Heroes of HeroPress: Steve Delves

HeroPress Campaign: Vandal City, British Columbia, Canada - reknowned for The McCourt Act, which was basically the Superhero Registration Act two decades before Marvel thought of it and used it to fuel their Civil War.

HeroPress Character: Silverfist, a charismatic martial artist, armed with a magical billy club that could transform into any melee weapon. His costume came with glider wings.

Without Steve, I wouldn't be the man I am today. It's as simple as that. He got me hooked on collecting comics, nurtured my role-playing passion and probably even coined the name HeroPress. These days I like to think of us as the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby of the HeroPress universe! That's why there's a statue of him in Knight City.

And this makes it all the sadder that I lost contact with him because I was such an ass about him becoming a Born Again Christian... and a Youth Minister on top of that. I was such a blinkered fool that I saw "the religion" where I should have seen my friend, and so cut myself off from him because I thought we no longer had anything in common. It has taken me a long time - and a brush with death - to appreciate that life is too short for such petty bigotry.

Steve now works as a Youth Minister up in Birmingham, where he lives with his wife and three children.

Other RPG Campaigns of Legend:

• Villains & Vigilantes: Our big, pre-HeroPress superhero game, which saw the first appearance of The Acrobatic Flea in a strange Dr Who-inspired adventure where we (as ourselves) were kidnapped by aliens to pilot giant space-borne sailing ships in some kind of race ... and in the process developed superpowers. Like Topsy, the campaign grew and grew until, at one stage, we'd developed superhero characters for pretty much everyone we knew from school and lived on a giant Legion Of Superheroes-style spacestation.
• The Fantasy Trip: Not your run-of-the-mill fantasy game. Our party, which included my ranger Farthorne The Wanderer, was aided by a djinn (modelled on Robin William's character in Aladdin) with a penchant for anachronistic summonings (such as DJ decks and complete disco light systems). We were always being told: "Don't go to the Land Of The Orcs." One day we went to The Land Of The Orcs. We were slaughtered within about five minutes of crossing the border. We should have listened!