Hi gang,

While we wait for stickies, I want to suggest something.

Everyone ought to think about an introduction. Who am I? What's my thing? What am I really good at in RPGs? What else am I really good at? I suck at something, so what is it? What kind of time-constraints do I live under? What could I take charge of, if Jonathan wants to delegate something semi-permanently?

Jonathan may not entirely realize it yet, but he needs to know these things. This will help tremendously when we actually have to start dealing with editing actual material.

So here's me:

I'm an academic who specializes in comparative religions, magic, and various kinds of critical theory. I teach academic, analytical writing. As a gamer, I am best at thinking about things and conceptualizing. I am a very good proofreader, and I know a fairly scary amount about a lot of theoretical and some kinds of historical stuff; I think extremely well in abstractions and with rigor. What I suck at is implementing RPG design and concept; frankly, I'm not a great GM, which is sort of the nitty-gritty knife-to-the-wheel version. My schedule is irregular, but I can usually be clear some time within any three-week period. My summer is loose, but I'm not very email-accessible. I could take charge of proofreading, though I don't want to very much; I would be delighted to take in hand any submissions focused on using non-RPG theory in gaming.

The last may sound like a small thing, but note that Eero's article got right into the question of cultural meanings of language, which is just my cup of tea.

I'm this guy.

Ooh... that was helpful.

I'm decent at tactics and strategy -- not necessarily the best minimaxer in the world, but I can tell the tactics and strategies of a game system pretty quickly, just not how to exploit them. Because not so many Forge people are into game theory and the minimax, I've sort of ended up on that soapbox a lot here, although I'm honestly just a hobbyist without serious formal training.

My other big RPG theory thing is GMless play, but I see myself as more of a researcher than a critic. I've written 4-5 game engines which support various types of GMless play.

My academic training is in physics with some religious studies. *If you have an article that makes reference to physics, even just a little run it by me for fact checking. Many very smart people make bad physics references.* My speciality field is Cosmology.

I give good prose. If you ever have the need for fiction or poetry, just ask.

I'm a pretty good editor, though not on Chris's caliber. I tend to be far more hard-nosed and mean than he is.

Hui shuo zhongwen, keshi Jonathan ye hui, suoyi meiyou yong.

I have a tendency to put off work until the last minute. *give me deadlines and I will get shit done* Conversely, if you say "oh, whenever," *I will not get it done*. This is a bad habit that I'm trying to change, but you need to know about it.

--

My schedule is insane, because I am a student.

In truth, I see myself mostly working as a writer in regard to this magazine, although I am happy to edit if necessary and I have the time.

yrs--
--Ben

Right,

This is a good idea.

I’m doctoral student in applied linguistics at City University of Hong Kong. I have an M.A. in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, but the focus of my PhD dissertation is on systemic functional linguistics and critical discourse analysis. Roughly translated, I am (or perhaps better, “am becoming”) a grammarian with a social conscience. I’m very familiar with prescriptivist grammars, but I’m also wary of many of their claims. This means that I’m good at spotting things that editors will tell you are wrong, and I will point them out to you, but I am not committed to seeing every prescriptive rule followed at all times. I’m very comfortable with both editing and proofreading, having taught composition to both native and non-native speakers of English, worked in university writing centers, and acted as an editor for departmental working papers. I can split proofreading duties with Chris.

I’m very good at doing work that is handed to me directly, but I am relatively slow at responding to forum posts. My schedule is flexible most of the year, but my time is limited at the end of each summer and beginning of autumn, when I am working most intensively on annual reports and my thesis. My primary writing commitment is to the thesis itself – it will be quite long (80,000-100,000 words), and I’m compulsive about revisions. This means that my primary contribution to Push will likely be as an editor and proofreader. I will probably produce very few articles, but I will gladly provide commentary and proofreading on very many.

I’m good at analyzing how texts hang together, and I like to think that I’m also good at analyzing how game systems hang together. I think I’m a bit behind the curve on Push right now because a) I hadn’t updated my email address at the Forge for a while, so I didn’t get any emails that Jonathan may have sent me, and b) I’ve been buried in my qualifying report. But I’m very interested in this project.

I like talking about myself and could go on and on here. But I’ll stop.

Rich

I'm your general intellectual, nothing too outrageous. I'm even interested in everything to do with human condition.

Well, OK. I'm a nigh finished master of sciences in theoretical mathemathics, but my real passion in life are the literary arts: I've written books (although not published yet), and currently hold position as the editor of two fanzines and a reporter in a local newspaper. Consequently I've got studies in folkloristics, latin, literary science, philosophy and history to complement my degree-not-likely-to-be.

I also started a little indie rpg import business this summer, and coordinated the translation of MLwM into finnish. I've written about ten or so modern (read: potentially important) roleplaying games, and intend to finish and publish at least some of them when I get the time. My rpg specializations tend towards genre emulation and lately, towards exploration of Color through System.

I'm good for general writing stuff - a wide range of experience, willing to learn. I'm also good for cultural stuff - anything from opera and theater to literature (classics, genre fiction), history, visual arts (antique, renaissance), movies (classics, modern asian) and comics. And obviously, if the journal needs theoretical math (say, probabilities), I'm your man. I can do some basic languages as well, should they be needed: finnish, swedish, latin, french, german, on at least basic level.

I'll be here to yabber on the boards when needed, and it's a good idea to ask if I could do something - it's possible that I could, or knew someone who can.

I'm not so good with hard-core academical rigorousness - although I know all that stuff, I've learned more from self-education than ever from the academy, and in my heart I'm an artist.

In principle I have much inexpensive time, but it should really be booked a month in advance to ensure I'm not riding reindeers in Lapland.

Chris, you really are chomping at the bit here. Thanks.

Here's me, by the way:

I'm a bed-wetting liberal from a highly academic family in the middleclass Southern suburbs. Yes, I have a lot of guilt. My thing is China, like Ben said (8 years of language study; this is my 3rd year in-country), and interdisciplinary comparative cultural studies, which is one of those non-useless Humanities fields that nobody ever hears about, because we try to keep people from killing each other (or at least we theorize about stopping the killing). Currently in China on a Fulbright.

What am I good at? The English language. Chinese. Layout and graphic design. Singing. Really grokking religion. Comparative perspectives and "seeing the other side" of things. Thinking outside the box. Making impossible things work. Aesthetics and the development of style. Getting passionate and excited about things. Leadership (blame the Boy Scouts). Using my guilt in the service of feminist/queer/minority interests (blame Oberlin). Wit.

In roleplaying, I communicate with other players. I collaborate. I push other people to be better. I encourage them to push me. I really dig inter-character antagonism, GMless play, freeform, and anything that pushes boundaries. My brain creates narrative automatically. I dream in involved, multi-part epics.

I suck at finishing projects, especially if I feel like I'm working by myself and nobody's supporting me (this is bound to be really important). I get intimidated by huge piles of things to do, but once I actually start working (and can see the pile diminishing) I'm cool. Deadlines are good.

This year is pretty open for me, though I do actually need to do SOME research every once in a while. In the next little bit, I'm planning to run Dogs in the Vineyard over IRC, but once that gets underway, my attention is all here. I have some games in the works, but I think most of them can be developed into pieces for Push. So I can step up to do anything; just don't make that necessary, please.

Hey all,

Some pretty impressive resumes there. I may be an odd girl out working on my masters in forestry. My perspective is more from a social angle than straight forest management or ecology, which works for me since my undergrad background is in social theory and economics. My interests in roleplaying were sparked by living with bohemian non-trad gamers some of whom took part in the frpg.advocacy days. So my experiences with gaming run more to the collaborative and free-form side.

Like Ben, I'm a proponent of non-normative gm-task distribution and part of my design agenda is finding out different ways to make that work. I'm interested in writing some essays, maybe a review or two, and giving and receiving critical feedback. I'm very happy to have an assigned task, I'm good with deadlines and even better at getting things done *now* so that I don't have to think about them later. But my work schedule gets insane at the beginning of each semester (Aug-Sept, Jan-Feb) so those would be hard periods for me to commit to anything.

I've got too many hobbies to name, but the interests that I see intersecting with rpg design, play and theory are in psychology and subjective experience, and ritual and ecstatic spiritual practice.

yrs,
Emily Care Boss

Can I just say here, reading these things makes me a lot happier. I did not expect to read what I just read.

Three of us speak at least some Chinese; yes, wo ye hui jiang guoyu, as they say in Taiwan.

Religion seems a common theme.

Writing and composition is very common.

A lot of academic background is common.

Some hard-core science is common (John Kim, who is pretending to hide, also has a PhD in physics, so I'm outing him).

Pretty catholic (small c) interests are extremely common.

Everyone seems pretty much agreed that they get things done if given clear deadlines and a reasonable span of time.

And there is nevertheless an extraordinary range of knowledge, ability, talent, and interest. Amazing!

Jonathan, this really might work. Hats off to you! I've been shaking my head, but maybe, just maybe....

Coooool!

Dude, you're surprised? Do you think I'd try something like this with a bunch of slackers?

Outing the rest of the peeps, who haven't spoken up:

John Kim, is brilliant, like you said, and he's the closest we have to a real historian of roleplaying. Have you see his site?

Liz Henry, besides being an overall badass, has background in hardcore web programming, creative & technical writing, and is fluent in Spanish.

Michael Babbitt, who most of you don't know, is a professional actor and stage director, very well read, and one of the coolest GMs I've ever worked with.

Vincent Baker is just a roleplaying genius and has the insane ability to express complex ideas very, very simply. He's a great educator.

Matt Synder does layout like nobody's business, has more direct experience with indie game publishing than most of us, has tread this ground before with Daedalus, and writes great games.

Neel Krishnaswami graduated from MIT, wrote the brilliance that is Lexicon (which I'm hoping to publish in the first issue), and drops bombs of RPG revelation on a regular basis.

Shreyas Sampat is doing linguistics and other fun stuff at Hopkins, has the greatest aesthetic sense of anyone I've ever met, and spouts incredible visions of grandeur.

Zak Arntson keeps it real. He writes short straight-up games that deliver immediately and don't mess around. Hopefully he can help keep us practical and grounded.

Gary Pratt is the guy behind Code of Unaris, the first game written specifically for chat, which I'm hoping to feature a bit in the first issue (but first I have to play it!) I added him here mostly on a temporary basis, so we could work with him to develop material. I doubt he wants to stick around and be an editor.

I figured if I could get half of you guys to sign on, the journal would have no choice but kick ass. And there are obviously other great people out there who might join us at some later date.

I'm an undergraduate in linguistics and fiction writing, though that is increasingly meaning less and less. I'm Indian, as in from India, but I grew up in New Jersey which means I see my ancestral culture from the outside, though maybe from closer to the glass than some. Writing workshops fascinate me. I learn languages very fast.

I love food and speaking and beautiful things and the music of words struck against words. I can write prose intermittently and I can draw intermittently, but rarely can I do both at once; my creative energies distribute themselves unevenly.

As a player of RPGs, I love to come up with fantastic things, to find patterns, to build structures out of things that are implied. This is how I like to design, too; I like to build things that interlock, devise economies, make things interact. I suck at subsystems. I suck at long game texts.

I am a student, which means my schedule is crazy, but I consistently have some free time each week. Like Ben, I like deadlines.

I blush at compliments.

Also, I am probably easier to reach by email than by PM or forum post, as my readership here has been only sporadic of late. ssampat@gmail.com . I'd have posted sooner, but this sporadicity tripped me up (:

Hi All,

Jonathan, I'll be sending you a pdf soon. Can't have you not playing. :)

I graduated in '89 and went to work for a big corporation for the next 15 years doing everything from writing, drawing, animating, directing, and managing. Now I do all that for myself.

I'm currently working on getting a another startup up and going while I continue to develop Code of Unaris.

Gary