Welcome to my web page.  I went through and heavily edited my Palladium page; reorganized it to be less of a mess, though I didn't weed out a lot of the crap that's accumulated in it over the years.  I did, however, add several articles, including one on Troglodytes, one one slavery, one on the Coalition Technical officer, and an expanded version of my OpENS article, which includes more material from DagTech Enterprises.  I've also included my Failed Apprentice article from Hermes Portal #12; it's a 4th edition article, but it might be useful to some people.

I've made a few changes in the past few years, so it's worth looking around.  My newest pictures are of the day I went into school with a mohawk. Instead ofI want to add some really old pictures of me, but I don't have much time to do it these days. I'll try when I can. I no longer update the very old "blog" that I used to have on this page; I don't even use the one on LiveJournal that much.  Instead, I've got a LiveJournal where I talked about games, and a MySpace page that I keep intermittently updated.

First off, a little bit about me. My name is Mark Hall, though I often go by the moniker of Nexx (or MrNexx) on-line and with several friends. I graduated from Kansas State University with a bachelors in History in May of 2001, and I teach English as a Second Language at Channelview High School in Channelview, Texas. My wife Kris and I live in Houston, Texas, where she attends school at the University of Houston, majoring in Anthropology and History. Hopefully, Palladium will soon publish my first book, Mysteries of Magic.

The main focus of these pages will really be my role-playing, though my other sections are expanding as time goes on. I've now broken the ten-year mark on gaming, and have written quite a few house rules, articles, and general thoughts on some of the various games I play. I obviously don't have something on every game; Fading Suns is woefully under-represented, and Earthdawn, Star Wars, Call of Cthulhu, MERP and Villians and Vigilantes aren't mentioned beyond this. Only the games I've really invested a lot of time in are up here.

For those who found me through various posts to pagan or heathen lists or newsgroups, you'll note that I talk a lot about Druids and heathens on these pages. While I try to make these as accurate as possible based on what I know, and occasionaly revise to fit new things I learn, I also try even harder to work within the constraints of the game I'm writing about. Thus, I have conflicting stories about many things, and almost any person who has seriously studied those topics can tear me a new hole about some of my assumptions. To them, I can only say that its just a game. Correct me if you must, but don't be surprised if you get a response that says "Yes, I know, but that's not how it is in the game", "I didn't know that, but it won't fit in the game", or "That's not how it works in the game, and these are the problems I have with your information." In the files on gaming, my interest is in gaming, and not everyone is going to redefine their games so I can feel like history has been served. In my posts about my beliefs, and those professional papers I post, we can argue whether I'm right or not, about where I got my information, and about my parentage. Until then, I'm interested in hearing specific criticisms you have... but don't expect me to change things in ways that don't fit the game world.

This is my personal section, including rants, poetry, and various silly things I entertain myself with. I've finally gotten around to including a journal; I'm now noting when the thing is updated above. I'm too much of a performer to keep up a journal on my own... hopefully, turning the world into an audience for my random thoughts will at least keep me honest. Things down here, generally, will reflect my mood and personal psychoses, more than my talent or interests. In case you haven't noticed, yet, I'm incredibly impressed with my own cleverness... there's probably something wrong with that, but I can't think of anything.