thread: 2005-04-27 : The Open House 4: Handshaking
On 2005-04-29, Charles wrote:
I'm Charles Seaton. I read here constantly, post moderately frequently. I also follow the Forge theory section irregularly. I lived with Vincent, Meg and Emily for a year (longer with Emily) back in the early 90's (where we introduced Emily to oddball freeform low GM'd gaming).
I've been gaming since I was six, when I was started off by the teachers at the hippy free school I attended (1st edition D&D, and then later RuneQuest). I played lots of D&D and then AD&D through highschool, with various other things tossed in at points (Call of Cthulhu, Toon, Top Secret, DragonQuest are the ones I can remember). For many years, I played GM-less AD&D with my brother and two friends.
When I hit college, I got involved in freestyle (although still GM'd) gaming, which I vastly preferred. Together with several of my current housemates and some former housemates, I was involved in creating a shared multi/co GM'd world, which we played in off and on (currently on) for the past 12 years. Mostly through the work of Sarah Kahn (my spouse, and a frequent poster on rgfa back in the mid-90's), the shared world has developed into a thing of amazing detail and breadth. We have recently started putting it online.
I currently play in a freeform, GM-less/co-GM'd game set in our shared world, and also in a 90% freeform GM'd game set in a different world. I haven't actually played any of the Forge-descended games, but I'm sufficiently arrogant that I discuss them anyway. I have, however, definitely been incorporating some aspects of Forge theory into my own thinking, and into the methods of our co-GM'd game.
I live in a quasi-communal household (3 of us are purely communal, 2 more are a married couple with a 1 1/2 year old daughter, 2 more are single renters). We used to be more communal, but so it goes. We live in a big blue and pink house in outer south-east Portland, Oregon. We also have two cats, one of whom is very shy, and the other of whom likes to be spanked (no, seriously). I've been married for a little more than 10 years, and I've lived communally with 3 of my current house for between 12 and 15 years.
I work for a research group in a university, where I help to support an estuary monitoring and modelling system (I mostly do data quality assurance and visualization stuff). I have a masters degree gained under my current employer.
