More interview memeage

[lederhosen]

goddess_of_impe asks:


1) If you could excell in a certain branch of the arts ie: painting, writing poetry or playing an instrument, what would it be?

Writing prose - that's always been my favourite medium.

2) Who is the most favorite character you have ever role-played and why?

Well, the only one who's ever gotten me fan mail from total strangers is Gideon Strongblade. Gideon started out as a lonely teenage D&D player whose character was Gideon Strongblade, an exceedingly munchkinly paladin. One day, while his head was full of fantasy, Gideon's player stepped out onto the road, saw an oncoming bus out of the corner of his eye... and then woke up somewhere he'd never been before. He swiftly realised that this land was in danger, and realised he had been called into the fantasy to become Gideon Strongblade, Paladin. So he wandered around smiting orcs, searching for weapons with better pluses, using his paladinly Detect Evil to resolve every dilemma, and taking advantage of his knowledge of the game rules. (At one point, another character stabbed him in the face with a dagger; Gideon's response was something like "That only does 1d4 damage, and I've got over a hundred hit points".)

However, what he didn't realise was that while he was indeed a character in a game, it wasn't AD&D... it was Wraith. Gideon was very good at getting that mix of laughter and horror that I live for :-)

My own favourite would probably be Art Black. He also has that whole funny-awful thing going, but he's more of a three-dimensional character than Gideon and not quite as tragic - while he might be a menace to society at large, he's cheerful, he's an incurable romantic, and he gets to play with Weird Science.

But at the moment, I'm having a lot of fun playing calair.

3) The math problems you sometimes post make my head spin. When my future children need help with their math homework, can they ask you for help?

Sure.

4) Has anyone ever told you to cut your hair just because you are a man? If so, what is your favorite method for putting these rude people in their place?

Well, my mother seems to be convinced that long hair will make the world hate me and end up with me destitute and on the streets because I can't get a job, but I'm sure I've grumbled about that before; unfortunately, cutting remarks aren't a whole lot of help there.

Other than that, nobody's actually said "Cut your hair!", although one old fellow did ask rather rudely "What are you supposed to be, a man or a woman?" (I was waiting for a bus on Oxford Street at the time, which is a bit like a slightly less over-the-top version of SF's Castro Street.) In response, I did what I usually do to such things, which is to look confused and then think of any number of witty comebacks ten minutes too late.

5) And lastly becuase I'm in the mood to try and make someone smile, what do you love the most about the lovely reynardo?

So many things to choose from! I'm not sure whether to pick her patience and generosity, or the way she makes me feel appreciated, but somewhere between those two.



torin3 asks:


1 What made you realize that munchkining was not a fun way to play?

I don't know that I ever really did :-) I still have a strong munchkin streak, and when I'm presented with a set of rules my natural tendency is to analyse them to figure out how much I can get away with - part of an analytical mindset, I guess. When playing solo (e.g. CRPGs) I'm quite happy to play ubercharacters and tromp over them.

The reason I don't munchkin these days (much) is more that I found things that are more enjoyable. In particular, I love character-character interaction, and munchkining gets in the way of that.

2 How did you meet CJ Cannon?

On rec.org.sca - I think she emailed me in response to one of my posts, can't remember what, and we formed an acquaintance from there.

Leaving #3 for last, since it's kinda long...

4 Who is your favorite science fiction/fantasy author, and why?

(I'm tempted to answer "Paul Riddell" just to annoy him, but I won't.)

Well, like just about everybody I adore Neil Gaiman - I think he has a very good understanding of human nature and storytelling, and the fact that he seems to be a very down-to-earth human being despite his success makes him all the more lovable.

But my pet "more people should read this guy" is Kim Newman. His stories are heavily influenced by pop culture (Newman's day job is reviewing films), and he makes extensive use of other authors' creations - "Anno Dracula", for instance, ends with something like two pages of credits to the original creators of the characters and organisations he's introduced. A big part of his appeal for me is his penchant for finding unexpected depths in trashy source material, without losing the fun. (Usually, anyway; sometimes he deliberately picks out a disquieting undercurrent, as with stories like "Ubermensch".)

My first encounter with KN was reading some of the game tie-ins he wrote for Games Workshop (under the pseudonym 'Jack Yeovil'). If you've ever read RPG-based novels you'll know how execrably trashy they usually are, but these were a lot of fun. "Drachenfels" begins where a cliche FRPG novel should end - an unlikely band of heroes, led by the young Prince Oswald fights their way through the evil archmage's stronghold and defeats him - and then spends the rest of the book on Oswald's attempts 25 years later to milk the incident for political gain by commissioning a play.

He also manages to write decent female characters, something I'm fairly picky about - women who are strong and yet plausible. A lot of "strong female characters" end up becoming too perfect; KN manages to find a very good middle ground between wusses and ninjas.

5 Could I bribe you to send me a box of Violet Crumbles (or are they a product like Fosters where you ship them overseas because nobody local would buy them)?

They don't have them in the USA? I'm sure something can be arranged (email me). They're certainly quite popular here, though I don't usually eat them myself. BTW, have you tried Tim Tams?

FWIW, my understanding is that the Fosters exported to the US is *not* the same as what's drunk here - I get the impression the non-export stuff is a stronger and more popular beer - but not being a beer drinker myself, I'm only going by what others tell me.

3 What made you gaffiate from the SCA?

A whole bunch of things. It happened between mid-'97 and mid'98, roughly...

First thing to understand is that the main thing keeping me in the SCA was the people. I got in as a result of chasing a young lady who dragged me along to SCA events, and by the time she dropped out not long after I was hooked. The other things I was most fond of were fencing (it's rare that I find a sport I enjoy) and chirurgeon duty (I like to help people, even if I sometimes bitch about the ones who still don't understand that sun + physical activity + no sleep + no food + no water is a bad idea...)

In '97, I went to the USA for a four-month working holiday, and stayed with an Australian-American SCA couple who very generously offered me a rent-free room for my stay. There were some personal differences, unfortunately (some my fault - I wasn't exactly the most thoughtful houseguest ever - and some just came down to very different personalities) and all three of us had major external stresses at the time that didn't help matters. I still have respect for them, but from being in their household I ended up seeing a lot of how certain other people played politics in the SCA, and it wasn't very pretty.

You might recall that at the time West Kingdom fencing (and in particular, Lochac fencing) was being jerked around - banned, legalised, banned again, put on probation, etc etc, with the rules changing every time the wind did. I met several people involved in that who were very polite and all to my face, but had been execrably rude long-distance back when I was in Australia - I don't take kindly to being called 'street thug' - and I came to the conclusion that if you weren't a heavy fighter, you were a second-class citizen. Meeting Famous Names and discovering them to be histrionic, manipulative, spiteful people who merely put on a thin veneer of chivalry was not a pleasant experience. (I should note that those were a distinct minority - most of the FNs were decent people - but it only took a few to leave a very bad taste in my mouth.)

Then I went back to Australia. I moved cities for study, which meant I had a lot less by way of personal ties to my new group, and I tried to keep up with fencing but they kept jerking the rules around and it was getting pretty disheartening. I was also starting a PhD, and I no longer had access to a car, which made it harder to attend events.

I was still active as a chirurgeon, and then a new Principality Chirurgeon was appointed - a woman who'd come over from the USA and didn't bother to look at how we were already doing things and why before trying to run things the way she was used to. (For instance, in the US principalities, it may be practical to have licensing requirements that require meeting everybody in person; in a principality the size of Australia, it's not.) I felt I was being expected to jump through hoops just for the privilege of doing volunteer work, and I lost interest. And I'd met reynardo, and was spending more and more of my time visiting her - we still went to the occasional SCA event, but it just gradually faded out.

I'd be vaguely curious to see how it's run nowadays, and I suspect Lochac going Kingdom will have improved some of the things that annoyed me so, but I've moved on and found other things to do with my time.

Comments

[torin3.livejournal.com]

1 Ok, from some of the WGP stuff, especially Strongblade gave me the impression that your transition was more dramatic. I do like the interpersonal stuff more too, and Kronos was an attempt of mine to play a deliberately screwed up munchkin fodder.

4 I'm not sure I've read any of KN's work. I'll check it out, thank you.

5 The only place I ever found them was at a 7-11 I managed. I ordered them in when we ran out, even though I was about the only one who bought them. I didn't eat them all that frequently, but it has been about 6-7 years since I had one, so I'm getting a craving.

3 Well, as an over 20 year member of the SCA, I'm kind of curious to identify why people leave and join. I do have quite a few friends that are members, and that does keep me in. As to the FNs, yeah, some of them are major jerks. I like Flieg, but I realize he does have a few rhino triggers (as in: trigger them and he charges like a rhino). I tend to have a real thick skin due to some stuff that happened earlier on in my life.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

#1 - Gideon is indeed me laughing at my younger self, but it's an affectionate kind of laughter. I *do* realise that munchkinism is very disruptive to games, so in practice it's usually a bad thing, but I wouldn't have been able to write Gideon as I did without recalling how much fun it also was.

#4 - Anno-Dracula isn't quite my favourite of his, but it's his most famous and a good introduction - if you like it you'll probably like most of his novels, and if you don't you won't. It's an alternate history based off a Dracula in which the vampire hunters lost and Dracula ended up marrying Queen Victoria. (Much to the public's dismay, since Prince Vlad had at one stage been a Roman Catholic!) Alternately, Drachenfels is a bit lightweight, but still fun, especially if you've hung around theatrical types much. It should be easy to find, since Games Workshop reissued it a year or two back.

He also writes some very good short stories - collected in Famous Monsters and The original Dr. Shade, among others. "The Man Who Collected Barker" is beautifully funny, if rather cruel.

And then there's Life's Lottery, a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure for grownups. It's also available as an e-book, which is a very appropriate format - KN obviously understands that the correct way to read a CYOA is with half a dozen fingers holding places open to see what'd happen if you'd made a different choice, and it's much more fun if you read it that way.

#5 - As per reynardo's recent post, we might be able to arrange something...

#3 - I think it boiled down to a combination of feeling like a second-class member (basically that whole "the SCA is about heavy fighting" mentality) and having other things to do. I wouldn't mind going to an event or two, but with my current timetable there just isn't a lot of room for stuff.