That Time Dave Thomas of Wendy’s Hung Out on My Website to Talk Dungeons & Dragons

A maybe true story.

In 1999, with a couple of friends, I founded the Gaming Outpost. For a time in the early 2000s, it was the internet’s largest tabletop gaming website, until brought low by a combination a disgruntled employee, a late-night hack, tapering revenue, and founders who decided to get real jobs. But the Gaming Outpost’s influence lived on. Mike Mearls, designer of the wildly successful Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, got his first paid writing gig as a columnist on the site. Shannon Appelcline’s magisterial, four-volume history of the the RPG industry, Designers & Dragons, looks back on the Gaming Outpost as the incubator and stomping ground for the ideas and designers who eventually gave us the modern indie RPG movement. While it now exists only in the Internet Archives’s Wayback Machine, GO was a pretty cool place.

It was also a favorite hangout of Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas.

Maybe.

The Gaming Outpost featured news, articles, and reviews about all things tabletop gaming, but its main attraction was its discussion forum. That’s where designers like Ron Edwards, Clinton R. Nixon, Jared A. Sorensen, Mike Mearls, and John Wick hashed out ideas. It’s where Mike Daisy, later infamous for his controversial…