DM Questionnaire

Yes, I'm jumping on the bandwagon, but here's my responce to Zak's Questionnaire.

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?

My home brew game world of Edarnia, a sword and sandals setting. 20 years of development through play and fiction. It's been the setting for games of RuneQuest, a very highly customised version of WFRP 1st ed, Rolemaster and every version of D&D since the Red Box.

2. When was the last time you GMed?

Last Friday. My ongoing OSRIC game set in Edarnia.

3. When was the last time you played?

Earlier tonight (well, last night now cos it's after midnight). I play Stefan Krueger, Initiate of Morr, in our WFRP 3rd ed game. You can read about it on my wife's blog, here.

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.

You collapse to the floor, hacking up a thick, bluish liquid onto the cold, steel floor. For a brief moment, your chest tightens, your lungs suddenly deflating until your bewildered body finally remembers how to breathe...

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?

Listen intently. Sometimes their wild-ass guesses and occasional OOC chat throws up some great ideas for me to steal.

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?

Mostly health food with the occasional bit of chocolate (in the OSRIC game anyway). I know, I know, my gaming buddies are strange

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?

Only in the sense that I find it mentally exhausting. If you count having a knackered brain after a game as "physical" then yes, I suppose I do.

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?
Giving the last rites to an entire town of plague-ridden victims of Nurgle cultists moments before my dwarven colleague Grund set the whole place on fire. Ping! 240 Fervour Points! Lucky my head didn't explode. They faded well before I had a chance to use them though.

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?

No, my OSRIC players don't. When you find your PC stranded on a hostile island where the only "civilised" settlement is ruled by a demonic madman whose guards nonchalantly execute an old lady for disobeying a male outsider, players start to take a game very seriously indeed.
As a player on the other hand, I'm playing in the Old World. It's hard not to fill the session with tongue in cheek black humour when the entire game world is filled with the stuff. Even if it's usually only the native Brit's in the group that get most of the setting's in-jokes.

10. What do you do with goblins?

My goblins are interesting, cunning foes with myriad tactics to make the players lives miserable. In Edarnia, these guys are not a joke. Tucker's Kobolds was essentially my  bible as far as encounters with humanoids are converned. At least in my formative DMing years.

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?

An artist's impression of Minoan womens' clothing styles.

12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?

The expression on one of my player's face (the guy playing the 18 charisma bard) when he thought that the Troglodyte shaman need one of his teeth to make a Potion of Tongues [link]. Poor guy's character had already lost an eye just two sessions before...

13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?

Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader. I just love that book. I was looking at it for pure nostalgia and would up being inspired by some conversion ideas.

14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?

The guy who does the 40K Horus Heresy book covers. That man (is it a man?) has talent.

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?
Oh yeah. As players they are terrified of the random encounters I throw at them.

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)

Uh......when I run other peoples adventures I usually re-write them to the point of being unrecognisable (with very few exceptions). I'll need to come back to this one later. My own adventures are so much more fun to run.

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?

A 14ft by 6 ft table with chairs for twelve players ( I often have this many guys belly up to the table -or Skype- in my games) with a library full of Mage Knight and Dwarven Forge scenery and all the gaming mini's I'll ever need close at hand. My own set up at home is pretty cool though. We still manage to fit ten players around the table with another on Skype and (sometimes) one sitting on a floor cushion.

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?

Artesia and Robert E Howard's Conan.

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?

Real world history (especially the most brutal periods) and the WH40K universe.

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?

Guys who want to roleplay rather than roll-play. Guys who'll use their brains, think outside the box and just occasionally do something so mind numbingly stupid (or outrageously brilliant) that I'm lost for words.
My current players, in other words.

21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?

My extensive experience of stressful, violent real-life encounters and my background with the Army and Police. Also my knowledge of pathology, virology, firearms, genetics, wilderness skills, history, blacksmithing and loads of other things.

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?

Nope. If it doesn't exist, I damn well write it myself.

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?

My parents. They love to hear about our games. They keep using the opportunity to remind me that I have a novel or three to finish writing and deadlines to meet for other writing projects.