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Nice to meet you ...

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 5:59 am
by Kepli
Hi,

Thought it would be nice to start a thread where everyone can introduce him/herself ;)

I wrote an introduction at FUM, so will post a link to that (just scroll down a bit)... No need to repeat myself ;)

Introduction link

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 6:49 am
by torstan
Fair enough.

I'm pretty new to the VT stuff. The only computer aid I used for gaming previously was eTools. I used to do all maps by hand and run the game on scrap bits of paper. My group was impressed when we moved up to a laminated battle map! This all changed when I moved from the UK to Poland for work. Now I run the game with my old group via Skype and maptool, which works brilliantly. I just wish Skype were as stable as maptool :)

I'm currently working as a research physicist in Warsaw University working on the connection between dark matter and particle physics. I did my doctorate and undergraduate back in the UK and the gaming groups I play with come from those universities. I code a bit and draw a bit and am happy to help out if ever these things come in handy.

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 7:05 am
by Kepli
Interesting job you have :D

Yeah, Skype works well with most VT\'s imo. I used it with FG before with a group of starting players. Unfortunately they were all women, so there was more gossip going back and forth than OOC talk LOL

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 7:14 am
by torstan
Interesting job you have :)
I like it. I've managed to get in to see the enormous particle accelerator they're building at CERN - which was very cool. Now we're all waiting to see what it finds when it turns on next November....
Skype works well with most VT's
Yes, it's not bad, though recently we have been getting come horrible feedback noises over the line. We can still use it, but it can be a real pain.

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 7:47 am
by trevor
I'm a senior software developer at a small software company. Married, 3 kids (4, 2, 5mo). Work on rptools in my "spare" time :)

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 9:29 am
by dLANbandit
I'm a Computer Engineer, in the deep south. I am mostly a contractor for the Department of Defense. I have a beautiful Materials Engineer wife, who gave us a son, who thankfully favors her. He is just over 3mo old now.

I started gaming with the Marvel system back in elementary school. I've gamed over the years in Champions, GURPS, AD&D, Rifts, Vampire, Werewolf, and even a system my friend tried to build himself.

In college we got into DnD a lot, and I ran a large number of campaigns with different groups. Our favorite tools? A whiteboard with black permanent marker drawing the grid, and a back of Starburst for dungeon wall creation, and Jolly Ranchers for enemy markers. Kill the enemy take a bite!

BTW: a lot of people don't know a permanent marker on a whiteboard is actually erasable with the application of windex or rubbing alcohol. And if you use the normal eraser it just takes off the eraser markers.

Our group found this community after purchasing Fantasy Grounds after college. That lead us to FUM and they lead us to here. Where the developers aren't afraid to respond to all the posts, and the builds are weekly instead of yearly.

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 9:43 am
by Dalna
I guess, some people would call me a bum...hehe, I stay home all day and veg. I assist my family when needed and play some on the computer. I need to do this due to having disabled people in the family that need alot of care, and not always being able to get assistance. The way the government works here, it became easier to stay at home, seemed like they punished me to work.

I once was in the navy working on the mechanical side of the nuclear propulsion plant for submarines. Did severasl other jobs out of the Navy, like HVAC tech, electrician, plumbers assistant, carpenters assistant, etc. Sometimes do computer consulting as a side job (Making/Repairing/Help in Prepurchasing/Instruction of use). So I am a jack of alot of trades. Very good at troubleshooting things.

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 10:41 am
by Steel Rat
I'm a bald, fat, white guy. Yeah, that's my profession ;)

Ok, so I REALLY work for a large telecommunications company (just became the largest in the US recently, hint, hint). I am an admin for an Asset Management software package called AssetCenter (Which used to be owned by Peregrine, and is now HP). So I do some coding and some SQL and fun stuff like that. But most of the time at work I'm managing my own web sites ;). Uh oh, now I'm busted.

Started playing AD&D when in the Army in 1981, stationed in Germany. After about 6 months I started DMing, and have played/DMed off and on every since. Never played any other game systems till about 5 years ago, now I've played an/or GMed d20, Action! System, GURPS, EABA, and some others I can't remember.

In the Army I was a professional target, er Scout. The official title was Armored Reconnaissance Specialist (MOS 19D). It was fun, but wasn't something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Only did 3 years from 1981 - 84. Stationed in Bad Kissingen, West Germany (way back when there was an East Germany) with the second squadron 11th Armored Cavalry (the shield-shaped patch has a rearing, black horse), and at Ft Riley, KS with the Big Red One, 2/16th Infantry.

As a kid, I built a lot of plastic models, mostly planes and tanks, and mostly german WWII vehicles. So every time I see a war movie I look for authentic stuff. Consequently my favorite "war movie" is Kelly's Heroes. this was the first WWII movie I had seen that went to the trouble of using authentic German vehicles. And while the Tigers they had weren't the real thing (I doubt there were any working Tigers in 1970), they did an excellent job of mocking up a Soviet T-34 to look like a Tiger (the road wheels gave it away). They used the same mock-ups in Saving Private Ryan, or at least they used the same type of T-34 chassis.

Anyway, you can see how much of a WWII vehicle geek I am, lol.

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 12:07 pm
by mosat
dLANbandit wrote:I'm a Computer Engineer, in the deep south. I am mostly a contractor for the Department of Defense. I have a beautiful Materials Engineer wife, who gave us a son, who thankfully favors her. He is just over 3mo old now.
Oak Ridge? Interesting, I'm in the deep south too and also have a son who will be 4 months old in a week.


I'm a Digital Imaging Specialist currently living in Chattanooga TN. I work for a Custom Publisher as a Production Specialist preparing our publications for print. I've been married a year and a half to a lovely woman who thankfully tolorates my hopeless addiction to computers.

A friend introduced me to RPG's by way of Traveller in 1980 and I went on to AD&D through Jr. High. Stopped playing in high school because I went off to art school and everybody there was too cool to play :?

At the tail end of college I found a group of friends who were geeks like me and one of them ran an involved game based on the Paladium books (Rifts, Heroes Unlimited, etc..). I'm not a fan of Paladium but he used the rulles loosely and ran a heavily story oriented game anyway so it was fun. After that we played third edition Ars Magical for a while. I was going to school in Atlanta at the time and we would hit DragonCon each year. When Vampire: the Masquarade was introduced I picked up the first soft-bound, badly edited first edition. We all loved this game and I ran a fondly remembered campaign set in Atlanta that ran for three years. I lost interest once the game devolved into LARPing, it was cool when nobody knew about it but running around with a bunch of teenagers in dark clothes with their arms crossed pretending to be invisible is not my idea of fun.

I stopped playing any RPGs for a few years until a fit of nostalga got me to thinking about D&D again, I still had all my old book but I went to the game book store to see what the current crop looked like. The players handbook had just come out and I picked it up and liked what they had done and so formed a new group and have been on the D20 bandwagon ever since.

A little while into it I did a search for computer tools for D&D and found PCGen. I liked it alot and loved the fact that you could edit the data with a simple text editor. I started making datasets and just got more and more involved. In 2004 I attended GenCon and met many of the other guys who work on PCGen. We had a rare face to face Board meeting (I had been recently been asked to Chair the Docs team for the Board of Directors) and at that time we merged the Data, Docs and Output Sheet teams under one director of Content. I held that possition for about two years but stepped aside last year since being married and expecting a new son in the near future had negatively impacted my free time.

My current group is starting to break up and my wife doesn't like to play with them anyway so I was looking for ways to play online. A post over at EN World or WotC (I don't remember which) led me here.

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 12:20 pm
by dLANbandit
mosat wrote: Oak Ridge? Interesting, I'm in the deep south too...
ddddeeeeeppp south. UCLA - Unknown Corner of Lower Alabama.

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 12:32 pm
by mosat
dLANbandit wrote:ddddeeeeeppp south. UCLA - Unknown Corner of Lower Alabama.
Yup that's deep. I guess I'm just mid-south :)

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 12:59 pm
by dorpond
Dorpond in a nutshell:
He wants to do everything possible in the world before he dies but is quickly finding out there probably isn't enough time to do it all..

I am a dreamer but instead of lying around dreaming all day, I actually push forth and try to fulfill those dreams. This can be a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because I can say I have done a lot in life but it is also a curse because I can never really become and expert at any of them - I get so far and move on to the next interesting thing in life.

Certain things have stuck though - RPTools being one of them :)

There isn't a moment that goes by where I am not trying to better myself in some way or shape. you will never see Dorpond sitting around for 4 hours watching a football game. I'll bet on it perhaps but you can count on me being in the back room playing a new guitar solo, making maps, reading a technical book or something that gets me closer to victory.

When people ask me to do something, I often times will tell people that I will get to it sometime between sleeping and getting up in the night to pee. My wife never sees me just relaxing on the couch - nope I am sitting on the couch with a manual of some sort or my laptop creating new goodies.

I was a computer field engineer (FE) for about 6 years fixing hardware, then I became a networking engineer (SE) for another 6 years or so. Then I left all that behind to get a chance to tour the world (DOD tours for the military) in a band as a singer/guitar player. We put out a couple CD's, played in major venues in the surrounding areas and even had a song of mine on the radio. It was all worth it but not a way of life - not for a family anyway. So then I quit the band and became an IT Manager which is what I do currently.

Dorponds motivational speech of the day:
Follow your dreams - dream hard and chase them. Pretend you only have 10 years to live and fulfill everything you can imagine. Life is precious - breath it in.

Edit: Oh, as far as personality - the class clown. This says it all: http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?t=332

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 1:43 pm
by Big_Mac
Well okay I'll jump in.

I am married to my lovely English wife of nearly 13 years. I have 4 kids (9 girl, 7 Girl, 3 boy, 1 Girl) I have lived in the Boston area most of my life June 79. Before that I was all over the place from birth 79 (Army Brat). Originally Born in Fort Rucker, AL.

Professionally I am an IT Consultant and have been for over 15 years. Been programming and the like, since 82. Started on a TRS 80 self taught basic, then moved on to the DEC CPM operating system and MBasic. Ended up teaching my Freshman year, of High school, programming class and scored a 99 for the year, first semester was typing. So needless to say I am a geek and proud of it. (If you want to argue I am also 6'9" and 320lbs) :wink:

Role playing and the whole point of being on these boards. I started with Basic D&D (Red Box and light blue Dice). Switch to Ad&D very quickly and then everything under the sun (RPG's, Stategy, Computer, and Board). Played up until college started. Took a small Highatius and the start with D&D 2ed. Played 2 really long campaigns then took about a 4 year hiatus we started player 3.5 a year 1/2 ago. It it just about the same group that I played with in college then added a few in high school then added one new one recently and lost some to moves. We have a steady group of 6 and I will be posting some pics of a recent battle we fought. You'll all like these I am sure.

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 1:57 pm
by Steel Rat
I am a dreamer but instead of lying around dreaming all day, I actually push forth and try to fulfill those dreams. This can be a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because I can say I have done a lot in life but it is also a curse because I can never really become and expert at any of them - I get so far and move on to the next interesting thing in life.
Sounds more like ADD, lol, and that's NOT AD&D. ;)

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 2:10 pm
by dorpond
Steel Rat wrote: Sounds more like ADD, lol, and that's NOT AD&D. ;)
Not at all close - Actually someone with ADD can't keep focus on anything.

I am different - I am so focus on the goals at hand that I take them exactly to the point where I want to take them. Once they are complete, I push them aside and move on to the next task.

I am a perfectionist at heart and complete EVERY tasks that I give myself.

I just don't dedicate a life around just one thing - that would bore the living crap out of me. How someone can train for the olympics is beyond me - dedicating every waking hour to the same thing over and over again - *Yawn* it is putting me to sleep already.. I want to know everything in the world.