Once in a while I stumble into a blog post that absolutely demands to be shared to as many people as I can manage, and this is one of them. Chuck Wendig makes his case on why writers should play roleplaying games.
I’d talk more about it, but that would just take up more time that would be better off reading the damn post. So go click, read and enjoy.
Today, I write a post in support of the Speak Out With Your Geek Out campaign that’s going on right now. The premise of the campaign is simple: Post about how much you like your geeky hobbies or vocation.
And so I’d like to go and present my geek DNA so to speak:
Anime
One of my earliest geek interests was Anime. Thanks to my best friend way back in Xavier, I was introduced to Rumiko Takahashi’s Ranma 1/2, which eventually led to me seeking out more anime like Gundam 0083, Bubblegum Crisis / Crash, Ah! My Goddess!, 8-Man After, Ninja Scroll, Lodoss War, The Heroic Legend of Arislan, Ghost in the Shell and others. It was a big thing for me, and the visuals paired with relatively more “mature” stories as compared to western animation was mind-blowing at the time and I got drawn in. My enthusiasm for this has cooled somewhat at this point, but I am still a big fan of some of the more fantastic series like Fullmetal Alchemist and Tiger and Bunny.
Books
I really ought to be reading more stuff. But that said I am a big fan of David Eddings, Terry Brooks, Guy Gavriel Kay (especially Under Heaven) and Dan Abnett. More recently I’ve resolved to read books by Joe Abercrombie (whose “The Blade Itself” is proving to be very, very amusing) and George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.
Comics
I’ve always been a fan of comics. While I’ve not had a chance to really collect a lot of them due to my poor money management skills back in high school. That said, while I’m a big, BIG Batman fan, the gems of my comic book collection have always been less well known. Some of the highlights of my collection include Christian Gossett’s The Red Star, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Metabarons, Arnold Arre’s excellent The Mythology Class and J. Michael Straczynski’s Rising Stars.
Computer Games
My first personal computer was a Commodore 64 that was given to us as a gift by my Uncle who lived in the US. That set me on a looong road of computer gaming that continues to this day. If I decided to list all the games I’ve played, I’d probably end up taking too much time, but I’ll hit all the highlights. I was incredibly fortunate to be able to play early RPGs like The Bard’s Tale, Ultima V (and VIII), Star Control 2 and the SSIGold Box series of games. I never really stopped picking up RPGs no matter what console or PC I had, picking up Fallout 2, Baldur’s Gate (the entire series), Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights and Planescape: Torment. Needless to say, majority of my D&D experience was from an electronic format.
Let me say this: Good Old Games is a godsend.
I also had a lot of exposure to old Japanese console RPGs, having played Final Fantasy (FF6 was the best in the series, in my personal opinion), Chrono Trigger and Wild ARMS.
Tabletop Games
Okay, here we go. Tabletop games are really my biggest geek interest. It all began with a copy of Star Frontiers back when I was about nine years old, and I haven’t really looked back since. I have to admit that I’m not much into board games, but Arkham Horror, Robo Rally and Puerto Rico very solid games that I enjoy playing.
I used to be a big fan of CCGs, picking up Magic: the Gathering in high school, before transitioning out into Legend of the Five Rings, and finally giving the short-lived Spycraft CCG a chance. I decided to stop after that as card games can get really expensive.
I greatly enjoyed painting and assembling models for Warhammer Fantasy Battles, but I was never really any good at the game, and so my interest dwindled)
Finally I got to RPGs. After dabbling in the Legend of the Five Rings RPG, I picked up Mage: the Ascension on a recommendation from a friend and it was as if the floodgates were opened. I became a rabid fan of White-Wolf stuff, picking up every single Mage book I could find regardless of how difficult it was to acquire them here in the Philippines at the time when PDF publishing was still nonexistent. Since then I’ve managed to amass a respectable collection of games both in physical format and in PDF, and I decided to open a blog focused on this particular hobby alone.
Life and Times of a Philippine Gamer is the result of that decision, and has been going strong for about four years now. It was originally meant to be a visible source of news and advice for local gamers, but has long since become a repository of crazy campaign ideas, actual play reports and random musings on the hobby. I’m also lucky to have met gamers across the globe who drop by on a regular basis to give their two cents and discuss the matter, and I have very little doubt that had it not been for their presence and company, I may have actually decided to quit this venture as it can be quite lonely to be broadcasting into the ether.
