MEMBER SPOTLIGHT 2004

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT 2003

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT 2002

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT 2001

SPOTLIGHT ON AQUADYNE & L'ANGE

AQUADYNE

DreamLyrics Name: AquaDyne

Real Name: Dan Widdis

Age: 38

Home: Currently San Diego, CA. Will be moving this summer to Monterey, CA.

Family: Wife Jacqueline, son Simeon (age 3)

Occupation: U. S. Navy Officer (Submarines)

Hobbies: GPS Games (See http://www.gpsgames.org) including Geodashing and Geocaching; coding/codehacking; debating philosophy.

Favorite Book: The Princess Bride (better than the movie!)

Favorite Movie: The Princess Bride

Favorite Music: Showtunes, especially Les Miserables

Favorite Color: Blue. No, yel-- Auuuuuuuuugh!

Role-playing for: 23 years, off and on, in various ways (tabletop, live action, MU*, and message board)

Favorite Genre: Fantasy/Medieval

What draws you to role-playing? Interaction with people in a virtual world, which strengthens friendships in the real world.

Speak your mind: I am not the best roleplayer, or the best person in the real world. I try hard at both, and occasionally fail. But most valuable to me is the helpful and forgiving nature of my friends in both worlds. Communities like DreamLyrics highlight some of the best features of RL communities, with many members all contributing their part in building up a strong group.

L'ANGE

DreamLyrics Name: L'Ange (short for L'Ange de l'Abîme).

Real Name: Mark Baker.

Age: 44 (At least that was my age the last time I checked my birth certificate). We'll not go into my mental age, because following that line of thought requires making several sanity checks.

Home: Near Wigan. (In the north-west of England for those who aren't familiar with UK Geography)

Family: I've been married twice, and have one daughter (Rachel, now working as a primary school teacher) from the first of those. Currently living with Ayesha from the forum.

Occupation: Web application architect/designer.

Hobbies: Roleplaying (naturally), computers (code hacking, even if it's just writing my own tools for collating game ideas and materials), reading, and historic research; although my interests cover almost any topic that could be used in a game.

Favorite Book: "The Power and the Glory" by Graham Greene. A long way behind that, I like Roger Zelazny's "Lord of Light", Mary Stewart's Merlin series ("The Crystal Cave", "The Hollow Hills", "The Last Enchantment") and Julian May's Pliocene and Galactic Milieu trilogies.

For a great yarn, I enjoy Tom Clancy fiction (he's an author that gives personality to even the most minor characters) and Bernard Cornwell's "Sharpe" novels.

Favorite Movie: Anything with Audrey Hepburn (even "My Fair Lady"), simply for the pleasure of watching her act.
Any Anime directed by Miyazaki (e.g. "My Neighbour Totoro") Hong Kong Action movies. "The Quiet Man"

Favorite Music: I have wide-ranging tastes; but I listen to a lot of Jazz and, have no time for hip-hop.house/garage (or whatever is flavour of the month this week).

Favorite Color: Pastel shades.

Role-playing for: Over 30 years now, and GMing for most of that time. I ran the first roleplaying event at any convention in the UK back in 1974. I don't have much opportunity for gaming on a regular basis (I don't have any local group, unfortunately), so most of my roleplaying is running games at conventions.

Favorite Genre: I've played and run probably every gaming genre that exists (and then some); but my favourites are Historic (Victorian, Swashbuckling, and Dark Ages/Early Renaissance) and Psychological Horror (using Unknown Armies or Kult as systems because they have elements of game mechanics that I particularly appreciate).

What draws you to role-playing? When creating characters, I like building complex backgrounds and histories to try and explain aspects of that character's personality and motivation; when playing characters, I enjoy exploring the darker facets of that character's nature, When writing horror scenarios I try to create backgrounds with strong images and emotions that will "stretch" the players: with historic settings, I love finding obscure references and building a story around them so that it's hard to tell just where fact ends and fiction begins.

Speak your mind: (Not completed)