About the author

Roldaïce and P.O.: a certain resemblance?
© Cédric Baer & P.O. Barome

During a nice summer day in 1994, I discovered the game that was about to change my life: Magic the Gathering®. My interest for the first trading card game soon turned into a passion, and became a component of my existence.
In 2002, after a Ph.D. in molecular evolution and two post-docs, I decided to leave the field of research to begin a new adventure. Among other projects, I created at this time the character of Roldaïce (a play with the English words “roll dice”), a goblin wizard moving in the universe of Magic®. I submitted my texts to Léonidas Vesperini, then editor-in-chief of the French magazine Lotus Noir, proposing to run a column intended to beginners Magic® players and readers interested in the storyline of their favorite game, with stories and strategies (“decks”), and another one about old Magic® sets, called “Magic Flashback”. Léonidas accepted both and I became freelance journalist for the magazine, then sub-editor, a job I held for one year. In 2005, the society publishing Lotus Noir unfortunately went bankrupt, and Léonidas then decided to create a new magazine, Mana Rouge. I assisted him in this exalting enterprise (among many other things, creating the magazine logo), and we had the precious help of the graphic designer Claire Renaudat and the illustrators Bruno Bellamy and Cédric Baer. I was the sub-editor of Mana Rouge for two years.

The three years I spent working on these magazines dedicated to Magic® were wonderful, humanly and professionally speaking. My main mission was to read and correct the articles and to choose the most appropriate illustrations for each of them, a task I carried out with passion. I had the pleasure to meet and work with many likeable persons, colleagues, freelance journalists, illustrators and professionals of the editing and gaming world. I will only mention here Nicolas Labarre, Antoine Ménard and Olivier Ruel, high-level Magic® players who managed to stay unaffected.
I had the immense joy to meet and interview some of the talented Magic® illustrators: John Avon, Mark Tedin, Terese Nielsen, Martina Pilcerova, Rob Alexander and Aleksi Briclot, and to tell them about my admiration for their works. And I had the honor, before the release of each new Magic® set, to ask some questions to the designers from Wizards of the Coast®, including the famous Mark Rosewater, in order to gather the precious information that allowed me to write prerelease articles.
Fifteen years ago, when I discovered Magic®, I'd never had imagined I'd live all this, and I thank Léonidas Vesperini for giving me the opportunity to do so.

I also wish to thank all the faithful readers that followed Roldaïce along his four years of adventures, and who told me about their interest for my texts in their letters and on the games conventions. Above all else, it is these expressions that made me the happiest.
If you too enjoyed the stories presented on this website, please drop me a line, nothing could please me more.

The time of my contribution to Lotus Noir and Mana Rouge is over, and I'm now working on other projects, but still in the fields of edition and imagination.
In 2008, I translated for Wizards of the Coast® France fourteen articles from the American Magic® official website, for non-English reading French players (see le list of these articles and the corresponding Internet links below).
I also reread scenarios for the French fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons®, and children books for the French publisher Mango Jeunesse.
But the two projects that are close to my heart are the fantasy novel I just finished writing and for which I’m now searching a publisher, and the development of card games with my friend Pascal Bernard. The first, Alien Menace, has just been released, but only in french. However, english-speaking friends, if you own an iPhone or iPad, you can play the video game version avalaible at the Apple Store!

Thanks for taking the time to read this page. Now, you know almost everything about me!
Well, see you soon for some new adventures. Until then, take care, and don't forget to put each day a bit of magic in this world that needs it so badly.
With the best regards from two goblins, P.O. Barome and Roldice.

List of the Magic: the Gathering® articles I translated in French:

Looking at the tribes, part III by The Ferret
Bog is for boggarts by Doug Beyer
Drakes & dragons, wurms and worms by Doug Beyer
The era of the planeswalkers by Doug Beyer
Timmy, Johnny, and Spike by Mark Rosewater
The making of Arabian Nights by Richard Garfield
Everything you know is wrong by The Ferret
Shatter again by Mike Flores
The amazing race/class by Mark Rosewater
The shaman cause by Doug Beyer
Shadowmoor payoff by Jeremy Jarvis
Shadowmoor more more by Mark Rosewater
The two-sided coin by Garrett Baumgartner
The evil that designers do by Mark Rosewater