Post by Lagoon on Dec 5, 2007 4:47:53 GMT -5
...And the last horse jumps the fence. Always takes me a while to get these things written!
Anyway, some of you probably know me, but several of you probably don't, so I'll follow the fashion and do one of these! (Format shamelessly stolen from Nekura
The Basics
Name: James
Alias: Lagoon, Tharilion, Paddy, Universal...
Stats:
- 24 years old, officially into the mid-twenties now. Gah.
- Male, with optional beard and sideburns.
- 5'8", likely to shrink if heredity has anything on me.
- Dark blond hair, which apparently has "so many layers" people think I get highlights. Which I don't.
- Bluey grey eyes, with little yellow bits right near the pupil that I occasionally worry about.
- Short sighted in one eye, long sighted in the other, double-jointed in my hands, and I used to be able to type at around 70wpm. Then I became a student, and stopped typing quite as much. Now I suck.
-Used to be fluent in French and German... that was six years ago. I miss my languages!
Random Facts:
*Works in a well-known tabletop wargaming store, and is apparently regarded as "one of the best staff in the country". Which makes me wonder why I never get promoted...
*Used to write loads, then tailed off a bit. Then I got into the running for a game development / writing job at our head office, got down to the last two, and lost it. On the plus side, I'm now a freelance writer, doing a mixture of rules and fiction. Which just simply rocks.
*Got a girlfriend who's awesome, and we just got a flat. Gamer love rocks. (However, she's away for a month on management training, so I've regressed to "online slacker" mode when I'm at home. Gonna eat beans on toast today!)
*I like hats, and have more than I have pairs of shoes or smart shirts. In fact, I like to think I have my own little style going on. I show off the trilby / open short sleeved shirt / vest / baggy jeans look on a regular basis!
*I'm a multifaceted geek, and proud of it. Music geek, literary geek, language geek gaming geek in every goddamned sense... yeah. I do a lot of roleplay, mostly tabletop these days but I used to rock the online world all the time; I'm a tabletop wargamer, and I paint all my own miniatures; I play video games whenever I get the chance, and I just reactivated my Xbox Live and WoW accounts so I'll be on those whenever I can; and buying new board games gives me a fuzzy feeling inside. So yeah. Geek.
*I write way too much in these things.
Hobbies:
*Gaming (see above!)
*Reading and writing
*Watching all kinds of movies!
*Makeup effects and prosthetics, mostly gore! The first film I worked on has finally been finished, and is getting a proper low-budget DVD release through our website, and you have no idea how proud I am!
*DJing at my local alternative music night (getting a group of regulars built up already!)
*Socialising with my good buddies, gamers one and all, and dancing like a crazy person to music that's good (and occasionally not so good...)
*Boring people with the things that fascinate me. Language study is a popular one!
(Y'know, I wondered why I've been so tired lately. I need to stop doing so much...)
RP History:
Tricky one, this! It's been a long time. Probably best to break in down into eras.
Era One - Discovery and Trek Sims
When I was about twelve, I picked up a second-hand copy of Werewolf: The Apocalypse around the same time that my best friend and (now) regular gaming buddy picked up, by coincidence, Vampire: The Masquerade. We dabbled for a bit, but it kinda sucked with two people, so we dropped it. A few months later I got the internet for the first time, and being a certain kind of kid, I found the Star Trek website and its chatrooms - specifically, I found the Holosuite, which was for "casual simming". The world of online roleplay opened its doors to me, and in I stepped. I played dozens of one-off characters at first, usually the ballsy, overblown, clumsy sorts that typify a newcomer to roleplaying. I'd already been writing (again, clumsily) for a good while, and I found that I really enjoyed having somewhere I could regularly let off creative steam.
Era Two - Stability and #warzone
I became a regular to the site, and developed a couple of regular characters - Fero Syler, a Bajoran technician, and Logan Toz, a Trill counsellor. The latter started off as an experiment, really - another Trill character, Cazjia Toz, got killed somehow, and I played the next host for her symbiont. Took a lot of OOC discussion and notes, but I think I pulled it off. I really took to the character, and kept him on even after the ST website lost the chatrooms, and everyone moved to the Trinet IRC servers. He got involved in the "T'Acraya Dynasty" storylines, which were mostly engineered by none other than the Nekura we all know and love. We spent months working off each other, usually roleplaying (simming, as we still called it) two or three characters at once. Roleplay eventually moved from the main room into our own side room, where a group of three or four of us did our own thing. We strayed away from Trek, as well, revelling in different settings whenever they occurred to us. It was an awesome time.
Then I went to university.
Era Three - Tabletop and the Outside World
I tried keeping up the online stuff at university, but sadly, I got too busy and my room's connection sucked. I drifted away from my online roleplay buddies (still regret that, to this day) and did the whole student deal. For one thing, I got involved with the Gaming and Roleplaying society, where I found lots of guys in leather trenchcoats with long hair and beards, who talked in precise, enunciated tones and sat in pubs drinking real ale. I fell in with one such group, and got involved in a couple of Vampire: The Masquerade games, playing a Brujah computer hacker and a Malkavian middle-aged businessman turned schizophrenic psychotic. Fun as all that was, it got cut short when I dropped out of university and went back home to get a job. Meh.
Era Four - Familiarity and Sofas
When I returned home, I tried to get back into online roleplay, but most of the people I knew had either done the student thing themselves, or were busy elsewhere. Instead, I started up another gaming group with some people I knew from work, where we gathered in one guy's living room and played Hunter: The Reckoning, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, D&D, Star Wars, and too many other things for me to think of. Bizarrely, I can't remember any of the characters I played in this time... mostly, I don't think we stuck with any one thing for long enough.
Era Five - Journals and Acclaim
After a little while, I did manage to break back into online stuff in a small way, after hearing about "roleplay journals" and meeting a crowd of people who did RP through Livejournal. The fashion was mostly fanfic-style, with people taking on characters from a TV series, book or whatever, and interacting in the usual way. My first foray was on a Buffy board (who can resist a vampire?) where I started off as a random extra, my philosophy being that it's always more fun to play a character you've created yourself. However, the girl playing Angel dropped out, and I stepped in. That's when I found out how interesting and fun it can be to play something that's already got a story. I took things fairly seriously, watching a lot of both TV series that involved him, and I got complimented by a lot of people for playing him believably. I started to get a reputation for getting right into the head of a character, and having a pretty decent range of stuff I could roleplay. I ended up as a mod on the journal, and even started up a second one (Harry Potter, because why not?) with a group of people I met through Buffy. I played the ineffable Ron Weasley at the same time as I was playing the enigmatic Severus Snape, as well as a host of minor characters. Again, fun times. Online roleplaying had welcomed me back in, and I was experiencing it in a new way.
Era Six - Return and Responsibility
I decided that the working life wasn't good enough for me, and that I needed to get back to some studying. Not wanting to drift away from my online buddies again, I told them I was going, and dropped out so that someone else could have a crack at the characters I was playing. Back I went, to the same university, to have a second crack at the same course. I rejoined GARPS (the Gaming And RolePlay Society, see?) and played some Mage and a bit more D&D, again with fairly forgettable characters. However, things got interesting when the Serenity roleplaying game came out. As a Firefly nut, I simply had to get involved, and as no one else seemed interested, I ran it myself. I got a group of players (most of whom I ended up living with, a move I came to regret) with some great characters, and it was a bundle of fun. I also started gaming outside of the university, with some people I met through my part-time job. We were playing a tweaked version of Advanced Fighting Fantasy (bit old-school, I know), and I took the role of Mac, an Irish-accented assassin who was a genuinely nice guy when he wasn't killing people with precisely flung daggers. (People who met Paddy will now understand where my love for the accent came from!) Things stayed predictably quiet in the online world.
Era Seven - Now and Soon
After some interesting academic footwork, I dropped out of university again, but didn't go home this time. Instead, I retained my gaming groups. Serenity tailed off when we started living together and resentment happened, but Fighting Fantasy is still going strong now. I took over running the game for a little while, and when I came back, I left Mac as an NPC in favour of Wallace Marlowe, an Edwardian-style foppish dandy who, due to a fear of death, too much money and an interest in the occult, was entirely immortal. Oh, he could get messed up in a fight, and it still hurt like hell, but he healed up eventually. (Rumours that I was watching the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen when I came up with this character concept are entirely inaccurate. Honest.) I also started playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, in the role of Dogwit Rumplebreek, the halfling barber-surgeon (great fun to play, as he makes up words on the spot and mainly gets around trouble by quick-talking at it until it gets confused), and Seventh Sea, where I played Giovanni Ferucci, a Vodacce - in other words, Italian - nobleman, duellist and womaniser. I'm still playing these three characters on a weekly basis!
In the online world, I got back into it when an old friend and gaming buddy started up a board called Condemned Night, and I played an Irish wandering minstrel by the name of Paddy. But then, I imagine a fair few of you knew that already...
And that's it.
Wow.
A potted history of my roleplaying experience. Never really thought about it in that way before. Of course, I just went through the big ones - there have been dozens of smaller characters and games over the years. Twelve years, to be precise. Holy poo, that's a long time.
If you've read this far, I admire your tenacity, and I'll admit to a little bit of self-satisfaction that you were interested enough to do so. I feel like I should be taking questions at this point. Or maybe a pop quiz is in order?
Either way, that's me. In a nutshell.
Good to meet you all...
Anyway, some of you probably know me, but several of you probably don't, so I'll follow the fashion and do one of these! (Format shamelessly stolen from Nekura
The Basics
Name: James
Alias: Lagoon, Tharilion, Paddy, Universal...
Stats:
- 24 years old, officially into the mid-twenties now. Gah.
- Male, with optional beard and sideburns.
- 5'8", likely to shrink if heredity has anything on me.
- Dark blond hair, which apparently has "so many layers" people think I get highlights. Which I don't.
- Bluey grey eyes, with little yellow bits right near the pupil that I occasionally worry about.
- Short sighted in one eye, long sighted in the other, double-jointed in my hands, and I used to be able to type at around 70wpm. Then I became a student, and stopped typing quite as much. Now I suck.
-Used to be fluent in French and German... that was six years ago. I miss my languages!
Random Facts:
*Works in a well-known tabletop wargaming store, and is apparently regarded as "one of the best staff in the country". Which makes me wonder why I never get promoted...
*Used to write loads, then tailed off a bit. Then I got into the running for a game development / writing job at our head office, got down to the last two, and lost it. On the plus side, I'm now a freelance writer, doing a mixture of rules and fiction. Which just simply rocks.
*Got a girlfriend who's awesome, and we just got a flat. Gamer love rocks. (However, she's away for a month on management training, so I've regressed to "online slacker" mode when I'm at home. Gonna eat beans on toast today!)
*I like hats, and have more than I have pairs of shoes or smart shirts. In fact, I like to think I have my own little style going on. I show off the trilby / open short sleeved shirt / vest / baggy jeans look on a regular basis!
*I'm a multifaceted geek, and proud of it. Music geek, literary geek, language geek gaming geek in every goddamned sense... yeah. I do a lot of roleplay, mostly tabletop these days but I used to rock the online world all the time; I'm a tabletop wargamer, and I paint all my own miniatures; I play video games whenever I get the chance, and I just reactivated my Xbox Live and WoW accounts so I'll be on those whenever I can; and buying new board games gives me a fuzzy feeling inside. So yeah. Geek.
*I write way too much in these things.
Hobbies:
*Gaming (see above!)
*Reading and writing
*Watching all kinds of movies!
*Makeup effects and prosthetics, mostly gore! The first film I worked on has finally been finished, and is getting a proper low-budget DVD release through our website, and you have no idea how proud I am!
*DJing at my local alternative music night (getting a group of regulars built up already!)
*Socialising with my good buddies, gamers one and all, and dancing like a crazy person to music that's good (and occasionally not so good...)
*Boring people with the things that fascinate me. Language study is a popular one!
(Y'know, I wondered why I've been so tired lately. I need to stop doing so much...)
RP History:
Tricky one, this! It's been a long time. Probably best to break in down into eras.
Era One - Discovery and Trek Sims
When I was about twelve, I picked up a second-hand copy of Werewolf: The Apocalypse around the same time that my best friend and (now) regular gaming buddy picked up, by coincidence, Vampire: The Masquerade. We dabbled for a bit, but it kinda sucked with two people, so we dropped it. A few months later I got the internet for the first time, and being a certain kind of kid, I found the Star Trek website and its chatrooms - specifically, I found the Holosuite, which was for "casual simming". The world of online roleplay opened its doors to me, and in I stepped. I played dozens of one-off characters at first, usually the ballsy, overblown, clumsy sorts that typify a newcomer to roleplaying. I'd already been writing (again, clumsily) for a good while, and I found that I really enjoyed having somewhere I could regularly let off creative steam.
Era Two - Stability and #warzone
I became a regular to the site, and developed a couple of regular characters - Fero Syler, a Bajoran technician, and Logan Toz, a Trill counsellor. The latter started off as an experiment, really - another Trill character, Cazjia Toz, got killed somehow, and I played the next host for her symbiont. Took a lot of OOC discussion and notes, but I think I pulled it off. I really took to the character, and kept him on even after the ST website lost the chatrooms, and everyone moved to the Trinet IRC servers. He got involved in the "T'Acraya Dynasty" storylines, which were mostly engineered by none other than the Nekura we all know and love. We spent months working off each other, usually roleplaying (simming, as we still called it) two or three characters at once. Roleplay eventually moved from the main room into our own side room, where a group of three or four of us did our own thing. We strayed away from Trek, as well, revelling in different settings whenever they occurred to us. It was an awesome time.
Then I went to university.
Era Three - Tabletop and the Outside World
I tried keeping up the online stuff at university, but sadly, I got too busy and my room's connection sucked. I drifted away from my online roleplay buddies (still regret that, to this day) and did the whole student deal. For one thing, I got involved with the Gaming and Roleplaying society, where I found lots of guys in leather trenchcoats with long hair and beards, who talked in precise, enunciated tones and sat in pubs drinking real ale. I fell in with one such group, and got involved in a couple of Vampire: The Masquerade games, playing a Brujah computer hacker and a Malkavian middle-aged businessman turned schizophrenic psychotic. Fun as all that was, it got cut short when I dropped out of university and went back home to get a job. Meh.
Era Four - Familiarity and Sofas
When I returned home, I tried to get back into online roleplay, but most of the people I knew had either done the student thing themselves, or were busy elsewhere. Instead, I started up another gaming group with some people I knew from work, where we gathered in one guy's living room and played Hunter: The Reckoning, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, D&D, Star Wars, and too many other things for me to think of. Bizarrely, I can't remember any of the characters I played in this time... mostly, I don't think we stuck with any one thing for long enough.
Era Five - Journals and Acclaim
After a little while, I did manage to break back into online stuff in a small way, after hearing about "roleplay journals" and meeting a crowd of people who did RP through Livejournal. The fashion was mostly fanfic-style, with people taking on characters from a TV series, book or whatever, and interacting in the usual way. My first foray was on a Buffy board (who can resist a vampire?) where I started off as a random extra, my philosophy being that it's always more fun to play a character you've created yourself. However, the girl playing Angel dropped out, and I stepped in. That's when I found out how interesting and fun it can be to play something that's already got a story. I took things fairly seriously, watching a lot of both TV series that involved him, and I got complimented by a lot of people for playing him believably. I started to get a reputation for getting right into the head of a character, and having a pretty decent range of stuff I could roleplay. I ended up as a mod on the journal, and even started up a second one (Harry Potter, because why not?) with a group of people I met through Buffy. I played the ineffable Ron Weasley at the same time as I was playing the enigmatic Severus Snape, as well as a host of minor characters. Again, fun times. Online roleplaying had welcomed me back in, and I was experiencing it in a new way.
Era Six - Return and Responsibility
I decided that the working life wasn't good enough for me, and that I needed to get back to some studying. Not wanting to drift away from my online buddies again, I told them I was going, and dropped out so that someone else could have a crack at the characters I was playing. Back I went, to the same university, to have a second crack at the same course. I rejoined GARPS (the Gaming And RolePlay Society, see?) and played some Mage and a bit more D&D, again with fairly forgettable characters. However, things got interesting when the Serenity roleplaying game came out. As a Firefly nut, I simply had to get involved, and as no one else seemed interested, I ran it myself. I got a group of players (most of whom I ended up living with, a move I came to regret) with some great characters, and it was a bundle of fun. I also started gaming outside of the university, with some people I met through my part-time job. We were playing a tweaked version of Advanced Fighting Fantasy (bit old-school, I know), and I took the role of Mac, an Irish-accented assassin who was a genuinely nice guy when he wasn't killing people with precisely flung daggers. (People who met Paddy will now understand where my love for the accent came from!) Things stayed predictably quiet in the online world.
Era Seven - Now and Soon
After some interesting academic footwork, I dropped out of university again, but didn't go home this time. Instead, I retained my gaming groups. Serenity tailed off when we started living together and resentment happened, but Fighting Fantasy is still going strong now. I took over running the game for a little while, and when I came back, I left Mac as an NPC in favour of Wallace Marlowe, an Edwardian-style foppish dandy who, due to a fear of death, too much money and an interest in the occult, was entirely immortal. Oh, he could get messed up in a fight, and it still hurt like hell, but he healed up eventually. (Rumours that I was watching the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen when I came up with this character concept are entirely inaccurate. Honest.) I also started playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, in the role of Dogwit Rumplebreek, the halfling barber-surgeon (great fun to play, as he makes up words on the spot and mainly gets around trouble by quick-talking at it until it gets confused), and Seventh Sea, where I played Giovanni Ferucci, a Vodacce - in other words, Italian - nobleman, duellist and womaniser. I'm still playing these three characters on a weekly basis!
In the online world, I got back into it when an old friend and gaming buddy started up a board called Condemned Night, and I played an Irish wandering minstrel by the name of Paddy. But then, I imagine a fair few of you knew that already...
And that's it.
Wow.
A potted history of my roleplaying experience. Never really thought about it in that way before. Of course, I just went through the big ones - there have been dozens of smaller characters and games over the years. Twelve years, to be precise. Holy poo, that's a long time.
If you've read this far, I admire your tenacity, and I'll admit to a little bit of self-satisfaction that you were interested enough to do so. I feel like I should be taking questions at this point. Or maybe a pop quiz is in order?
Either way, that's me. In a nutshell.
Good to meet you all...