Welcome to The Gamer’s Codex, a place FOR table top gamers BY table top gamers.
The Gamer’s Codex was born from the idea that Justus Productions can share more than just gaming events throughout the year. We felt we could share our knowledge, our opinions and our skills as gamers to the community and the industry. The goal of The Gamer’s Codex is to be your primary source for game news and reviews as well as a fun place to discuss the games you enjoy playing. We recruit from our pool of talented gamers to write for us and as time goes on, you may see them demonstrating these games at various events. We enjoy gaming and enjoy writing about it! This web site is an expression of our passion and our want to expand into the industry in new and productive ways.
Our mission statement is to create a web site that is a competitive, new and innovative source of news, reviews and ideas for the table top game industry. We want to present honest and true opinions of the products we review. But we also will do more than review the games sent to us. We offer a service where the reviewer will demonstrate them at local events throughout the Carolinas (and perhaps more as our review team grows). These demos will generate feedback and give each player an opportunity to give feedback on the game experience. Justus Productions, the company behind The Gamer’s Codex, has a 15+ year history of running quality events and these will be the first events where demos can occur. We are working with other events including SCARAB to expand our area for demonstrations.
Those behind The Gamer’s Codex:
Ron McClung, Review Editor and Lead Reviewer of The Gamer’s Codex.
Ron has been gaming for 30+ years, primarily in the areas of board games and role playing games. He was brought on board to Justus Productions in 2000 to coordinate gaming for MACE events. MACE has grown almost 200% in attendance since those years. During those years, Ron worked with other events to expand gaming there as well. The MACE brand has expanded to multiple game day events called mini-mace, as well as other smaller full weekend events like MACE West and plans for more.
In 2004, Ron began writing game reviews for GamingReport.com. In that time, he wrote a wide variety of reviews and was exposed to all areas of gaming. In 2006, Scrye magazine publisher purchased GamingReport.com to serve as the official website for the magazine and Ron began to write for Scrye Magazine as a game reviewer. In 2008, he was invited by GamingReport.com as press for GenCon 2008 where he wrote several articles about his experiences there. Since the demise of Scrye Magazine and GamingReport.com, Ron has had a passion to write again and from that passion, The Gamer’s Codex was born.
Featured Column: B-Movie Inspirations – What is “B-Movie inspirations”? It is one part movie review and one part RPG game master idea seeds. Many of my ideas have come from cheesy movies that I somehow find time to watch. I decided to start writing theses ideas down in reviews geared towards RPG game masters like myself. In some ways, this is me watching these horrible movies and drawing the ideas from them, so you don’t have to.
Stephanie McClung, Editor in Chief of The Gamer’s Codex
Tera Fullbright, Assistant Editor of The Gamer’s Codex
Jeff Smith, Owner and CEO of Justus Productions
Jeff has been gaming since the late 70’s and the good ol’ red box days. It was love at first roll and from then to now, he has not stopped. Jeff even switched majors in college, from Engineering to History when all that homework ate into his game time.
Through the years Jeff has worked on great events like StellarCon, Hexacon, Roc of Ages, Roc 96.5, Bab-Trek, MACE, mini-mace, MACE West and now Club MACE. He is continually working on ideas to add to the JustUs Productions line-up.
It is his love of games that fuels his passion for MACE. And now that same love is being put into the Gamer’s Codex. While Jeff may not write the reviews, he fully believes that by offering others the chance to share their thoughts and ideas, the love for games will grow. Jeff looks forward to how MACE and all the JustUs Productions’ endeavors grow in the future and hopes to eventually be the first to run a Retirement Community convention for the aged gamer.
CJ Taylor
In addition to being a code monkey for the Codex, CJ has a long history of gaming and being involved with different facets of the game industry.
From 1997 to 2001, CJ filled the role as the original founder of The Game Society, a network of gamers and sub-organizations building from a common denominator: gaming. Also during this time, he developed NCN (National Convention Network) that worked on a shared mailing list of convention enthusiasts which proved to be mutually beneficial in an increased attendance across the board for all participating conventions. During these years, CJ was also actively involved backstage in a 3rd party role with multiple game manufacturers on many levels ranging from development to promotion.
Though no longer involved full time, CJ still has a passion for gaming. Currently, his favourite games include Arkham Horror, Robo Rally, Diablo 3, and is a KS backer for Shroud of the Avatar banking on many hours of future play. He’s also currently working on a live action system that places more focus on role playing and improv in a theatrical environment that can be used across many genres.