My friends and I started a podcast! After much hard work and planning we launched our first episode Thursday. Creative Commoners is about the creative process and creative pursuits while balancing busy work and home lives. It’s part creative round table, part creative support group for ourselves (and hopefully soon, the audience).  There is plenty of talk about pop culture, games (including tabletop games), movies, and other silliness, too.  I hope you can check it out.

We had a lot of fun making it. I hope you enjoy it. We plan to release episodes on a weekly basis. And I’d love to hear feedback.

You can go to our website: www.creativecommoners.net or find us on iTunes by searching for Creative Commoners.

As I said in my previous post, I’ve recently taken up game development.  My interest in game development was sparked when I attended the Google I/O Developers Conference earlier this month. At the session entitled Kick-ass Game Programming with Google Web Toolkit (they had me at “kick-ass”), Google announced an effort to develop a cross-platform game development library called ForPlay.

The suggestively named library was of interest to me for several reasons. It’s all written in Java, which is my programming language of choice. It uses Google Web Toolkit (GWT), which is development kit that makes it easier to develop complex web applications. I’ve been using GWT for the last several months at work. Finally, ForPlay is mainly designed to be cross-platform abstraction library. That means that I can write a game once and with one line of code compile it as a web application or a flash application or native Android application.  That’s pretty powerful. I just want to write a game. I don’t want to worry about vagaries of a particular platform. I especially don’t want to worry about it since I’m doing it for fun.

The library currently supports the platforms (or will soon): Java Desktop (mainly for testing), HTML5, Flash, and Android. There are even plans to look at support iOS (to run on Apple mobile devices).

The other thing I like about ForPlay is that I’m getting in at the ground floor, so to speak. It’s only been available to the public for less than a month. Before that, it was apparently used to write Angry Birds for the web and was an internal Google project. It will be nice to watch it as it grows. It will be a good learning experience for me.

ForPlay’s newness is also its biggest problem. It is still very much in an alpha state. It doesn’t work properly with Android and Flash, yet. There are fairly significant code changes on a daily basis. I’ve already had to do some minor refactoring after a recent update. Documentation is sparse as well. If you want to get something done in a hurry or on any kind of deadline, I wouldn’t suggest ForPlay. You’ll want to wait for it to mature. I’m certainly not in any hurry as I’m working this in my spare time which is unfortunately in short supply.

That said, there is already a pretty lively community springing up around it and there is a lot of activity going on with the code. So, I don’t see this library going away anytime soon, especially when consider how powerful this could be.

If you’re interested in ForPlay, the code is located here: http://code.google.com/p/forplay/

The community and ongoing discussion is located here: http://groups.google.com/group/gwt-forplay

On my next post, I’ll take about the game I’m developing. I’m working on a simple asteroids game. I’ll describe the process I went through to create it and lessons learned.

I am going to shift the focus of this site to a certain extent. I am still planning to write about tabletop games. I haven’t lost interest in tabletop games at all. My regular gaming group is still going strong. We’re currently taking a break from our Swords & Wizardry campaign and playing a fun 1920’s pulp game using the Savage Worlds system. So, I still have plenty of stuff to say about tabletop gaming. Hopefully, I’ll write more frequently about gaming in the coming months.

The change in the site actually comes from a broadening of my interests. As I wrote about in a previous post, I wrote a short story that will be published soon. I’m also working other stories. It would be nice to be able to write more about the writing process here on this site.

The big impetus for the change to the site is I have recently (very recently – as in last week) gotten interested in video game development. I was lucky enough to attend the Google I/O Developers Conference. I attended the session Kick-ass Game Programming with Google Web Toolkit. You can watch it yourself at this link. It inspired me to attempt writing one of them newfangled video games. It already fits in with the main themes of the site: 1) gaming and 2) I barely know what I’m doing. It works out nicely. I plan to use this site to chronicle my efforts. For the time being, that will be the main focus Level 1 Gamer.

I am also working on another project that is still in its infancy. (Like I need more to work on.) I’ll have more on that soon.

I really just have the urge to open up what I write here on Level 1 Gamer to other topics as my interests broaden.

I’ve been in a creative mood for quite some time.  More than in any other time in my life, I have been spending a good chunk of my free time (as little as that is) on creative endeavors. Most of this creative energy is a result of RPGs and gaming. At least, RPGs have been a catalyst for much of this.

Pen and paper RPGs are necessarily creative. As a player, you bring a character life – giving it a name, a personality, a back story. You are also imagining the events of the game – the flow of a battle, the atmosphere of a tavern. As a Dungeon Master, you are doing all that as well as crafting a story and building a world. In case of my gaming group, there is also a ridiculous (disturbing?) amount creativity put into dick jokes. All this creative activity is bound to spill out of the realm of playing RPGs.

It certainly has for me. For starters, I created this blog which is absolutely a direct result of playing games. My enthusiasm for gaming drove me to express myself. I’ve written almost 30 posts (not so much lately unfortunately) including stories about the characters I’ve played in the regular Swords & Wizardry game I play in. My last post was one such story. This is something I never would have thought I’d do before getting into this stuff. I’ve always felt character stories were silly, a little self-serving, and bit too much like writing fan fic. But, I had fun with it, so I’ve got learn not to judge until I’ve tried it myself.  I started painting minis after going to a workshop at Rincon. I’ve found the hobby to be extraordinarily relaxing and creatively rewarding for me.

Finally, my big creative project, the one that has been most rewarding for me,  is a short story. It’s not related to gaming, but it came about because of gaming. Really, it came about because of the people I game with. I’m fortunate to game with a group of very creative people. Our DM, Paul Fini, runs his own RPG blog, The Warlock’s Home Brew, publishes game modules and aids, is an accomplished artist, and has published several comics through Indie Only Comics. Many of the other players are artists and have blogs themselves. Check out: Gedleesmote’s Grumblings, Rambles of a Lost Viking, Never Crit, Rebirth of Classic Comic Art!, and Boom Culture. Being around all these creative folks is inspiring.

That last blog, Boom Culture, is put out by Max. He is a researcher studying video games and distance learning in education (I know. How cool is that?). He wrote a short story last summer and sent it out to the group. I thought it was great and felt maybe I should try writing something. I haven’t written fiction in a while. I always had ideas, but never the follow through.  Around the same time, several of the guys came up with an idea to put out a pulp magazine called Tales of High Adventure in the style of the old pulp magazines of the ’30s and ’40s like Weird Tales and Amazing Stories. The first issue just came out. Check out Indie Only Comics for details.

This set things in motion for me. I had the inspiration and creative energy. I had a goal to shoot for: write a story that could by published in this new pulp magazine. Also, I had a style, the pulp adventure style, that I found very easy to come with ideas and fun to write. So, I set out to write a story. I decided on a pulp sci-fi story in the vein of Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers with some influences from Doctor Who and Alan Moore’s Tom Strong.  Honestly, when I started, I didn’t think it’d be good enough to actually get published. It was just a goal to shoot for and motivation to actually finish. It took me months to write it, but I finally finished the first draft of Doctor Galactic at the Edge of the Universe in “The Creeping Invaders”. I had a hell of a lot of fun writing it. I submitted it and they liked it. After some great editing work (thanks Paul!), the second draft should be close to being ready to be included the second issue of Tales of High Adventure. Exciting stuff. Once it gets close to coming out, I’ll post a preview of the story here.

To add further to all this creative energy, my good friend has started a web comic. Check out Detective Agency. He’s off to great start, so check it out.

That’s all for now. Hopefully, I’ll be able to post more often. If only I had more time to devote to my creative projects . . .

The following is write up of the last session of my regular Swords & Wizardry game which is going strong, by the way.  I know a lot people run the other way when someone says, “Let me tell you about my character,” especially when it’s not your campaign.  I understand that sentiment as I don’t have a lot of interest in this type of stuff outside of my own gaming group myself.  But, I had a lot of fun writing it and thought I’d throw it up on the blog.  Feel free to skip it if you’d like.

Excerpted from the Great Annals of the Druids:

fter the travails and exertions of the day, Gnarly Blunderbrush, Initiate of the 3rd Circle, was ready to rest.  That day was particularly strenuous for it was the Black Sabbath, a day when the forces of evil seem to have special power. Gnarly and his followers, the legendary band of adventurers that became known as Arvin’s Avengers, had chosen to meet this evil head on and toiled against unnatural creatures in the ruined tower of Zenopus for much of the day.

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My life has been pretty crazy the past couple of months.  Between a graduation, a week-long trip, a wedding,   and a heavy workload, not mention a wife and kids I haven’t had much free time.  I had to miss a couple sessions of my bi-weekly Swords & Wizardry game.  I’ve had no time to write for this blog.

Well, now, my schedule is opening up.  I’m looking forward to getting to game more.  And I’m looking forward to getting back into writing for the blog.  Hopefully, this kicks off what will be a more regular posting schedule for Level 1 Gamer.

Here is some random gaming stuff I have on my radar.  I’ll be writing more about some or all of this very soon:

  • My first public game as a DM will be at the Tucson RPG Guild Gathering in June.  I’m going to run the 4th edition module Rescue at Rivenroar (modified for a single session).
  • I’ve picked up a few sets of Pirates of the Spanish Main, a fun little collectible tabletop game.  The models are fun and I hope to play it soon.
  • I had some money from a recent Ebay auction and picked up some classic D&D books.  I got a 1E Dungeon Master’s Guide, the Moldvay/Cook and Mentzer Basic/Expert box sets, and the old modules Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread.  Expect my impressions soon.
  • I’ll be presenting at the next Gamemasters’ Conference in July.  I’ll be doing a presentation on running a game for new players from the perspective of a new player.
  • Had a blast at my regular S&W game last night.  It was great to be back after a break.  Great role playing and the usual shenanigans.
  • I plan on going to the Tucson LFR Night again next week.  I may even end up running game if necessary.

I’m really looking forward to getting back into the swing of things.