Thomas began learning to fence in 1981, while at Fairfield University. He competed at the collegiate level for 4 years. In 2001, he began teaching fencing at Guard Up, Inc., in Burlington, MA, primarily to young students, aged 6-16. That same year, he began studying historical swordplay, branching out into German longsword, Italian rapier, and English sword-and-buckler as resources became available. He occasionally dabbles in Chinese and Japanese sword styles as well. He enjoys learning from a comparative study of original period manuscripts, and is always continuing to learn.
Locally Thomas has taught fencing at Shelburne Buckland Elementary School, Colraine Elementary School, and Mohawk Trail High School in addition to his own classes in Shelburne Falls, and Shelburne.
Thomas specializes in teaching sword arts - modern foil fencing as well as historical European swordplay - to younger students, beginning at age 4. His patience and inventiveness have endeared him to his many students over the years. His approach emphasizes the reasons behind each technique, and he incorporates variations from many historical sources into his modern fencing classes. He is also very safety-conscious in his choice of training tools and methods. He uses all the modern fencing safety gear in his foil classes, and padded foam swords (by ActionFlex) and/or flexible practice rapiers to teach historical swordplay.
Thomas has designed and co-designed numerous board games and card games since 1987.
These include:
These games have won several awards, including the Oppenheim Award, the Mensa Award, and the Best Game award at the Cannes International Games Festival. He has also been commissioned to design personalized games for corporations. Thomas continues to develop new games, and is also available to teach game-making workshops.
Thomas also has a great deal of experience designing live-action games. In 1991, he and Bill Chamberlain founded one of the longest-running Live Action Roleplaying (LARP) games in the New England area: Legends Roleplaying. Legends has been a powerful influence on many other LARPs with its emphasis on "what you see is what you get" costuming, props, and set design. From 2001-2005, while teaching fencing and swordplay at Guard Up, Inc., he created a number of popular games and founded the A.C.E. Adventure" series of classes for young students (aged 6-16). These classes used roleplaying games with foam swords to teach fair play, social development, and a positive outlook on life. In 2004, he and his partner, Helene Grogan, created a new system of live action roleplaying called CyberLARP. While remaining live action, CyberLARP incorporated the use of barcodes and computer technology to allow for a wide range of new rules while remaining easy to learn.