The Impossible Dream started out as a small group of people, brought together by our love of roleplaying games, and our interest in trying new things and experimenting. Over the years, the membership has shifted. Currently, it consists of Nat "woodelf" Barmore, Epidiah "Eppy" Ravachol, and Akira "Akira!" Barnes.

This particular group originally got together as a gaming group, specifically assembled to try out new games and new styles of gaming, some commercial, some home-grown. Nat carefully selected among the gamers he knew those who were most of a like mind: willing to experiment. That was about 12 years ago, and since then membership has changed, with only Nat & Dan remaining of the original small group — and that only by virtue of Skype gaming. Akira! joined very shortly after its initial inception, and Eppy joined once he moved back into town. About that time, we really started writing our own game systems, sometimes to solve a concrete problem, sometimes to explore a thought experiment. Some of them turned out really well, and we thought maybe we should start sharing them with others. So, that got us to a company and a website with content ranging from sketches of ideas to near-professional products.

That was about 6 years ago. Since then, Nat and Eppy have moved, Bex joined and then moved away, Akira and Eppy have founded their own game companies, and Dan and Bex have decided they've had their fill of game publishing. For a few years, we were running a massive presence at Origins and Gen Con — I remember noting that we had more BESM games than GoO a couple of years — but now things are scaled back a bit, on all fronts.

Nat "woodelf" Barmore

The central force in putting The Impossible Dream together, and currently pretty much the only active member — and he really only counts as "active" if he gets off his duff and makes some progress on Four Colors al Fresco. With Eppy, he co-created Dread and Four Colors al Fresco. He has recently moved to Rochester, MN, with his girlfriend, which I guess means that The Impossible Dream is now headquartered in Rochester, MN.

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Epidiah "Eppy" Ravachol

Eppy is now living in Western MA, where he is happily engaged. He has been involved in Imagination Sweatshop and Design Matters, among other endeavors, and now has a blog dedicated to Dread, and his own publishing imprint, Dig a Thousand Holes Publishing. With The Impossible Dream, he co-created Dread and Four Colors al Fresco, and wrote Dread.

Akira "Akira!" Barnes

Akira is now focusing most of his energies on Windmill Game Co., his own company, which is producing supplements for Dread, and has inherited ongoing responsibility for Advanced Dimensional Green Ninja-Educational Preparatory Super-Elementary Fortress 555. He and others, mostly in the guise of Windmill Game Co., make regular convention appearances, mostly in the eastern half of the country, running our games and theirs.

Alumni

A couple of people who were instrumental core members at one time, but have since moved on. Both still help out from time to time, depending on schedules and the task.

Dan "Dan" Bongert created Tech Noir, and was also responsible for most of the convention versions (read: only complete versions) of the Four Colors al Fresco characters. After an enormous amount of work and support, he chose to do other things with his Copious Free Time(tm), and bowed out of The Impossible Dream.

Rebecca "Bex" Kinraide joined us to help with organization and production, initially, but was also indispensible in helping to focus our creative energies, and get the best bits down on paper. However, she chose to move and go back to school, so we've had to manage without her.