| Full
Name |
Chris Shaeffer |
|
| Race |
Half-Drunk |
|
| Classes/Levels |
Translator 6; Photographer 3; Barista 2; Office Monkey 1 |
|
| Gender |
Male |
|
| Size |
Large |
|
| Age |
26 |
|
| Special Abilities |
Craft Banana Bread; Overcome Jetlag; Learn Language；Incorporate Constructive Criticism |
|
| Alignment |
Crazy Lazy |
|
| Deity |
Tolkien (Patron Deity of language construction enthusiasts) |
|
| Location |
Lansdale (Suburb of Philadelphia), Pennsylvania, United States |
|
| Languages |
English, Japanese, basic Philadelphian |
|
| Occupation |
Exchange Student & School Coordinator; Freelance Japanese-English Translator |
|
| Homepage URL |
The Hodge Blog (www.chrisshaeffer.blogspot.com) |
|
| Strength |
12 |
|
| Dexterity |
9 |
|
| Constitution |
10 |
|
| Intelligence |
14 |
|
| Wisdom |
12 |
|
| Charisma |
12 |
|
About Hodge Podge
First, a shameless plug! Visit my blog for my RPG Superstar Commentary and general worldbuilding musings. I haven't updated it yet...:
ー～・The Hodge Blog・～－
Second, a little bit of personal history:
Basically, I grew up here in Lansdale, a boring Philadelphian suburb consisting of white bread residential developments, a few cows, and Merck (a giant pharmaceutical company. We like to joke that it's Umbrella Inc. and that Lansdale is Raccoon City.)
My first brush with tabletop gaming was getting the AD&D starter box for my birthday one year. I unfortunately never really found anyone to play that with, but the CD was hilarious, and I still have the dice and plastic figurines from it! One thing I do remember from this period was actually roleplaying with my brother and sister. We got pieces of paper, drew pictures of our adventurers, and gave them things like "a rope, a quarterstaff, robes, 2 empty bottles, and a backpack". We didn't have rules, and my brother just had a map with different locations, objects, and creatures. We didn't even know what our goal was, we just explored. Funny, it sort of played like a text adventure or King's Quest, where the map was aligned to a grid (would you like to go North, South, East, or West?), and each "screen" had something of interest on it that we could interact with. It wasn't until much later, in high school, that I finally played games with codified rules like D&D, Shadowrun, BESM, and various White Wolf games.
I fell out of the gaming crowd for a while when I went to Japan as an exchange student, came back, went to college, went to Japan again to finish college, came back, and then discovered that I was an adult in the rat race. It all happened so fast! During said rat race (in 2010), I recognized my old GM from high school in a local diner. I hooked up with his group. Soon after, we tried Pathfinder for the first time, and have been playing it ever since.
I heard about RPG Superstar two years ago, and followed the rounds closely. I was impressed! I then forgot about it completely until October/November of last year, at which point I signed up here on the boards, entered an item, and got really lucky. (Edit: And again with the luck! Thanks so much everybody!)
I may not be a great designer yet, but thinking back on my choice of hobbies, it might be a long time coming:
When I was a little kid, I loved to draw maps and monsters.
When I was a teenager, I started to write up and draw conworlds and characters
When I was 20 I started having an intense interest in linguistics, and I started creating conlangs and concultures (I thought I was weird, but then stumbled across entire online communities of people that like to create languages for fun! There really is every sort of person out there. :D)
I love SYSTEMS. I love creating my own systems of time, calendars, number systems (duodecimal is great), classical elements, grammars, monetary systems, weather, and of course, games.
Anyway, enough about me. Enjoy the contest, and remember to vote!
