1. Game Master, Player, or both?
I’m more inclined to run games than play them, but I really enjoy both. Running games gives me more to engage with, but involves a great deal of effort and not a small amount of stress. Playing in games is less work, less rewarding in some ways, but a unique kind of fun in others. Really, I’m happiest when I’m able to do both fairly regularly.
These days, though, the answer is more like “Game Designer,” which involves a lot of playing and running and then lots more besides. Working with friends to put our own system together is way more effort than I could have imagined when I got into this hobby, but it’s also been the most satisfying experience by far.
This one’s an even tie between Fantasy Adventure and Cyberpunk. Fantasy is ideally suited to a lot of my favorite game elements: journeys to fantastic places, characters with lots of cool powers and tricks, plots about saving the world through friendship, and big crazy magic swordfights. Cyberpunk has this style I just can’t get enough of, and I really appreciate how the goals of your typical protagonist (Complete missions, get money, upgrade gear, complete more missions) align so perfectly with the goals of RPG players.
I’d be tempted to add “Giant Robots” as a favorite genre, but I’ve never found a system that covered it in a way that appealed to me.
15. Your Most Epic Death.
In a Shadowrun 3rd Edition campaign, I was playing a covert ops specialized who went by the code name Heretic, not because it meant anything significant, but because he thought it sounded cool and sinister. In his last session, he got into a fist-fight with an armored humvee. He actually won, but the vehicle’s momentum carried both of them off the roof of the hospital they’d be fighting on, and neither survived the impact with the ground. Great way to go.
27. Your favorite setting or game location?
I’ve invested a lot of time and energy into the settings for Exalted, Shadowrun, and the Worlds of Darkness both old and new. I’ve had a tremendous number of great experiences in those worlds, and I’ll always remember them fondly. I have a special fondness for The Worst Place in the Setting locations, areas that are set up as legendary challenges in the setting, where getting ready to tackle them could serve as a campaign in its own right. Places like the Imperial Manse in Exalted or the Renraku Arcology in SR are just so damn cool, even if I rarely actually see them in play because I don’t actually want 15 consecutive TPKs to drain the fun out of the game.
My very favorite settings, though, are the ones I invent myself. I’m not saying that they’re better than those published ones I mentioned, but being settings I wrote makes them so much more fun to work with. It’s amazing to see other people immerse themselves in worlds I wrote, and telling stories with them about those worlds is possibly the greatest thing ever. Most settings I make have been designed for a single campaign, but a few have shown up multiple times over the years, generally to everyone’s great enjoyment. I’ve got a million more settings than I’ll actually be able to use, but that’s fine by me.
