How serious do you take your hobbies?

[Unorthodox]

So, how serious are you?

It's January.

The highlight of the weekend was a trip to a mummy display.  Could lie and say it was to educate the kids...but that's a side effect.  I went for more research, for Halloween, and have come back with some new ideas, even though the particular section I wanted to revisit was not touring this time, another WAS that was equally interesting.

Talia and I could have spent an entire day there, I think...

[Lorizael]

I guess my main hobby is gaming, by which I mean playing boardgames and pen-and-paper rpgs. I am not as serious as some. My group has a sizable collection of games, of varying complexity and play-time, but there are a lot we're missing (both in terms of classics and more obscure stuff) and we often fall back to the same couple games. This is especially true of role-playing games, where me almost exclusively play D&D. I wish that weren't so, but alas.

On the other hand, over the years we have attempted to design multiple boardgames and RPGs, getting a pretty far into the process several times. I am usually the instigator of this, and I wish we did it more/actually completed some games. There was a time, over a decade ago, when we styled ourselves a business and we're legitimately trying to sell a Warhammer 40k RPG to Games Workshop. Didn't work out. So that's pretty serious, I guess.

[Unorthodox]

I guess my main hobby is gaming, by which I mean playing boardgames and pen-and-paper rpgs. I am not as serious as some. My group has a sizable collection of games, of varying complexity and play-time, but there are a lot we're missing (both in terms of classics and more obscure stuff) and we often fall back to the same couple games. This is especially true of role-playing games, where me almost exclusively play D&D. I wish that weren't so, but alas.

Speaking of obscure.  One thing over the holiday was picking up a copy of Ikusa.  Formerly Shogun.  Formerly Samurai Swords.  Familiar with it? 

On the other hand, over the years we have attempted to design multiple boardgames and RPGs, getting a pretty far into the process several times. I am usually the instigator of this, and I wish we did it more/actually completed some games. There was a time, over a decade ago, when we styled ourselves a business and we're legitimately trying to sell a Warhammer 40k RPG to Games Workshop. Didn't work out. So that's pretty serious, I guess.

I really respect a lot of the model building that goes into some of those game sets.  It's like little miniature versions of what I do for Halloween.  I could never work in miniature, though. 

[Rusty Edge]

Not so seriously, at least not any more.
I recently resumed playing Civ IV mods. I hadn't played  for six months. That's the longest stretch of idleness since IV came out.

I can't imagine starting a collection like Uno's, that a University would accept, or developing a game that I'd pitch to a company.

But come to think of it, while I lack that level of persistence of vision, I have been rather dedicated to  my hobbies from time to time. I have a Disney Incredibles  pin collection that has pretty much every one I know that exists whether it was issued by a Disney park or store, from around the world. It includes a couple of prototypes and one that never went into production. But my wife has to take credit for much of it. She finds them, I wear them and love them.

Before that it was hunting and shooting. Mostly I was trying to prevent crop damage from crows and groundhogs. The crows quickly learned to go over the property line or over the ridge whenever they saw me. Sure, I could have killed more if I'd used something to lure them closer, but where I grew up, a guy that used bait or lures was called a trapper or a fisherman, not a hunter. Besides, I wanted to be rid of them, not bring more to my fields.

The woodchucks, well they suffered a population collapse. I was pretty good at all aspects. I could stalk pretty well, enough to club them or catch them bare handed if I didn't have gun  or ran out of ammunition.  I was a good marksman, too. I never shot anything much over 400 meters, but that was the limit of the line of sight in that area, or at least in directions in which I could safely shoot. Even so I could aim for the heart and hit within an inch. There were a number of better marksmen than me in the area, so I aspired to become better, but I didn't have the time and money to put into it that they did, so I wasn't trying to surpass them, just realize my potential. I could also combine the  two skills so that I could kill two cleanly with the same bullet, which gets kinda complicated, like playing pool on a golf course, or something.


Before I got serious about varmint control, I was into kung fu. I couldn't attend classes regularly due to timing, so I practiced a lot, in hopes of mastering the basics. I started trying to kick the heads of nails in the barn, then flies, then flies on a low ceiling, eventually being able to kill a fly on the ceiling during the dog days of  August, without leaving a mark.  Yeah, I know. That sounds insanely obsessed. I'm not saying it wasn't. It just developed out of trying to master control of a simple kick, until I ran out of ways to increase the difficulty.

Anyway, I'm glad I got to do those things while I could still do them. Now it's walking and reading books, and no walking because it's winter.


Speaking of hobbies, my favorite hobbiest was a customer of mine. I used to sell water purification systems. This guy was into model railroading in a BIG WAY. One foot gauge! Steam Engine! He turned his basement into a machine shop so that he could build and repair everything from scratch. The only thing he didn't make were the couplings. He made a couple of them,just to prove he could, but it was simpler to buy them than to do all of the milling. He had a backhoe, so that he could put the train back on the tracks if it de-railed. His whole property became a layout. He'd been at it for decades, and had more planned. One man, one hobby.

That is admirable persistence of vision!

[Unorthodox]

I can't imagine starting a collection like Uno's, that a University would accept, or developing a game that I'd pitch to a company.

I don't think ANYONE sets out to start something a University would accept. 

I started with a "collect 10 of something" for cub scouts.  Could have been leaves, or rocks, or whatever.  I chose bugs for unknown reasons. 

edit:  I think the reason was my older brother had to collect 10 bugs at the time for a science class, and I was figuring I could kill 2 birds with one stone.  Just save my 10 for the class I was going to have later.  It turned into 300 by the time that class come around...

I just never stopped.  It was fun seeing all the different bugs that lived just in the yard.  Or on vacation. 

At age 12, one got away while I went looking for a net.  I swore I'd learn to not need a net.  Since we spent plenty of time in the library every summer, I had plenty of time to learn about how the bugs worked and why and how to catch them by trap or hand.   It was a fun challenge to catch things by hand, taking care to get undamaged specimens where a net would hurt wings.  How many people can say they've caught a dragonfly by hand?  Let alone wasps and hornets. 

By age 14, I was getting submissions from others and questions "what is this", and rearing insects in hopes of capturing every stage of development for species.   

Age 16 is when I put in all the work cataloging and sorting and mounting and whatnot that got it presentable and worthy.  Before that it was disorganized. 

It just slowly developed with more challenges. 

[ColdWizard]

I'm always engaged in one or more hobbies but as a dilettante, my interest in those is superficial and fleeting. Even the ones I always come back to.

[Lorizael]

Speaking of obscure.  One thing over the holiday was picking up a copy of Ikusa.  Formerly Shogun.  Formerly Samurai Swords.  Familiar with it? 

I think I played Shogun once, but I might be thinking of another boardgame that involves territory control in Samurai-era Japan...

I really respect a lot of the model building that goes into some of those game sets.  It's like little miniature versions of what I do for Halloween.  I could never work in miniature, though.

I lug around a couple boxes of miniatures from those days, even though I don't play the game anymore. The idea of getting rid of them seems wrong to me, and they're not high enough quality (modeling and paint-wise) for me to sell them.

[Unorthodox]

Speaking of obscure.  One thing over the holiday was picking up a copy of Ikusa.  Formerly Shogun.  Formerly Samurai Swords.  Familiar with it? 

I think I played Shogun once, but I might be thinking of another boardgame that involves territory control in Samurai-era Japan...

It's a personal favorite.  It's like the ultimate Uno game.  All about the armies with virtually no side fluff.  It's something akin to what would happen if Risk and D&D had a child.  The Ikusa edition is very nice, I only have one minor complaint: they got rid of the swords for turn order selection and replaced them with tokens.  Functional, but I've operated a shell game before, and there's no amount of mixing of 5 tokens that's going to fool me if I want to draw the #1.  The old swords "draw straws" method was more random for me.  Everything else is actually improved on the old edition I played. 

I do need a second set of D12s now, though.  The game would go quicker with a second set, so the attacker and defender could roll at the same time. 

[Valka]

I guess my main hobby is gaming, by which I mean playing boardgames and pen-and-paper rpgs. I am not as serious as some. My group has a sizable collection of games, of varying complexity and play-time, but there are a lot we're missing (both in terms of classics and more obscure stuff) and we often fall back to the same couple games. This is especially true of role-playing games, where me almost exclusively play D&D. I wish that weren't so, but alas.

I used to do a lot of gaming - board games, computer games, table-top RPGs... that SCA group I was in had an eclectic batch of interests and most of us were into gaming of some kind. Even our Star Trek club got into D&D, and our DM made little props - when we found a scroll, we had to physically unroll the thing to know what was on it (there was a paper inserted saying, "This is a scroll with ___ spell" or "This scroll is CURSED" - and there'd be a penalty attached). Pretty soon it was a case of "I don't wanna look at this scroll, YOU look at this scroll!" 

We had little containers of colored water for potions; drinking a potion meant literally drinking a potion (the color was just food coloring). There was a store in town that sold fancy-looking pencils, so those became magic wands. I inherited this stuff, and have kept it even though the gaming group broke up and scattered over 15 years ago.

I still have my favorite board games (well, mostly; some of them got "disappeared" when some people "helped" me move), but nobody to play them with. 

I'm still into Civilization, though, and Fighting Fantasy was originally designed as a solo game. I've still got 2-3 dozen of those gamebooks I haven't finished, and belong to a forum where people write amateur adventures. Something I've been doing for the past few years for NaNoWriMo is novelizing some of these gamebooks. It's a slow process because I have to play/replay them first, then check the errata, and thank goodness for the people who made maps and the wiki. I check those so I don't contradict anything that's major canon (or at least if I do, it's a conscious decision for my own reasons).

Adult coloring is back in vogue now, after a few decades. So it's socially acceptable to finish my DoodleArt pictures I had back in the '70s. 

[ColdWizard]

I wish my D&D group met more often. But they're all married and have young children. :bored:

[Valka]

Well, there's always a Play-by-Post option. I was part of a PBEM (play by email) game of Civilization (the original board game) for awhile. It was loads of fun, even though I expected to come in dead last. I was playing Crete (not the best choice for someone inexperienced or rusty) and spent most of the game in a war with Thrace (thank goodness for the secret alliance with Asia). Unfortunately the game broke up a couple of turns before the end; the GM just stopped posting and to this day I've no idea what happened.

[ColdWizard]

I have one of those but don't find it as engaging as in-person play.

[Rusty Edge]

Well, there's always a Play-by-Post option. I was part of a PBEM (play by email) game of Civilization (the original board game) for awhile. It was loads of fun, even though I expected to come in dead last. I was playing Crete (not the best choice for someone inexperienced or rusty) and spent most of the game in a war with Thrace (thank goodness for the secret alliance with Asia). Unfortunately the game broke up a couple of turns before the end; the GM just stopped posting and to this day I've no idea what happened.

I had the game, but only played by myself. It was too complicated for family, and too time consuming for friends. Iirc, Thrace was the prime resource location, wasn't it?

[Valka]

You must be thinking of the board game that came out after the computer game, as Thrace had no particular assets that were more spectacular than anyone else's (well, except for land; Crete is stuck for a turn or two before they've got enough population to send anyone across the sea).

I don't see how the original board game can be played solo, as you're constantly attacking other players, making alliances, and there's a trading round where you trade commodities and try to hit your opponents with calamities. That's how I won one game... last turn, someone else was about to win... until I put on my best poker face and slipped him a Civil Disorder card in the trading round. He couldn't recover from that, so I won.

[Lorizael]

My group used to play Avalon Hill's Civ a lot. Well, as frequently as you can play a whole weekend game, anyway. Until we kind of figured out the winning formula. Alas.