Hobbies.htm

Well, role-playing games are obviously a hobby of mine. In December of 1976 someone introduced me to a popular role-playing game (whose name needs not be mentioned). I played just once when I decided I much prefer adjudicating games (which at last estimate I have done so for upwards of 1200 gaming sessions). And with few exceptions, I have run every Saturday night since then. In the first couple of years, I ran during the week occasionally, and also had a regular game on Sundays. Talk about having no life! Somewhere along the line, the early 80's, I and the other people decided to do more than just complain.

I started writing a replacement. It took a couple of years to get it playable, but it evolved over the next few years into something a little more primitive than what we had been playing. If you would like to know more about it, go to the section entitled "Adventure Quest™".

Back in the late 70's and early-early 80's, I made a go at producing a computer game for the machines of the era (The Commodore PET, the Apple][+, the Radio Shack TRS-80, and the Atari-400). Eventually this game got picked up by Avalon Hill, and sold under the name Telengard. Alas, the vast pirating activity of the time prevented me from taking up computer game authoring as a living.

I would like to get back into the practice of writing computer games. It is something that I have always enjoyed. But what to create that hasn't already been done. I would like to create a computer game fashioned after the role-playing game Adventure Quest. Something that is involved and makes you think, I would imagine. Pretty much anything other than a first-person "shoot'um up" game.

The games that I like now are ones like Command and Conquer: Red Alert, Total Annihilation, Starcraft and Rise of Nations Why? Probably mostly because they make me think. Not only that, they reward quick thinking and clever strategy.

When I was living in Rochester, I learned how to play the oboe. Altogether, it's a pretty hard instrument to learn how to play. It takes a lot of work, and has relatively few things you can do with it. I continued to play while I went to Purdue. I played in both the band and the orchestra there. In total, I played the oboe for about 14 years. After a few years out of school, I bought myself an acoustic guitar. I bumped into someone willing to teach me... and I learned how to play folk music. Nice, but... uh... I bought electric soon after, a fender '58 replica, actually. I started learning to play more energetic stuff. As with the nature of things, the computers got involved too, and I acquired some synthesizer gear and started learning to sequence. Today I play about anything, including 70's and 80's rock, dance music, contemporary rock, and even some classical too. I have picked up playing keyboards. I really like going out and playing in front of a lot of people.

Making music is something that I enjoy, almost more than programming, and is something that I would like to get into as a career, should the opportunity present itself. My music involves computers extensively, and recently I have started to produce music with equipment that has become affordable enough. This is not something that I could have done 6 or 8 years ago. The biggest challenge so far has been to get people to the right places on time to accomplish our mutual goals.

My tastes in fiction varies, but carries one main theme, whether it be written or video. That theme is looking at the human condition and examining what the species has the capacity to become. This usually is kind of limited to science fiction, but not exclusive. I especially enjoy Star Trek and Babylon 5. I find most sitcoms uninteresting because they limit themselves on current events, or the present state of humanity. I generally go for the meat of a topic rather than the superficial flare.