“Shhh, do you want to get sued?”

Game designers of all shapes and sizes. The year was 2000. February 14th, a Monday, and I was at work. At lunch, as I normally do, I checked my personal email. That day there was one direct but weird one from somebody I didn’t know that said ‘Jeff Ibach call this phone number right away’. I called out of curiosity. “Who is this” they said.“Jeff Ibach” I said.“This is Steve Jackson from Steve Jackson Games and I’m suing you for copyright infringement.”“Pardon?”“Your website DM’s Haven has an image on it that belongs to me. Delete your website immediately or I am suing you and Freeservers. I have my lawyer on the other line, do you want to talk to him?” Honestly, I panicked. What the hell? Oh yeah, Dawn and I had written an article there called “Minis on a budget”. I had taken a scan of TWO of his company’s pawns (of a set of 200 or something) to showcase and touted the set as a good deal. “I’m at work, I will take it down as soon as I get home, I can call you when I do!”“You’ll delete your website right now while I’m on the phone or I’m suing you.” Working as fast as I could I logged into my account, had to jump through a few hoops and the whole time I was being lectured on the evils of copyright infringement. “It was just a couple images; I was promoting your product. I didn’t mean any harm.”“I don’t need your help and I don’t need you stealing from me.” A few minutes later the account was deleted. He threatened if I ever did it again, he’d sue without warning. I spent the rest of my workday seriously stressed and amazed at the same time. I was dazed. The ride home however got me thinking of all the kind folks who wrote to thank me for the advice I had there. That site is exactly how I started gaming with Bruce Alderman, who sits at my table to this day. So, when I got home, I opened a new Freeservers account under a slightly different title (dmshaven.com, which sounds unfortunately like a DM without a beard) and used my backup to reload my site minus any mention of Steve Jackson Games. What a fucking prick.Anyway, there was this time we were playing D&D in my parent’s basement and had a few rules questions so I called TSR right there at the table. Whoever answered got me over to Roger E. Moore, Dragon Magazine’s Editor, who helped us through our questions easily. We were also playing Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator and had a doozie of a question and called FASA. The guy took the time to give an in-depth answer with good reasoning behind it. I didn’t recognize his name and asked what he worked on. “I’m the after-hours janitor” he said. “It’s after 7 here in Chicago”. Then there was the time I called Wizards of the Coast to ask if their then-president Peter Adkison, who was coming to a Jersey Game Con, wanted to play a game with me. He did, and he was a very cool guy too. We played Alternity with a bunch of strangers and had a blast. Dawn and I went that night to the Q&A with him on the buyout of TSR. And you know who was in the audience?Steve fucking Jackson. I’m not joking. Someone asked some numbers question and Steve held up his hand 5 times in a row asking about buyout strategies and integration of employees, feverishly writing down everything Peter said. Until the 6th time when Peter, obviously agitated, said “let’s hear from someone else.” It was weird because I didn’t know what SJ looked like, and afterwards went to get close to read his badge and nearly LOL’d. Steve Jackson, super assho