{"id":296,"date":"2012-01-23T18:40:36","date_gmt":"2012-01-23T18:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/23-questions\/"},"modified":"2023-03-04T22:10:40","modified_gmt":"2023-03-04T22:10:40","slug":"23-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/23-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"23 Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

To go along with the <\/span>Reverb Gamers<\/a> thing Atlas is doing, here are my answers to the GM Questionnaire from another blog.\u00a0I couldn\u2019t pass up a list with such as perfect number of questions.<\/p>\n

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?<\/strong>
\nAssuming \u201cinvention\u201d is defined broadly enough to include game mechanics, I\u2019d have to go with Yum Yums, though gorilla gangsters are a very close second. Going with the \u201csome kind of sciency thing\u201d definition, I\u2019ll pick Doc Science!\u2019s roller-skating-powered time machine that I\u2019ve used in a couple of Roller Girls Vs.<\/a> games.<\/p>\n

2. When was the last time you GMed?<\/strong>
\nI think it was at Archon<\/a> back in October, but I\u2019m not really sure. There might have been a session of the M-Force<\/a> game that I was running since then, but I don\u2019t remember for sure.<\/p>\n

3. When was the last time you played?<\/strong>
\nAbout 2 weeks ago. Star Wars.<\/p>\n

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven’t run but would like to.<\/strong>
\nThe Scientific Adventures of Jesus and Pals: Jesus Christ, Teddy Roosevelt, Emo Hitler, and other as-yet-unspecified historical characters travel through time solving problems with SCIENCE!<\/p>\n

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?<\/strong>
\nDoodle.<\/p>\n

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?<\/strong>
\nUsually Starburst, since that\u2019s what I use as Yum Yums.<\/p>\n

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?<\/strong>
\nNot really physically exhausting, but a really good game leaves me a little tired. Unfortunately, those are rarer than I\u2019d like. If my voice is almost gone at the end of a convention, it\u2019s usually a sign that the games there were good ones.<\/p>\n

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?<\/strong>
\nOne of my characters summoned the ghost of Hitler to find out some information about hell (because, hey, you\u2019ve got to summon somebody you know is in Hell) in a recent game. He then used a magic bullet to send him back to hell. He probably could have done some kind of unsummoning or exorcism ritual instead, but who doesn\u2019t want to shoot Hitler?<\/p>\n

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?<\/strong>
\nDepends on the group. When we first published QAGS<\/a>, the fact the rulebook is fun to read and has a lot of jokes got it tagged as a \u201chumor\u201d game, so we had a lot of people show up expecting to play TOON<\/a> or something, which got really annoying if we were running a more serious game. As we\u2019ve released more and more \u201cserious\u201d supplements, the problem has lessened.<\/p>\n

10. What do you do with goblins?<\/strong>
\nNothing recently (in Clan War, I always liked magic mud goblins–you basically set them on fire and hope they run into the enemy lines instead of the friendly ones), but I\u2019ve got some plans for them in the 2nd Edition of M-Force.<\/p>\n

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?<\/strong>
\nEither roller derby or hobos. I\u2019ve worked on the hobo game most recently, but I think Roller Girls Vs. is the one I\u2019ve actually GMed most recently.<\/p>\n

12. What’s the funniest table moment you can remember right now?<\/strong>
\nIf you mean \u201ctable moment\u201d as in \u201cfunny result from a table,\u201d I don\u2019t really have an answer because I rarely use tables when running a game. If you mean \u201cfunniest moment at the table,\u201d one of the funniest things I can think of off off the top of my head is The Professor fighting The Skipper in a mecha suit made from bamboo and coconuts in a Gilligan\u2019s Island conspiracy game about 12 years ago. There are lots of others, but that one requires the least explanation.<\/p>\n

13. What was the last game book you looked at–aside from things you referenced in a game–why were you looking at it?<\/strong>
\nAll-Stars: Vice Squad<\/a>. I was doing the layout for it.<\/p>\n

14. Who’s your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?<\/strong>
\nDepends on the project, but Jeffrey Johnson<\/a> and Gary Bedell<\/a> are the two people I want to see art from in just about anything I\u2019m work on. For people I haven\u2019t worked with personally, Larry Elmore<\/a>\u2019s always been my favorite gaming artist and there are a lot of non-gaming artists whose work would be great in the right game.<\/p>\n

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?<\/strong>
\nNothing I\u2019ve run recently, but I think I\u2019ve pulled it off in the past.<\/p>\n

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn’t write? (If ever)<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s been so long since I ran something I didn\u2019t write that I can\u2019t remember.<\/p>\n

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?<\/strong>
\nBig comfy couches\/chairs with a table in the middle to roll dice and keep your character sheets and crap on.<\/p>\n

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?<\/strong>
\nLaser Ponies<\/a> and Clan War.<\/p>\n

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?<\/strong>
\nRobert Rodriguez and Terry Gilliam.<\/p>\n

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?<\/strong>
\nSomeone with a well-thought out character who’s there to tell a good story and have fun.<\/p>\n

21. What’s a real life experience you’ve translated into game terms?<\/strong>
\nCan\u2019t think of anything specific, but I often based locations and GMCs an places and people I know.<\/p>\n

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn’t?<\/strong>
\nHobomancer<\/a>, but hopefully it will be out in about a month. There\u2019s also a book about game magic that I\u2019ve been wanting to write for years now about getting rid of flash-bang magic without magic becoming completely useless. I think I\u2019ve finally started to wrap my head around the details, so it might be my next big project after the M-Force revamp.<\/p>\n

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn’t play? How do those conversations go?<\/strong>
\nOther than telling people it\u2019s game night or describing projects I\u2019m working on, I usually try to spare my non-gaming friends from RPG talk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To go along with the Reverb Gamers thing Atlas is doing, here are my answers to the GM Questionnaire from another blog.\u00a0I couldn\u2019t pass up a list with such as perfect number of questions. 1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2009],"tags":[1182,3468,3467,2304,2114,1803,1723,1626,1565,1183,43,1181,1150,1038,1011,872,584,156,153,146],"class_list":["post-296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prompts-and-challenges","tag-larry-elmore","tag-all-stars-vice-squad","tag-clan-war","tag-teddy-roosevelt","tag-roller-girls-vs","tag-robert-rodriguez","tag-star-wars","tag-terry-gilliam","tag-jeffrey-johnson","tag-crimson-skies","tag-qags","tag-toon","tag-gilligans-island","tag-gary-bedell","tag-archon","tag-hobomancer","tag-jesus","tag-project-g","tag-m-force","tag-laser-ponies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4160,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions\/4160"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}