What do you do besides role-playing?

[GB Steve]

By day I'm an analyst at the Department for Work and Pensions (Social Security to you). I'm responsible for an analytical programme that seek to determine the best ways of preventing fraud and error in some of our main benefits. This afternoon, as a special treat, I get to meet the Minister. Along with 30 others, I'm not that special.

By night, I'm the editor of the Origins nominated zine Places to Go, People to Be. I'm not really sure how that happened, but it's quite nice. I'm not sure I have a whole lot of time for things other than roleplaying, nothing terribly organised that is.

Paula, that's my wife, has been heard to say, "Why does everything you do have to be roleplaying related?" And she's a gamer so it must be pretty bad.

We did go to the theatre last night and caught a pretty decent Blithe Spirit at the Savoy Theatre. We also go to the occasional gig. London's great for gigging. This year I've seen the Raveonettes and I think NIN is next on our agenda. I also read a lot, mostly whilst commuting. I'm a big football fan (West Ham don't ya know) but I've not been playing much recently since getting tendonitis whilst skating.

I also comment on other people's blogs whilst not really bothering with my own.

[Sean]

I'm passionate about ideas and the way they fit together logically.

I'm passionate about fantasy, both in the broad sense of 'imagination' and in the narrower sense of 'stories about swords and magic'.

I'm passionate about my six month old daughter.

I guess #2 is the hobby part. It's really the only hobby I have time for. All my free time that doesn't go into my fantasy life goes to exploring nature, principally by hiking around remote areas. But I wouldn't call that a hobby.

[Domhnall]

Besides role playing??  There's a "besides role playing" now?  Why didn't anyone tell me!?  

Read, debate philosophy and theology with old friends.  
Just over the past 6 months I've gotten serious about WingTsun Kung Fu, which is a "practical" martial art (no Katas, nothing fancy--just fighting).

[Andrew Cooper]

Forgites,

As an introduction, my name is Andrew Cooper and I live in East Tennessee.  I'm 33 years old and married with 1 child.

What do I do besides play games?  

I read.  I tend to stick to fantasy with some Sci Fi thrown into the mix.  Every once in a while I'll dip into an Espionage novel, a biography, or a philosophy book.  With my current schedule, reading has become a luxury that I don't have as much time to spend doing but I do like it a lot.  Next year when I take my wife on our 10th Anniversary cruise, I intend to spend lots of time in a lounge chair reading and sipping cocktails.  Woot.

I program computers.  I also do this for a living but I taught myself because it was something I enjoyed doing so I'm guessing it counts as a hobby too.  Recently I've written a MUX engine in VB.NET and I've played around with making a VB.NET version of the old D&D Gold Box games that SSI released in the late 80's and early 90's.

I work out with free weights and I run.  I stopped doing this for several years and got fat.  Now I've started up again and am struggling to get myself back into shape.  I also like to play basketball, soccer, and volleyball.  I love football; although, I've never played.  I do play in a fantasy football league every year and this past year I won the Superbowl for the second time in 4 years.

I played the trumpet for 9 years but haven't touched it in at least that long. Mostly, that's a time issue.  Musically, I run the soundboard and other equipment at church.  My church is one that places a good bit of emphasis on music so our equipment is very good and playing with it is a lot of fun.  Besides, as the sound man I can make sure the bass is thumping and the electric guitar is screaming.  :)

Hmmmm... that's about it, at least it is if I stay on topic.  I could certainly regale you with tales of my lovely wife and 14 month old son but that'd likely bore you to death.

[Keith Senkowski]

I make shit with my spare time.  I make art.  I make babies. I make playlists with i-Tunes.  I make video game characters.  I make my wife crazy.  I make myself run.  I make myself read all sorts of shit.

Keith

[xenopulse]

Hobbies:
- write fiction (currently editing my first novel-length manuscript)
- Martial Arts (started with Wun Hop Kuen Do, nowadays doing Kajukenbo)
- compose techno and industrial songs (see signature)
- spend time with the love of my life and the kids (three boys: 12 yrs, 10 yrs, 14 months)
- waste time discussing politics and philosophy online, a leftover from my graduate school time
- do puzzles and riddles
- watch movies and good TV series (Farscape, Deadwood, Carnivale...)
- used to play computer and video games, but those have gotten a little stale (and too time consuming) recently

[Emily Care]

Hobbies I get to do now: Singing at drum circles & fire circles (like a pagan hamster wheel, but more fun :); dancing: contact improv, freeform; reading--lately hard boiled fiction & forestry related stuff; web design in a small way; learning about environmental regulation & conservation in MA--it's more work related but I'm sure not getting paid for a lot of it, so it's a hobby for now; making maple syrup; petting chickens & other farmy stuff.

Hobbies I wish I had time for: silk painting, marblizing, martial arts, hiking, juggling, writing, playing guitar.

Passions: none lately, I'm too tired & busy from working & doing forestry grad school! I"m sure they'll resurface once I graduate and get a couple months of sleep.  :)

best,
Em

[Lee Short]

I love to travel.  One of the better parts of my job is that I don't travel much, but when I do it's usually international.  

I love food and wine.  I cook pretty well -- but I keep it informal (ie, I don't do presentation, all I care about is how it tastes).  Many of my friends cook as well; we will often do dinners where we each cook a course or two and have 5-10 courses over the evening.  

I've been really getting into watching anime lately.  Not the cutesy stuff with screechy voices, though.

[C. Edwards]

I live. I've finally managed to arrange my life to where there is no separation between work and play, education and entertainment. Basically, I travel around doing what catches my interest at any particular time.

Just two days ago I flew back into the states from Ecuador. While I was there I worked on an organic farm and traveled around the country. I climbed mountains, met cool and interesting people, and experienced a third-world country. It was about a 9 week trip.

In about three weeks I'll be going to Oregon (I'm in Atlanta visiting friends at the moment). Most likely I'll be taking an intern position at Lost Valley Educational Center where they try and educate people about permaculture, sustainable and healthy/happy living, etc.

After that, who knows? I'll probably take the winter months to go visit family and friends. Then I'll find some other place I'd like to go. Maybe the Omega Institute for Holistic Education in New York state. Maybe by then I'll have something else I'd like to pursue.

The details that fit into that bigger picture include hiking, backpacking, climbing mountains (17,000 ft. being my personal record), reading, reading, reading, cooking like the devil, intense discussion about meaningful things with friends and soon-to-be friends, stuffing my laptop with a decadent amount of music, dancing-any kind of dancing, laughing, loving, bucking the system, and generally enjoying the short amount of time I've been granted.

-Chris

[J B Bell]

In spite of my angst-filled quasi-goth roots (I still wear mostly black), I'm something of a hippie, having gone vegan, doing yoga, being a Buddhist, and preaching nonviolent solutions to the world's problems.  Someday I'll give a workshop on Nonviolent Communication at a gaming convention and all the social maladroitness of the participants will be transformed into super-duper heart-connection communicative excellence, and the world will look up to gamers as the people who can smoothly and lovingly negotiate even in the most polarized of situations.

Heh.

I am applying to a local correspondence college to get a Bachelor's of Justice Studies, to be followed by a residential Masters in Conflict Resolution, to turn that passion into some kind of career, possibly consulting, possibly working within the justice systems or one of its alternative tracks, or who knows what?  Better than slogging away in the bitmines as a systems administrator, much as I do like working with Linux in general.

I play the harmonica, and people even stay at parties and clap when I jam with a competent guitarist.  Hey Clint!  Man, if we ever end up at the same con, you gotta bring that instrument so we can do weird acoustic punk.  I'd be so into that.

Like practically everyone here, I read voraciously.  Ron turned me onto classic sci-fi and fantasy (I can't really stand the modern fantasy stuff anymore, mostly), and just finished Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, which was pretty interesting.  Just started the Jerry Cornelious chronicles, too.  Not surprisingly I read a bunch of Buddhist stuff, and am working on learning Pali so I can get the original scriptures in their original language.  I love chatting about linguistics generally.

[Mike Holmes]

What do I do besides RPGs? Well, there's the job, the wife and kids, and then...um...

I sleep a little and eat... uh...post to the Forge? Does that count as something else?

Then there's...uh...

I'll get back to you on that.

Mike

[Brennan Taylor]

I hang out with my wife and kids, mostly. I have two kids who are really cool to do stuff with, and Krista and I watch lots of movies thanks to Netflix. I am a connoisseur of all sorts of things: books, food, movies, music. I am snotty and intellectual about how I enjoy these things and would probably be a critic if I thought anybody else actually cared what I thought. Or if I thought my opinions weren't obnoxious.

[Eve]

I study theoretical biology (MsC), like to write, make drawings, run around, never have time and I love to be with my friends (sometimes roleplaying, sometimes not)

[Jeph]

I do Highschool, which fluctuates between maddening and intensely awesome. In fact, I should at this very moment be turning out a few pages on Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Outside of that and Gaming, I dick around with Adobe Illustrator and do a wee bit of calligraphy (which I'm terribly sloppy at) and cartography (which I am improving at rapidly). And linguistics. I love languages, alphabets, and words. Part of why I like Frank Herbert and Neal Stephensen so much... their books are full of random diversions into the history of the written and spoken word, without being jarring or out of context. Love it.

[Lxndr]

I work.  Now it's customer service by phone for Godaddy.com.  If you ever buy anything through them, please do it through me, as I get the commission.  ;)  But, only if you like me, obviously.

Besides that, I ride my motorcycle less than I probably really should, but enough to consider it a hobby.

Thanks to a previous roommate getting TiVo, I'm actually back into watching television again.  Kind of embarrassing, but such is life.

Thanks to a gracious soul purchasing City of Heroes for me, I also actually play a video game regularly now.  

I just bought some private stock, and might be buying a new house, so I'm really exploring the whole investment thingamajigger idea.

I'm very much a fan of hypnosis (both therapeutic and entertainment), and the study thereof, and hopefully by next year I'll be able to get out to the American Board of Hypnotherapy convention as rabidly as I currently want to go to the GenCon conventions.  I need more vacation time.

I read, though not as much as I used to (blame the people who introduced me to TiVo and City of Heroes).  Almost all fiction though.  I don't want to escape the real world by reading non-fiction, as that's... the real world.