Reed Logan Westgate

Who I Am

I have been running tabletop games for thirty-seven years. For most of that time I have been the storyteller behind the screen with a pile of dice, trying to make my players' characters feel like they mattered. I still think that is the best job in the world. 7th Reality Games is where all those years of stories finally get to live outside my own table, and I would like to tell you a little about how it got here.

Second Grade

A surprising amount of my life traces back to second grade. That was the year a teacher helped me write and bind my first little book, and I decided right then that I was going to be an author. My grandmother Rosie had already made a reader out of me by then. She is the reason I loved books before I ever tried to write one.

It was also the year I met Bryan Santamore. We became friends that year and never grew out of it. He has been my best friend ever since, and he has read every word I have ever written, usually before anyone else.

The Long Detour

High school did its best to take all of that away. I was bullied, and I learned to keep my head down and my imagination to myself. When it came time for college, my parents would not back a writing degree, so I went the practical route instead. I worked in a factory, went back to school, and built a steady, sensible life. For about twenty years I did not write stories at all. What I did not see at the time was that I never actually stopped telling them. They had just moved to the game table, where my friends and I kept the worlds alive one session at a time.

It was my eldest daughter, Emma, who finally called me on it. She asked me why I had given up on my dream, and I did not have a good answer for her. So I sat down and started writing one.

The Baku-verse

That answer became the Baku-verse, a dark urban fantasy set in Portland, Maine. I grew up with the fog rolling in off the Atlantic, and it was never hard to imagine something moving inside it. In my world that fog hides a war between Heaven, Hell, and everyone who refuses to pick a side. Celtic, Egyptian, Greek and Japanese mythology all collide there, because I have loved myth since I first read the Odyssey in school and I wanted a place where the old gods could finally meet each other. My heroine, Xlina Dar'Karrow, is built on the Baku, the Japanese spirit that devours nightmares.

Since 2020 I have published seven books in that world: The Baku Trilogy, the Soulstealer prequel trilogy, and a novella, The Druid of the Morrigu. People sometimes assume the game grew out of the books. It is really the other way around. The Baku-verse was born at the table, and the novels are me finally writing down what I had been running for years.

Mistfall: Armageddon

Mistfall: Armageddon is that world coming home. It is a narrative urban fantasy roleplaying game that picks up after the apocalypse the novels set in motion, and it has been through four years of playtesting to get it right. I built it the way I like to play. Your choices matter more than your bookkeeping, and every character carries a Nemesis, because a good story needs someone who wants you to fail.

I care a lot about meaning in this world. The Celtic and occult symbols in the books and the game are real, and every one of them was chosen for a reason. The rule I keep coming back to, at the table and on the page, is that magic is intent. What matters is the choice you make and what is in your heart when you make it.

7th Reality Games

Bryan and I founded 7th Reality Games together as equal partners, fifty-fifty, which feels about right for two people who have been splitting everything since second grade. Mistfall is our first game, and it will not be our last.

At Home

I still live in Sanford with Amanda, my wife and my childhood sweetheart, and our daughters Emma and Lyriel. All three of them are my first readers and my toughest critics, and at least one character in my books is alive today because Emma talked me out of killing her. I write in long weekend binges with music on and our dog Ace asleep on my feet. My favorite author is still R.A. Salvatore. When I am not writing or running a game, there is a good chance I am out fishing.

If you have found your way here, thank you. Pull up a chair. The Mist has fallen, and there is room at the table.

— Reed

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