The Origin of STARKADE

It’s tough to write about the history of STARKADE because the roots go back nearly 40 years. This isn’t just a project. It’s my life’s work.

It all starts in 1987 with my best friend Mike Field and I huddled over our Grade 5 scribblers, sketching larger-than-life wrestlers. We were obsessed with the WWF, and being the creative kids we were, we didn't just watch it—we built our own world. My league was the Awesome Wrestling Federation (AWF). We rolled dice to determine match outcomes, held massive tournaments, crowned champions, and fueled heated rivalries. It was a whole thing, gang. Total chaos in a notebook.

Those characters stuck with us. Over the years we’d resurrect our federations, redraw our favorites, and even recreated the whole roster in a PS1 wrestling game later on. But at the heart of it, Mike and I knew this was our own little universe. It was uniquely ours, and something nobody would fully understand unless they were right there with us in that room.

As I moved into my design career and started the Signalnoise hustle, I never lost sight of those guys. I still have every single one of those original drawings. In 2016, I was having dinner with my now-wife Naomi and we started talking about how to bring these characters back. What form would they take? Why would anyone care? She had a few ideas, but one hit like a ton of bricks: a simple tabletop game that let people experience the wrestlers exactly the way Mike and I did back in the day.

That was the spark. A game. What started as the AWF evolved into the mighty STARKADE.

I’m going to leave the tale there for now. The story of STARKADE is massive, and I’ll be picking up the pieces in a future post.

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