Zak has a GM Questionnaire up.
- If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be? To use Sandbox conventions and the Entourage Approach in my D&D 3.5 game. I finally realized that a lot of what I didn’t like about D&D 3.5 wasn’t set in stone.
- When was the last time you GMed? Eight days ago.
- When was the last time you played? Sixteen days ago.
- Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven’t run but would like to. Find the lair of the green slime flask throwing, air shark riding orcs living in a cave near the river Styx and win them as allies in your assault against a mindflayer panzership.
- What do you do while you wait for players to do things? Undecided players automatically delay. When there is nobody left wanting to go, I go. If there is no opposition I use the moment to introduce a color scene or non-player characters to interact with.
- What, if anything, do you eat while you play? Players bring chips, cookies, chocolate, grapes, cherry tomatoes, mandarins, or pastry. Occasionally, I have offered bread and cheese.
- Do you find GMing physically exhausting? No. When the game is over, however, I am often tired and don’t like to talk too much.
- What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing? My barbarian tied some shields together in preparation for a sled escape down a snow-covered mountain as frost giants were approaching our position.
- Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither? No. There is a lot of joking, but when I’m unsure, I’ll ask “do you really say that?” All the sillyness happens out-of-game.
- What do you do with goblins? They are a player race. Goblins are sexless and born out of warm mud kept underground; the earth magic does it (a form of spontaneous creation).
- What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)? Material from the Mesopotamian section of the Louvre, articles on Wikipedia on the Mesopotamian pantheon.
- What’s the funniest table moment you can remember right now? A player character has a blast spore in his backpack and suspects that it might explode when pierced. He intends to destroy a magic-user spectre using it. As he sneaks into the treasure room, the spectre turns visible behind him and casts a spell on the rest of the party. He cries a warning, throws the backpack and fires a cross-bolt. The explosion causes 22 points of damage, save for half, and I decide he’s caught in it. The character has but 10 hit points. He also has a healing potion. At this point the player gets up and exitedly demonstrates how the character could throw the backpack, shoot the crossbow bolt and drink the potion “in one smooth move” by throwing his own shoulder bag across the living room and miming the entire scene in bullet time. We cried tears of laughter.
- What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it? I was looking for cool ideas in ASE1: Anomalous Subsurface Environment but it was very long and I got tired.
- Who’s your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator? At the moment I really like Kelvin Green.
- Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid? No.
- What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn’t write? (If ever) The top levels of the megadungeon published in Fight On have been providing many funny sessions.
- What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in? I like my living room. It has a big table, it has benches, it’s comfortable, we don’t have kids or pets competing for our attention, we can laugh and shout without the neighbours complaining.
- If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be? I like both Mountain Witch and Labyrinth Lord.
- If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be? The old school blogosphere and the indie games I’ve been playing biweekly.
- As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table? Funny, friendly, polite, non-smelly, pro-active, cooperative, interesting people.
- What’s a real life experience you’ve translated into game terms? A visit to the passage tomb of Newgrange inspired several burial mounds in my games.
- Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn’t? I would like a return to parsimonious adventures. I used to like Paizo products until I realized that I wasn’t actually reading them. They were too damn long.
- Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn’t play? How do those conversations go? I have a poster of Orcus and an explanation of what role-playing games up at the office and once or twice a co-worker asked me what this was about. I provided a short explanation, they nodded and moved on.
Tags: RPG 