Mike Patterson (Maidhc O Casain)
Maidhc O Casain
🖼️ 8 images Surveyor
Wow! So many interesting people here, with so much excellent life experience! I'm very mundane by comparison, I'm afraid.
I'm 53 years old, so somewhere in the middle of the pack age-wise. I've been playing RPGs since the Blue Box edition of D&D back in the 70's. I've dabbled in a few different systems - D&D, Shadowrun (1st Edition), HERO, Fantasy Wargames, Savage Worlds, CHILL, and a few others.
I've been a mental health counselor since the early 1990's, and now manage an outpatient community mental health center in an economically depressed, rural area in the mid-southern U.S.
My wife and I have been married 24 years, and we've got a 17 year old daughter and a 6 year old son.
Though I've always loved computers and what one can do with them I mapped by hand with colored pencils until I found CC2, and jumped into computer assisted cartography with both feet.
Maidhc is pronounced "Mike," and O Casain is - as best I can tell - the original Gaelic of my family name.
I guess that's about it.
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Comments
I wouldn't say that was mundane!
You're like me, and lots of other people as well. We got on with life and made stuff along the way in those odd moments of time between all the busy stuff :)
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks, Sue - I like "odd moments of time between all the busy stuff!" I do think it's been a life well lived so far, and I'm definitely looking forward to what the rest has in store for me :).
I've travelled quite a bit within the States, and next year my daughter and I should be having a trip to Peru (pandemic willing). It'll be my first time outside the country!
Also, I'm learning to wake surf (since I'm not close enough to real surf to make learning that practical).
My goodness! That looks fun. You make me feel really old, even though I'm only a year older than you are. My limit is a quick walk around the village at the moment.
And to think I used to walk almost as far as Ralf does... about 20 years ago now!
When you say interesting, I think what makes the people around you interesting is that we are all so different. This is a rather diverse group, joined together by one common interest. Which is also why it is so fun learning who all the people around you are.
That wake surfing looks seriously fun, wish I lived somewhere with a bit warmer waters.
I hope that trip to Peru works out as planned. I haven't been there myself, a bit to far, but it is a very interesting region. I am sure you will have a great time. You should keep us updated.
Welcome Maidhc, good to see more celts around! ;) -im from Galicia (Spain) and have celt blood supposedly running on my veins heh.
I´m starting to see a pattern on most forums users: around 50 years old, old time RPGers and most attracted by the early Campaign Cartographer when it was the most advanced (and close to unique) software program for building fantasy map. So i guess you will fit perfectly here!
My old Junior High School gaming group has been in touch and playing together since I was 12, so a bit over 40 years now. Some 16 or 17 years ago we'd spread far and wide enough across the States that we had to start gaming via Play by Post if we were going to at all. In 2006, we started "LakeCon." Late each October we all get together at a cabin here in Arkansas (some travelling 10 or 12 hours by car, some have to fly as the drive would be a day or more, and some 'fairly' local). We commemorated LakeCon 10 in 2016 with a tee shirt that I designed by taking an architectural rendering of the cabin where we gather and putting in a looming dragon. I was asked to do another for our pandemic gathering this year...
Aww I love such gaming stories... See, my play group is also spread all over the country so we were playing only on holidays. But this year with the covid.. The funny thing is that I got invited to play using Fantasy Grounds with the people I started playing, in 1989. We had played the last time on 1996 or so even if we stayed in touch for Al this long time. It brought me memories.
Your LakeCons are great - they remind me of Ralf's annual boardgame vacations, which I've always envied.
My old tabletop RPG group (the core of which has been together since 1983) is spread around the North West of England now (apart from the guy who moved to Geneva, Switzerland!), so we were stuck using Virtual Tabletops even before Covid. Currently about to try out FoundryVTT for my new Pathfinder 2E campaign.
I have been looking at foundry but their demo doesn't show what the dm can do. I would appreciate a whisper of your findings. Thanks.
I'd like to know how you find Foundry as well. I've got d20Pro and I'd like to know how they compare.
I'll let you know how I get on. I've also got d20Pro, although I've only used it during face-to-face games to get the player map on a TV screen. I've also used Maptool in the past the same way.
I've not even started testing Foundry yet, I'm hoping to set up using an Amazon server. The plan is for me to get my stuff set up over the next couple of weeks, and then have a character generation and VTT test session. That will hopefully be two weeks today.
We've played online before using Roll20, but we weren't fans. d20Pro is my fall-back VTT if Foundry doesn't work out for us. A lot of FoundryVTT users had the same dislikes about Roll20 as we did, so we're hopeful tht it's the right one for our group.
One thing we did like about Roll20 was the webcam integration in the same window, which we can also get using Foundry. It also appears to have excellent support for Pathfinder 2nd Edition already. I was a bit worried about that, as the player demo just shows what a good job it does for D&D 5E.
There is a DM demo as well by the way Jim. I'll see if I can find a link to it, as I only found out myself via Discord.
Thanks. As that is the important bit for me.
There are DM demos of FoundryVTT available:
Here https://dnd5e.doomnaught.com/
And here https://sws.doomnaught.com/
I guess for 5E and Savage Worlds.
I believe that the demos are of the "works for an hour, then you lose everything" type. I've not tried either, I read enough about the PF2 capabilities to decide that it was worth a punt for my games and just bought a licence.
I'll still let you know how things go in a couple of weeks when I hopefully start using it. ?
There were no maps, characters, nor sounds loaded. But I could see the configuration menus. Looks interesting.
Looking forward to your experiences on how it works.