Our Members: Who We Are - The Company of Strangers

The Members of The Company of Strangers:

Richard Harris

Rich had his first taste of role-playing games in junior high school, in the latter stages of grade 7, with Dungeons & Dragons. This was just a very infrequent pass-time until he met A.J. during the last couple of weeks in grade 8, and an unholy alliance was born.

Along with several other friends at the time, Rich and his group played numerous games and game systems on an almost weekly basis. These included The Morrow Project, Merc, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, Pendragon, Twilight: 2000, Merc: 2000, Traveller, Traveller 2300, and even Toon (after a night of heavy drinking). After almost 7 years, the group went its separate ways, and gaming went pretty much by the wayside for Rich, although he and A.J. remained in close contact over the years.

After an almost 8 year hiatus from gaming, Rich was reintroduced to RPGs in the form of D&D 3.0 in A.J's Dullstrand Campaign (later converted to 3.5). Through A.J., this was also where he met the group of people (as other PCs in the campaign) who would later form The Company of Strangers. This eclectic band of gamers are truly an exceptional lot, and really put the “role-playing” in role-playing games. A player couldn’t have asked for a better group to get back into the hobby with, and once again Rich was bitten by the gaming bug in a big way. The rest... Well, let's leave the historians of future generations something to argue over.

On a more personal note, Rich joined the Canadian Army Reserve at 17, and served for 5 & 1/2 years as a Trooper in an armoured reconnaissance regiment. During that time he also served in Cyprus as part of the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces, while attached to a regular army armoured regiment. Unfortunately his tour was cut short due to an injury in a training accident, and he served out the rest of his attachment as part of the regular regiment’s rear-party at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa. He took his release from the military altogether in 1992.

Aside from RPG’s, Rich’s interests include miniature war-gaming (minor), military affairs (both current and historical), Canadian politics, world geo-politics, sketching, creative writing, films, and reading. His favourite genres of film and print are military, science-fiction, fantasy, political thriller, and historical period pieces (especially when two or more elements are combined into a good story).

On how to keep a gaming group relatively harmonious, Rich has one simple philosophy: Never game with someone who you wouldn’t sit down and happily drink a pint with in a pub. Jodi may prefer wine, but she is a girl so some exceptions have to be made. ;-)