The Monsters and Manuals Interview [#3 - David Larkins]

An occasional series of interviews with other RPG bloggers.

David is a reknowned expert on Lone Wolf Adventure Gamebooks. After studying his B. A. at Harvard, he took his M. A. in Magnamund Studies at the Sorbonne and then finished his Ph.D (in two years) under Eli Rochemback, the reknowned Lone Wolf scholar. His thesis was a psycoanalytic reading of The Fall of Blood Mountain; he now teaches Rifts Studies at the University of Cambridge, where he is also Dean of the School of Gamebooks and Miniatures Painting.

1 - Let's begin at the beginning. Can you remember your first gaming session? What happened, and why did it suck you into the hobby?

I barely remember my first session. I was about 8 or 9, and I was hanging out with this kid who was a son of my mom's friend, so we had sort of been forced to spend some afternoons together in the manner of parents thinking that just because they're friends, their kids will be friends too. One afternoon he offered to run D&D for me. I had been a huge fan of the cartoon series, and had heard some cool playground stories about friends' older brothers' games (things involving statues coming to life and flaying characters alive, that sort of thing), so I readily agreed. The adventure consisted of the kid reading the solo adventure from the Mentzer Red Box out loud and letting me make the decisions. As for what happened, I have a dim memory of the rust monster, but that's about all I remember. The thing that intrigued me the most at the time was actually the accoutrements like the polyhedral dice. The d4 in particular. "A pyramid-shaped dice? No way!" The character sheet too, with its weird shield-shaped box for AC. It all seemed so arcane, occult even! Big draw for a kid back in the 80s, you know.

2 - Tell us about your first ever character.

First character...gosh. I mean, apart from the "Generic Fighter" character sheet I was handed for my first game, I honestly don't know. The problem was that a couple years later, when I bought a Red Box of my own, I found I had no one to play with. So I made a lot of characters to "test the system" but they never saw the light of day. When I finally did start gaming properly a couple years after that, I was always running things. So I have plenty of stories of other people's first characters, but nothing really substantive for myself. The earliest character I remember playing is probably an elf mage-thief in the Forgotten Realms who turned into a moderately successful pirate.

3 - Have you been playing regularly ever since, or have their been long gaps in your gaming?

Aside from that initial two year period, when I was beginning to despair of ever finding people to game with, there was another gap, nearly three years, that began shortly after I finished college. It was due to a bunch of small reasons combining into one big block, but I never really "gave up" on gaming or thought that I'd truly left it behind. But it was weird to go from weekly game sessions to essentially nothing, and for such a long period. I started gaming regularly again back in 2003, and I haven't let up since.

4 - What do you think attracts you to the hobby? Why this and not, say, cross-stitch or ice hockey?

I think it's the creativity aspect. The sheer open nature of the hobby, and the collaborative nature of it. Other hobbies--computer gaming, fiction writing, comic books--share certain of the elements in their own ways, but for me gaming collates it all into one big heaping pile of goodness.

5 - Is there anything about the hobby you strongly dislike?

What I dislike about gaming is also what attracts me to it: the fact that it's so collaborative and so individualized. There's very little that's objective about gaming. You could argue that there are certain books, movies, graphic novels, even video games that are as close to being objectively "good" as it's possible to get with mass entertainment. At the very least, they present a consistent message, regardless of who interacts with them. Board games are similar; house rules aside, if I play a single game of Monopoly and loathe it, chances are I'll loathe all future games of Monopoly I might play. But with RPGs, there is no consistent, objective element. I mean, it's sort of common wisdom that with an awesome GM and players you could take nearly any set of rules, nearly any campaign concept and make it awesome. And, crucially, vice versa: the most amazing module/campaign in the world won't survive a terrible GM or disinterested players. I can't tell you the number of people I've met who've written off RPGs because they at one time wanted to play badly, but then had one or more really awful experiences. And you can't just hand someone a copy of a game and say, "You want to see RPGs at their best? Check this out!" in the same way you could with, say, Watchmen or what have you. You sort of have to grandfather people in. The fact that all gamers, no matter how creepy, smelly, or socially inept, are effectively ambassadors for the hobby kind of irks me.

6 - How would you introduce a newcomer to rpgs? Have you ever done so?

I've practically done nothing but introduce new players to the hobby! As I said, I had a hard time finding existing groups when I was first starting out, so I built my own group one person at a time over a period of a few years. That pattern's persisted ever since, for one reason or another. I just recently sat down with a former co-worker and his friend and introduced them to RPGs, actually. And that was the first time I had two newcomers sitting at the table simultaneously. My approach is usually to start macro and zero in. So first you do the whole song and dance explanation of what the hell an RPG is and is not, how it's played, why dice are rolled, etc. I usually pepper my mini-lecture with examples from my own past experiences, and I continue to interject old war stories when appropriate during the course of game. I've found that that's really helpful, actually, to provide specific examples from past games. I've tried both approaches of handing out pre-gens or letting players make their own characters. I think with simpler systems, the latter approach works fine, although even then it's a good idea to keep options simple. The main thing is just to try and remember how bewildering RPGs can seem to the outsider, but to balance that with allowing the new player(s) to do what they want, make their own mistakes, and so forth.

7 - Do you hide the fact that you game, or do you live an "I am who I am" geek dream?

It sort of depends. If I do hide it, it's not because of shame, but simply because I might not want to get into an explanation of gaming with the people in question. For something that's been around for 35 years, RPGs are still seriously misunderstood. I guess that just gets back to what I was talking about earlier. Anyway, I don't wear my hobby on my sleeve, but I browse gaming-related websites at work and such, and there have been times in the past when a co-worker has seen what I'm looking at and asked me about it or shown an interest. Then I'm happy to discuss things. Strangely enough, the most guff I've gotten in the past is from other uber-geeks who think their interest of choice (::cough::comic books::cough::) is somehow inherently superior to mine.

8 - What would your 'desert island game' be? (That is, if you were marooned on a desert island with four other rpg players and you only had one set of rulebooks, which books would you choose?)

Hmm. Well, if it was just one book, I'd probably take Basic Roleplaying, since that's sort of my universal system of choice these days and it has the necessary tools for pretty much any genre I'd care to dip into. If it was a set of books...I'd still make it BRP, but I'd bring Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon along with me!

9 - Have you ever toyed with the idea of writing rpg material for money? Ever tried to get anything published? Ever self-published?

When I started doing freelance writing a few years back, I sent out some query letters to various publishers. I received a couple responses, and even talked about doing an adventure for HARP, but the most that came of it was some bits I wrote for a book on adventuring in deserts that, as far as I know, never got published. Or if it did, I never got a check! At any rate, my disastrous experience with painting miniatures for hire has taught me to keep my hobby and my career separate. Now, self-publishing for fun via my blog (and maybe future submissions to mags like Fight On! and Knockspell) is something that I'm quite interested in. As far as I know, my Carcosa character sheet is going to be included in an upcoming collection of setting-related fan material, and I'm pretty happy about that. Getting hooked into the world of gaming blogs has really kindled my DIY spirits; I used to be pretty pedantic when it came to settings and rules, but I've very quickly morphed into this inveterate tinkerer, although not nearly to the degree of some of the blogs I read.

10 - What would be your ideal soundtrack to a session of your favourite game? Pick three songs.

Yikes, just three? I've developed a habit over the last few years of making a mix/playlist for each campaign I run, but I don't really make those for use during play. An ideal gaming soundtrack to be used during an actual session is, for me, instrumental music. Vocals just tend to get in the way and call attention to the music. Soundtracks are an old favorite, so I'll name my top three favorite soundtracks that I've either used or seen used in the past: Bram Stoker's Dracula, Conan the Barbarian, and North by Northwest.

11. Interesting what you say about RPGs lacking objectivity. I think that's very perceptive. In fact it makes them almost like a sport in some respects - nothing beats a good game of football, but a terrible one is....terrible. I remember introducing an American friend to cricket a few years ago, and being incredibly nervous that the game would be a bad one and he'd get a bad impression of it. So have you ever had an awful experience with bad players/terrible GMs?

Good call on the sports analogy. Of course, what hampers RPGs in this regard is that they really don't make for very compelling spectator events. Even moreso than sports, they're really something that has to be experienced first-hand to really "get".

As for myself, thankfully I haven't had any personally awful experiences. My gaming history has by and large been confined to people who I was friends with first, then gamed with. So that helped. But even then, I had to learn that with certain folks, trying to run Game X was a recipe for disaster. Not all games/campaigns are created equal, and trying to run a taut, modern day mystery-suspense-espionage game with a bunch of dedicated DnDers is like trying to climb up a down escalator. You get there eventually, but...

12. Regarding superiority-complex comic book geeks and RPGs, I absolutely agree and it's a trend I've noticed too. What's also noticeable is "nerdish" activities like comic book reading and computer-game playing becoming more mainstream. Do you think we'll ever see a day in which RPGs follow suit? Do you even want to see that day?

I'm fascinated by the increasing acceptance of comics and computer games--particularly the latter, since, as all those Gary Gygax obits pointed out, computer gaming owes much of its existence to tabletop RPGs. I suppose it's conceivable that RPGs might some day achieve similar acceptance, but really don't see how. Again, it goes back to the fact that one could argue that certain comics and video games are very close to being objectivally good in and of themselves. Or at the very least more immediately engaging than RPGs. These days I'm more apt to agree with Jeff Rients's assessment that RPGs are destined for the same niche occupied by barbershop quartets and model railroads.

13. Painting miniatures for hire? It reminds me of some people on rpg.net who were discussing GMing for hire. I'm amazed that such activities exist. How did you get involved in that?

Oh, it exists all right. And unlike GMing for hire, it's actually its own little fully-realized industry. There are companies like Blue Table Painting that actually employ full-time painters. There's even been outsourcing, with companies in Sri Lanka and Thailand undercutting the American/European market! I guess there are enough folks who don't want to fiddle about with taking the time to paint the things to justify the market. (My experience is that a lot of people who do this are older, and simply don't have the eyesight or steady hands necessary to do justice to their figures.)

I got involved in it from selling some figures I'd painted "on spec" via eBay. I made a decent profit, and thought I might try doing some actual commissioned work. Big mistake, as I ended up getting saddled with hundreds of figures at a time!

Thanks for the interview, David.

Anyone interested in being interviewed should contact me at jean.delumeau AT gmail.

The Monsters and Manuals Interview [#2 - Brian Murphy]

An occasional series of interviews with other RPG bloggers.

Brian Murphy is a wolf-breeder and turkey-shoot-stall owner from the town of Dead Weasel in Minnesota. As well as his many other pursuits, he is a reknowned expert on tobacco pipes and the author of the nonfiction bestseller Spitoons of the Wild West: 1854-68. His favourite food is marzipan and he once killed a man just to watch him die. His dream is to be the first man to travel from pole to pole via zeppelin, and he is the current butter-eating world record holder.

1 - Let's begin at the beginning. Can you remember your first gaming session? What happened, and why did it suck you into the hobby?

My first gaming session was December of '81 (I think). I was DM, after having read Moldvay's Basic thanks to leaving the light on in the hall outside my bedroom the night before. It was just bright enough to read by even with the light in my room out. My mother, brother, and father rolled characters, but my dad was the only one who really played. The guy has a PhD in Chem E, so I got right into the whole lateral thinking deal. When I described the black veins in the rocks of the Caves of Chaos, he asked what they were. I had no idea, so I asked him what they could be. He floated some suggestions, and the one I latched on to was coal. He then proceeded to powder the coal and use to, in effect, create a bomb to blast in the doors of the goblin warren.

My father decided he never wanted to play D&D again, because the game was too violent for his tastes. He did, though, do some free-form gaming with me on airplane trips later, mostly sci-fi stuff. I can only claim that first session as a moderate success, but even then I got a hint of the game's potential. And honestly, at the time I was crazy for anything with knights and dragons and all that in it. I'd already devoured C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books, and from there launched into The Hobbit, King Arthur, and Robin Hood. If the game had utterly sucked, I still probably would have played the living daylights out if it.

2 - Tell us about your first ever character.

Ho boy! I don’t remember his name, but I do remember he was a ranger. Yes, I started with Moldvay/Cook, but I didn’t get to actually play until I had AD&D. In his very first adventure, he barely survived the Palace of the Silver Princess, and I was quite annoyed when the awakened princess wanted the loot we’d gathered. And I remember thinking there was something fishy about the story she told us. I was probably twelve or thirteen at the time, so this guy didn’t have much personality. He did have a very cool magical repeating crossbow (we were ignorant of the Chinese design at the time) which fired bolts like a machine gun, and poisoned them on the way out. I just told the DM how many seconds I kept the trigger down for and he rolled dice behind the screen to tell me how many died.

The game skirted Monty Haul but never quite devolved into it. There were always challenges, but again, primarily of the lateral sort. Even after he had a castle/spaceship, my ranger was struggling to keep thieves out, convince his people they really needed to pay at least some taxes, and rid the sewers of annoying giant rats and zombies.

The moment I remember best was when he ended up finally facing down Loki, a character who had been a bit of a thorn in his side. Loki proved immune to poisoned crossbow bolts, but my ranger did have a girdle of giant strength at that point. So while grappling with the trickster god, my ranger ripped Loki’s arm off and proceeded to beat him to death with it. I seem to remember the attitude of the rest of the pantheon being something like, “Well, it was Loki, so I guess we won’t make too big a deal about it. But don’t get cocky!” ;)

3 - Have you been playing regularly ever since, or have their been long gaps in your gaming?

HUUUUUUUGE gaps. From about 5^th grade to 8^th I only got to play maybe once every few months. Mostly, I kept gaming alive by reading Dragon, mapping out dungeons nobody every explored, and daydreaming.

4 - What do you think attracts you to the hobby? Why this and not, say, cross-stitch or ice hockey?

Not much ice in south Texas and last time I checked out cross-stitch, there was a noticeable lack of scantily clad beauties and rubies the size of a man’s skull. ;)

Seriously, RPGs are a sort of crossroad for lots of interests of mine: reading, writing, puzzles, history, anthropology, fashion, science, nature, sex, mythology, sociology, architecture, travel, exploration, fantasy, sci-fi, and art. For the price of snacks, I can hit on all of those in a single four-hour session while wallowing in my joy of daydreaming, and I get to share it with other people, too. I really can’t imagine a better hobby.

And deep inside me there’s still a nine-year-old boy who’s just gaga over knights and dragons and Robin Hood.

5 - Is there anything about the hobby you strongly dislike?

Not really. There are some things I’d like to change. I’d like to play more, and get paid for doing so. But there’s nothing I strongly dislike about it.

6 - How would you introduce a newcomer to rpgs? Have you ever done so?

A few times, yes. The last time was with a girlfriend in college. I sold it to her as an Infocom game, but with a real person at the other end who wouldn't keep spitting back “You don’t see that here.” She created a whip-wielding magic-user for 2e who was heavily influenced by Indiana Jones, and I gave her an adventure that was all traps and puzzles. We had a blast, and last I heard she hadn't books and still had some interest in RPGs.

I think the old ways are best here. It *is* like a story or your favorite action movie, but you’re the main character, and you get to make the choices. How would you escape the cyclops, or sneak into Dr. Evil’s hidden undersea base? Does your character fall in love with the mysterious stranger with the jade green eyes or the childhood friend who has stuck by you through thick and thin? What would you do with your share of Smaug’s hoard? Answering those questions is fun. So is playing through the consequences.

7 - Do you hide the fact that you game, or do you live an "I am who I am" geek dream?

I couldn’t hide it if I wanted to. My new boss introduces me to everyone we meet as, “He was my DM in college!” ;D

8 - What would your 'desert island game' be? (That is, if you were marooned on a desert island with four other rpg players and you only had one set of rulebooks, which books would you choose?)

Define “set”. ;) If you’re going to hold my feet to the fire, I’d probably go with Moldvay/Cook, but I’ve always mixed it up. In my currently Labyrinth Lord game, I'm using a lot of Moldvay/Cook, the BECMI Creature Catalogue, 1e DMG and monster books (MM, MM2, and FF), yak folk from 3e, and my vast collection of Dragon magazines, as well as my growing collection of Fight On! issues. And that’s not counting all the resources on the web, like your page or Taichara’s Hamsterish Hoard, about which not enough good things can be said.

9 - Have you ever toyed with the idea of writing rpg material for money? Ever tried to get anything published? Ever self-published?

Thought about it and done it! I got my first rejection slip from Wolfgang Baur when he was at Dragon Magazine. It was for an article on designing adventures based around political intrigue. A lot of the ideas I talked about in that article are now are common practice in some games, things like relationship charts and paths of knowledge, but at the time I thought I was coming up with them for the first time. Mr. Baur was right to reject it; I was fresh out of college and wrote it like a college paper: dry and wordy. The friend I mentioned who made the Indiana Jones-esque magic-user later helped me whip that article into shape and it got published in KoDT. To date, that’s been the extent of my getting paid for RPG writing.

I was really excited about the OGL, but could never get into 3e. Without playing it, I really didn’t feel qualified to write anything, so I never did anything with it. I regret that a bit, but I don’t regret at all sticking with the 1e/2e mash-up I played.

10 - What would be your ideal soundtrack to a session of your favourite gamee? Pick three songs.

- 1: “The Road To La Coruna” from the Seville Suite by Bill Whelan

- 2: ”Riddle of Steel/Riders of Doom” from the “Conan the Barbarian” soundtrack by Basil Poledouris

- 3: “Sea of Miracles” from the “Record of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight” soundtrack by Yoko Kanno

11. So your favourite game seems to be Moldvay/Cook (or mixed up Moldvay/Cook). Can I ask why? Is it just nostalgia, as your first game? It seems that most people tend towards citing their first game as their favourite, though of course there are exceptions.

Nostalgia is part of it. Just looking at that Jeff Dee, Erol Otis, and Bill Willingham art puts me in the mood to game. But I probably wouldn't have given the game a second look but for the old school renaissance. Like most, I couldn't see past the parts I was hung up on: race-as-class, hit points, the fact that an axe and a sword are almost identical in mechanical terms. The bloggers of the renaissance, especially Jeff Rients, James Maliszewski, and most especially Robert Fisher and Philotomy, got me to really see the potential for the old versions.

Now, that said, I think you can talk about old school DMs ranging across a spectrum. At one end are the purists who love the game just as it is. These are the folks who will argue for the beautiful simplicity of race-as-class and one die for all weapons types. At the other end of this spectrum are the tinkerers. They look at all that simplicity and see it as an invitation to treat D&D as a fantasy RPG construction set. I fall firmly on that latter end of the spectrum. When Mr. Maliszewski was talking about a swords-and-sorcery D&D project, which led him to start his Grognardia blog, one of his mantras was take what old D&D gives you, and then turn it up to 11. He was the first one I'd read who suggested that memorizing a spell should have side effects, which led to my list of secondary-powers and “leakage” effects for the magic-user spells. And it was in that same spirit that I started to think that if I was going to use descending AC and the combat tables, there was no reason for the numbers to march in order, 18, 17, 16, etc. all the way down. That was the inspiration for my rogue's funky to-hit tables. Wanting to play more with henchmen and loyalty was the inspiration for my gnome class. I've just about got a hierodule class written based on some tinkerings with the morale system, though that one has a few major issues that still have me stumped.

I love this ability to tinker and make the game your own. Based on some stuff from your blog and David Larkin's writing about Pendragon and other high fantasy themes, my LL game was originally going to be set in Cerilia of the Birthright setting. But I kept finding myself drawn to the artwork of Frazetta and Elmore, the mythology of ancient Mesopotamia and Babylon, and the sword-and-sorcery literature of Howard and Leiber and Wagner. As much as I've been enjoying Erikson's Malazan novels, finding a copy of Christopher Silke's Tooth and Claw set my brain on fire. I devoured it over a weekend and after that my course was set. The cool thing about D&D is how easy it was to change gears. With a system like True20, which I'd been tinkering with previously, that sort of change would have required a lot of work, but with D&D I just fiddled with the equipment lists and deities and I was most of the way there.

12. Ripping off Loki's arm and beating him to death with it! I've never heard that one before. How much damage did one blow of Loki's severed arm do? Are your games that wacky these days?

I think the arm did only 1-2 points of damage, but it counted as magical for the purposes of harming a god, and with my girdle of giant strength I was probably doing +6 to +8 on every hit. And 1e gods had like 100 or so hit points before they have their arms ripped off. ;)

As for being wacky, I dunno, honestly. Talking about the way I DM is difficult sometimes because to me it's like saying the sky is blue. A lot of my style started with that first game, with my dad powdering coal and turning it into a bomb and stuff like that. I don't think it's wacky, because to me that's what playing D&D is supposed to be like. So when Oddysey's Rukmini led the tarantella into the bed of amber lotus, I was more than happy to roll with it. It was a cool idea. Was it wacky? I didn't think so. I thought it was clever. Are hedonistic elves and dragon-worshiping pirates wacky? What about carnivorous riding-birds and hierodule PCs? They're certainly not any wackier than clockwork modrons or the Lady of Pain. To me, that's just D&D turned up to 11.

13. What prevented you from getting into 3e?

3e was a real heartbreak for me. It promised everything I'd always said I'd wanted in D&D: an end to level-limits and weapon restrictions, a robust skill system, and monsters who were as detailed as the PCs themselves. And I was just buzzing with the thought of the OGL. I was all ready to create a campaign and adventures and turn them into products for sale.

Instead, I found the game horribly unwieldy. There was so much stuff to work with, stat blocks that took up an entire page, characters who were supposed to be heroes but could barely demonstrate competency in skills I'd grown confident in by the age of 16, and that's not even getting into the unintended consequences. 3E was the last nail in the coffin of my trust in professional game design. 2E's Tome of Magic nearly derailed my college game. At that point, I should have seen the writing on the wall, but it was really 3e that finally convinced me there was no set of rules I could play out-of-the-box without some serious tinkering.

So I played some 3e but never ran it as a DM. It turned out everything I'd always wanted was nothing like what I enjoyed running. I'd play in a 3e game today with the right DM, but I don't see myself ever going back to run it. What I want these days are toolkits to make the games I'm excited about playing. That means games like True20, GURPS, and Moldvay/Cook D&D.

Brian would have us believe that he looks like this:

The Monsters and Manuals Interview [#1 - Max Davenport]

An occasional series of interviews with other RPG bloggers.

An accomplished actor, musician, martial artist, and philanthropist - there are the many facets to Max Davenport. For over 25 years, Max has brought an unparalleled passion for the arts that few can match. His deep spiritual roots are an integral part of his movies, his music, his martial arts expertise and his genuine love and care for others. From humble beginnings in Detroit, Michigan to finding his cultural center in Japan, to an acting career launched in 1988, to a flourishing music career and his involvement with numerous charities - this is Max Davenport.

Let's hear what he has to say about RPGs...

1 - Let's begin at the beginning. Can you remember your first gaming session? What happened, and why did it suck you into the hobby?

You know, I honestly don't remember a first session. I was probably 7 or 8? We lived out in the country and the kid across the street only wanted to play baseball and occasionally beat me up. I remember going to the local recreation center for Friday evening games a few times, but as a shy kid on the younger end of the age range I never felt comfortable.

Eventually I got into a semi-regular group with the son and nephew of one my teachers. They lived one town over, but we got together for overnight D&D marathons when we could.

What drew me into the hobby the most was the creative aspect of making up characters and monsters, drawing dungeons, dreaming up adventures -- the solitary side of the hobby. My most vivid memory of actual play in the first few years I gamed was a tantrum I threw when I couldn't get my players to stop cracking jokes. Tears were shed, threats to take my toys and go home were made.

Let's just move on.

2 - Tell us about your first ever character.

Oh pssh, who knows? I never got a chance to play in an ongoing campaign in those days, so most of my characters were scarcely differentiated mooks who changed from game to game. I do remember two high level characters I made up but never played. One was a lawful good halfling fighter, Peregrine something-somesuch -- straight off the hobbit family tree in a Tolkien appendix. The other was a half-orc assassin who used an "arrow sling," a weapon of my own imagining -- a giant rubber band for shooting arrows with. I've rolled Retro-Stupid since retro was new, kid.

3 - Have you been playing regularly ever since, or have their been long gaps in your gaming?

I gave away all of my gaming stuff the summer before I went to college, including Gamma World 2e, a bunch of modules and Dragons and my only two minis, a beholder and a Jabberwocky. I didn't think about gaming for a decade except for buying a nostalgic copy of Tomb of Horrors at a comic shop. When I heard about 3e I collected the core books and various supplements but played it only once with an old friend.

Last January I found out about the impending Fourth Edition of D&D, and that piqued my interest again. But the more I read about 4e the less it floated my personal boat. I found myself drawn to the old school and the retro-clones -- and got a huge crush on the retro-mutant Encounter Critical.

Then of course the death of Gary Gygax was a memento mori -- for me and many others I'm sure. I asked myself, "If not now, when? You like gaming -- go find some gamers and roll the dice!

4 - What do you think attracts you to the hobby? Why this and not, say, cross-stitch or ice hockey?

I'm a fairly solitary person who also enjoys playing the fool, so gaming is a perfect hobby! I can spend an afternoon all to my lonesome poring over a dungeon map or scratching out monsters. But I also get a chance to extrovert myself playing face to face. Even online around the blogs and in play by post games there's a camaraderie.

And let me add that while I never took to sports or needlecraft, gaming isn't my only hobby. I do a fair bit of cycling in the warmer months (which gives me lots of time to brainstorm gaming ideas).

5 - Is there anything about the hobby you strongly dislike?

Monty Python references. The tedious "You are!" "No, you are!" neeener-neener bickering that keeps me from reading most online forums. People who mistake arrogance for wisdom. All of which, of course, are really blemishes on geekdom in general rather gamers alone.

6 - How would you introduce a newcomer to rpgs? Have you ever done so?

Never had the opportunity to introduce a new player to the hobby. Given the chance I guess I'd keep it as simple as possible, adding in rules along the way. Depending on the interest of the new player I'd go with Labyrinth Lord for fantasy, Mutant Future with the setting filed off for science fiction, Risus for other genres. These three because I know them reasonably well and they can all be pared down to a few simple rules. And they are all free, so the truly interested could dive in!

7 - Do you hide the fact that you game, or do you live an "I am who I am" geek dream?

I'm open about my interests -- currently my coworkers are enjoying the lurid series of vintage horror posters I'm using for desktop backgrounds, which changes every couple days when Netflix mails me a new Hammer film. I guess they know I play D&D too -- I've mentioned it in passing.

8 - What would your 'desert island game' be? (That is, if you were marooned on a desert island with four other rpg players and you only had one set of rulebooks, which books would you choose?)

I'd go with some iteration of OD&D. It has already proven itself adaptable and inspirational enough to spawn the entire hobby, and its cod-medieval sword & sorcery milieu is defined sketchily enough that it can be (and, indeed has been and continues to be) jerry-rigged to fit many other genres. It's the Swiss Family Robinson/Army Knife of games.

I'd also smuggle in Risus, nestled safely between my ears.

9 - Have you ever toyed with the idea of writing rpg material for money? Ever tried to get anything published? Ever self-published?

I have been published in the fanzine Fight On! and hope to be again. I hope to put together .pdfs of some adventures and such to share online, but I haven't any aspirations to publish on demand or freelance.


10 - What would be your ideal soundtrack to a session of your favourite game? Pick three songs.

Aw hell. Where to start?

Rather than playing the Conan soundtrack or Dead Can Dance in the background, I like the idea of matching atmospheric music to specific encounters. Cue up some barrel-chested Georgian choral music for a meeting with dwarven elders, or wild Romanian fiddle tunes when they party goes astray in the haunted forest. My wife and I are big fans of he brilliant viol player Jordi Savall, so we have hours of amazing early music in our collection as well. And every dead D&D PC could be honored with Motorhead's "Deaf Forever."

Beyond D&D I feel like skronky modern jazz and Gamma World / Mutant Future go together like flies and candy. Might just be me though. If I were running something spooky I'd put the 12" version of "Bela Lugosi's Dead" on repeat. I could listen to that bass line for hours.

But this isn't what you asked. You asked for three songs for a favorite game. I'll do you better and direct you my Encounter Critical playlist on Youtube: http://mbenign.blogspot.com/2008/07/v-tv.html. It's got Billy Ocean on it so you know I ain't foolin' around.


11. So Encounter Critical. What on earth is the attraction?

Oh, now you've uncorked the bottle.

As Louis Armstrong said, "If you have to ask, you'll never know." But I'll give it a shot. To quote another legendary jazz trumpeter, Jeff Rients recently said "EC was like a pulling a blindfold from my eyes and being able to really see the impossibilities of roleplaying for the very first."

I actually fell for the EC hoax myself -- a year after the big reveal, because I read one of Jeff's early reviews, thought "Man, what a crazy world," and moved on. But it wormed its way into my brain, and when I found out the full history I had to read the whole thing. Have you? It is not only a genuinely hilarious piece of writing but a brilliant bit of in-character roleplaying too. It's like this: Have you ever watched one of those generally wretched movies that tries to be deliberately awful in emulation of old B-movies? It's not easy to do, and most of the movies just feel hammy and forced. EC pulls this trick off. It works because it is *totally sincere.* All of its satire comes from a deep love of this oddball hobby and its equally odd devotees, and an unreserved joy in playing games.

Add in an adventuresome setting that allows me free reign to indulge my love of bad puns and pop-culture and BOOM! the whole thing went of in my head like a Warlock Bomb. I never *knew* that I wanted a game where Edgar Winter is the last scion of a decadent island empire, wandering the world on an endless rock'n'roll tour, wielding a soul-eating demon synthesizer. But as it turns out, I do, and EC is that game.

12. You're into horror then. But it's interesting that you don't mention much horror roleplaying. You've never dabbled in World of Darkness or the like?

Is WoD a horror game, really? I'm not being snarky -- I have very little experience of it. But if your character is a monster, a supernatural creature, doesn't that make horror normative? What is there to dread?

Lest anyone think I trying to knock WoD, I freely admit I don't know what I'm talking about. I've never read a WoD rulebook. What little I've gleaned of the milieu, Vampire in particular, just doesn't interest me enough to pursue. I have no doubt that there are GMs out there running campaigns that would prove me wrong. But I'll just say this: It's Peter Cushing I root for. I like my vampires stalked, staked, and sun-baked. Stuff their mouths with garlic, beat them with a crucifix and chop their heads off.

As for other horror games Call of Cthulhu interests me, but I don't currently own it. I'd play it gladly though!

13. You wanted to move on, but I'm going to ask anyway: You threw a tantrum because you couldn't get your players to stop cracking jokes, but you like Encounter Critical, Risus and 'playing the fool'. Seems like a bit of tension there between the serious and comedy Maxes. Would that be a fair comment?

It might be if I were still ten years old! Nowadays I'm more laid back, I think. Certainly as a player I can tolerate a table that goes in and out of focus over the course of an evening. But I'm judging a face-to-face game for the first time in 20 years in a couple of weeks. If I lose my shit and end up shouting and sobbing perhaps you can resume this prying and distasteful line of questioning.

Hell, if you're lucky somebody will film it and it will go viral on Youtube.

Hopefully Max will let us know how that face-to-face game goes... He blogs semi-regularly at Malevolent & Benign, so watch that space.