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Biography of Ford Ivey
After attending the University of Texas school of Architecture, Ford Ivey worked in all parts of the construction industry, doing everything from design to supervisor of construction on some major projects in the Boston area. He got disenchanted with the construction industry and got into the gaming business, running The GameMaster, a full service Game Store, which had tables for playing role playing games and miniatures. This store was located in Arlington, MA. While doing this, he heard about a Live Role playing game in New Hampshire called Mid Realms Adventures, based on The Treasure Trap games in England.
While he enjoyed this game, he was convinced that it could be done in a way that would allow more character freedom of action. After running a series of games for a couple of years in Sudbury, MA, under the umbrella of the Explorer Scouts, he (with input and assistance from several others) developed the idea of everyone playing the game: everyone would be someone else’s non player character (NPC). This was the infamous Shandlin’s Ferry event, which was run in the fall of 1987 and was the immediate predecessor to NERO.
NERO was a unique development in LARPing, based on character growth and freedom of action. It grew far more quickly than the organization could handle in those early days, after an article appeared in Dragon Magazine, written by Mike Ventrella. NERO suddenly had over 5,000 active members.
NERO began to expand with new chapters quickly, starting with one in New Jersey, called the Ashbury Campaign. They later broke off to form what is now LAIRE. Other early chapters were the Pittsburg chapter (now PRO), and the Atlanta chapter, now running a game based on an early set of our rules, now calling themselves SOLAR.
Ford ran the first game to own its own site dedicated to Live Roleplaying in Ware, Massachusetts. This site had 105 acres of woods and fields and 27 structures, including an old New England Inn, barns, and many cabins.
Ford, suffering from ill health, sold the game in August of 1998 to Joseph Valenti. After overcoming most of his health issues, Ford is now involved in several new projects, one of which is his new game called The Isles.
