The Gnome as consolation.
2. When was the last time you GMed?
Last Sunday
3. When was the last time you played?
Late November
4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.
The crypts and cellars of the City of Vorgrad must be cleared one by one to reinstate the Nine Mysteries of Crime and return it to its former standing as City of Thieves.
5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?
Roll dice menacingly in a small box.
6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?
Varies from pizza to junk food; once, a red lentil stew.
7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?
Not half as much as teaching. In fact I find it actually adds energy.
8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?
I had an L5R Hida berserker once who said "Treat me as a go stone upon a board of doom." And played suicidally and was the only survivor.
9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?
My setting is as serious as your life and just as ridiculous too.
10. What do you do with goblins?
They are generic evil killable sword fodder. Little vicious guys who would like to have a warrior code but haven't realized that's incompatible with cowardice. I would like to have a campaign where they are the evolved form of tomatoes.
11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?
Hieronymus Bosch's Temptation of St Anthony.
12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?
Hooven using his randomly assigned wooden teeth and a torch to cast a menacing shadow and frighten kobolds ... and it worked! (Gencon 2010)
13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?
The Scaum Valley Gazetteer, because I am thinking of running a Dying Earth game.
14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?
Tramp. As serious as your life and just as ridiculous. Pure joy.
15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?
Yes, and my wife had a "Black Leaf" moment when her character died.
16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)
I think my recent runs of Castle of the Mad Archmage and Tomb of the Iron God have both delivered a lot of fun.
17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?
A trunk full of minis, a lit up table to project maps onto, and some way to make it work.
18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?
Baron Munchausen and Kingdom Crush
19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?
Social psychology and horror fiction
20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?
Intelligent, creative, fun, with the occasional just fun as a foil.
21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?
Can't really say that I've ever done that literally.I prefer to take the fantasy tropes, the world peculiarities, the horrors and violations, the mindsets of the NPCs, and proceed more or less from there into a logically mapped out insanity.
22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?
Reverse Tower of Babel to end edition wars.
23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?
Less and less embarrassed as I get older. But I only really fly the flag if I think they would want to play.
I liked your color magic stuff years back. Never got to use it, but I think that's when I started following your blog.
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