talking about it and did it.

For me, 7th Reality Games is not just about publishing games.

It is about creating experiences that bring people together.

If something we create gives a group of friends a reason to get together every week, helps someone create a character they remember years later, or becomes part of a story they keep telling long after the game is over, then we are building exactly what I hoped we would.

Away From the Table

None of this would have been possible without Jess, my wife of 24 years.

She has dealt with all of this insanity for essentially my entire adult life, and through every new idea, challenge, and project that somehow became bigger than expected, she has been my backbone and my rock.

Our four kids, Trevor, Tyler, Lillian, and Jazmin, have grown up around all of this too. They have taken turns sitting at the table with us or simply listening to Dad go on far too long about his "nerdy gaming stuff."

When I am not working or gaming, I am usually happiest doing something simple with the people I care about.

I love cooking outside over an open fire and bringing friends and family together. Jess and I also spend a lot of time walking our two Old English Bulldogs, Apollo and Helios.

The games, the characters, the communities, the food around a fire, the walks with Jess, the people around the table. It is all about connection. Pull up a chair, let's share some stories.

— Bryan

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