XAD was born in Geneva, Switzerland, some time in the 70’s.
His grandfather offered him his first computer at the age of 8, a Sinclair ZX Spectrum with a few software on audio tapes.
Along with his buddies, he lived through the whole computer and consoles eras: Commodore 64s, Amstrad CPC’s, Nintendo Entertainment Systems, Atari ST’s, Commodore Amiga’s, Sega Megadrives, Super NES’s, IBM PCs 286/386/486/Pentiums/… . By mid 90’s, he was assembling his own PCs, installing and configuring them, and setting up LANs to play networked games. Though he does not work in the IT industry nowadays, he has kept for habit to stay informed in hardware and software and still builds his own rigs.
His first contact with RPGs were at the age of 12, when his mother bought the french translation of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Over the span of a few weeks, he had finished the first adventure, and they had bought more adventure books which he eagerly went through.
Then, some time during his last school year before college, he was offered the whole set of Das Schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye), freshly translated into french by Schmidt France and sold in big plastic boxes containing manuals, dice, pencils, character sheet. He read through all of the books in a short time and set up his first unsuccessful adventures with his parents.
A few years later, he had joined a games’ club and was regularly playing many RPGs, including Dungeons & Dragons, Stormbringer, James Bond, Rolemaster or The Call of Cthulhu.
Disappointed by the poor french translation of Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0., he had the english original version ordered online and has since then taken for habit to acquire games in their original language.
XAD has been DM’ing various games and systems for the last 25 years. He has been part of the organizing team for two gaming conventions in the Geneva region during the 90’s and has been a founding member of a Geneva-based games club.
Since 2012, he resides in Toronto, Ontario, along with his wife and daughter, and he has been looking forward actively resuming his favorite hobby.