DavesGaming

Welcome to my latest pages. Visitors may recognize me from PlaneDave.net or ChuckThisBlog; more pertinent to this site I’ve been a recurring commenter at the Beamdog forums and Reddit’s Baldur’s Gate page.

This will be a more occasional and casual type project than the other blogs have been. But as I’ve started creating more pure text for my own playthroughs of the classic Infinity Engine games I thought it might be fun to share some of what I’m doing, while maintaining some control of my content.

Computer Gaming has been a part of my life for a long time. I suppose I didn’t start really young like a lot of current gamers, but there were no computer games or gaming systems when I was very young. My interest in gaming started alongside my interest in military history when I was 10 years old. I first played old Avalon Hill Games like War at Sea, Midway, Tactics II. In High School that spread over the D&D, in part because it was what most of my gaming buddies would rather do. But I got into it hard, and became a frequent gamer and DM. By the time I was 15 I loved gaming with a split passion for wargaming and fantasy RPGs.

At about the same time I got an Atari 2600 (actually a “Sears Video Arcade”. Same thing) and I guess that’s the start of me and computer gaming. I lost some interest in College, but afterwards got a Commodore 64. Early favorites were Telengard, Ogre, Battle Cruiser, War in the South Pacific, Phantasie and others. The AD&D Gold Box games bit me hard and I played them extensively!
My computer grew to a Commodore Amiga before getting my first PC (Dos and Windows 3.1). Gary Grigsby’s Pacific War was the main motive for that upgrade. But so many others; Panzer General and Fantasy General, Ravenloft, Dark Sun…

In this century, my most played games have been Baldur’s Gate (the whole saga, including now, Seige of Dragonspear), Icewind Dale, War in the Pacific: Admiral’s Edition, Civilization III and most recently, Fantasy General II. A lot of others have filled some time.

My plan with this site is just to do an occasional post on whatever game I’m currently playing, and maybe a separate post on a current playthrough. Especially with those Infinity Engine games (Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale), creating characters and teams is what got me to thinking about this whole thing to begin with. And in the short run, this will completely dominate what I post here for several months.

I’m doing this largely for my own amusement. I would love it if others are motivated to post comments about their own experiences with, and thoughts on these games as I go. I’m not going to promote this heavily. Maybe mention it at the sites where I comment, and of course I’ll tag posts for their subject game so they’ll be visible to search engines. But I’m not any kind of “professional media critic” or even that knowledgeable about computers. I’m a gamer, who apparently enjoys writing. This is a hobby/interest, nothing more.

For readers who already know me from Plane Dave, no worries. These interests have always co-existed in my busy little brain. Plane Dave will remain as my military history “with scale models” site! And that will remain my primary interest. But this site will see recurring posts just for the fun of it. How often will fluctuate with where my time is mostly being spent! But expect these things to exist side by side as long as I can keep them both up. This site may appear heavily favored for the next several weeks, a lot of that is because I started doing very detailed character write-ups in December 2023. So currently, I have six completely done. Once I get those edited for this format they will all go up pretty quickly. Then things should slow to a more sustainable pace.