Forum Name: Gulnyr
Name: Greg
Class: Commoner (1)
Race: Human
Alignment: TN
Deity: None
Age: 31
Sex: Male
Physical Description: 175 cm tall. 61.2 kg. Dark hair, usually cropped off very close to the scalp. Nerd-pale skin. Wears glasses. Often kind of scruffy-looking.
Hobbies and Interests: Sciences (all of them, though some more than others), history, science fiction, gaming, classical music, cookies.
Background: I was introduced to the bright red D&D Basic box set at age 12 by some slightly older neighborhood friends. It was a lot of fun playing for a couple of years, but then they moved away.
I found some new friends with new games. Some were RPGs, like GURPS, Warhammer Fantasy, and Champions (aka the Hero system). Most were tabletop wargames, like Battletech, the
Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator, and Warhammer 40000 (way back in the days of Rogue Trader, when army lists came in White Dwarf and made you roll randomly for equipment). There were never many of us, so it usually came down to some sort of battle no matter what game we were playing, but we always made sure to include roleplaying. We developed characters for every game, not necessarily written out on paper, but always with personalities that affected the game in real ways. Tabletop battles take on a whole new feel when you stop thinking of the counters or miniatures as chess pieces and start caring about the characters involved.
Even when we started playing against each other in computer games, we'd find ways to include roleplaying. We made rules for mixing Risk with Age of Empires, with a backdrop of politics for our characters - the leaders of the nations - to interact within.
I met new people online who were also interested in mixing roleplaying into the basic computer games. One of the best experiences I had was a small community built around the game Man of War II. It's a simulation of sailing ship combat around the time of the American Revolution on into the Napoleonic Era, but we used it to represent roughly the mid to late 1600s in the Caribbean. Some of us played pirates, others played naval officers (mostly British), and a couple played the middle as privateers. It was called Marooners. We set up a forum and four of us acted as GMs. There were general rules about what could be done when and where, but it was generally free form. I made a spreadsheet chart with a built-in die roller for determining ship sightings and cargo in the holds of prize ships, which was about the most absolute thing about the whole setup. The players would make posts in the forum, in-character, describing what their characters were doing in town or at sea, up to twice per day. The GMs would then respond with descriptions of the action, playing the roles of NPCs and other ships when necessary. Things generally built toward Fridays, as that was our night to get together online and fight out any ship-to-ship combat that resulted from forum posts. Any player who didn't have his character in a battle could still be part of the fun by playing one of the NPC ships.
Eventually, I circled around and found D&D again with the arrival of 3rd Edition and then NWN. Then I found Layonara through the
D&D Adventures site. That was a little over two years ago. Since then, I've had only two 'real' characters - Gulnyr the Grim and Jennara Creekskipper. Gulnyr is based on a level 1 Dwarven Rogue I have on a sheet of paper. Jennara was a little more spontaneous, but she doesn't lack any depth for it, I hope.
