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Interview with Monte Cook!!!!!

Firstly thank you for making a geek's dream come true. I truly appreciate you taking the time to talk with us, especially with your busy schedule.

Thanks for asking!

Could you please tell us about yourself: age, hobbies outside gaming, so on?


I'm 44. I live in Seattle. Besides gaming, I really enjoy writing fiction, reading, travel, music, and movies. I also am really into Legos! So, I'm a big geek.

How did you initially get into playing RPGs?

I heard about roleplaying games when I was about ten years old, in Sunday school of all places. Two brothers were talking about a map on graph paper, traps, monsters, and a magical crown. I had no idea what they were talking about, but I knew I wanted in.

What was the first gaming system you played in? Can you remember anything about your First Character?

D&D (the original, small booklets from 1974) was the first game I played. It wasn't until a year or two later that I actually owned any rpg products, the first being the just-released AD&D DMG. My first character was a fighter, and I don't remember much about him. Later, though, I remember having a
ranger named Thad the Brave.


Do you get to play in a campaign, how often do you play? When you do, what system do you normally play?

Until just a couple of weeks ago, I was in a playtest for the new, upcoming edition of D&D. Before that, I was running a variation on 3rd edition with a lot of house rules (most of which appear in the books The Book of Experimental Might I and II) for a few years. 

What is your favourite character you have played, could you tell us something about them?


That would probably be Malhavoc, a D&D wizard/cleric that I played long, long ago. He was an evil character that redeemed himself in the end.

Mostly, though, I don't play much. I run games instead. I'd say I'm the GM about 98% of the time when I play an rpg.

Do you have any funny gaming moments?

Sure. Thousands. I think everyone does. One time, a paladin vain about his appearance was on a quest to bring a villain named Helmut Itlestein to justice. He followed him into this otherworldly realm where an evil demigod lived. The demigod told the paladin that the man was dead. The paladin demanded proof to take back with him. So the demigod burned the words "Helmut Itlestein is dead" onto the paladin's beautiful face.

I can be a mean DM.

Do you have any gaming superstitions?

Not really. I'm not touchy or particular about dice or sheets or anything.

                                 

Considering all of the items you’ve published throughout the years, what is the one thing you’re most proud of?

That's really hard. I suppose it might be the campaign setting, Ptolus, just because it came out so wonderfully. It's beautiful, it's a feat of game design and editing (it takes a lot of broad steps forward in how a product can be presented), and I'm still quite in love with the content.

That said, D&D 3rd Edition made hundreds of thousands of people really happy for a lot of years, so I'm proud of that too.

What's a typical day in the life of Monte in terms of preparing your own role playing campaign

I usually make a lot of chicken scratch notes that would make sense to no one but me. For NPCs, I'll often just prepare the most important stats, or just take something out of a published source and change what I need to (sometimes on the fly). Basically, I often prepare the big stuff, and sometimes the cool descriptions of things (I'm a very visual person), and then pull together the details on the fly.

I try to make that kind of "on the fly" GMing as easy as possible, though, so I keep things like lists of cool names, books with cool art, and products with stat blocks, cool spells, monsters, and whatnot close at hand.

What's the secret to being a good GM outside of following the official materials?

The number one key is making sure everyone's having fun. Sounds oversimplified, but if you do that, you'll run a good game. Fun trumps rules, story, and anything else. And remember, "everyone" includes you, too.

What do you think of the changes the way the RPG industry is currently changing, and heading towards more digital products?

I think we going to see interesting melding of tabletop and digital over the next few years. But tabletop will always have value for its social components.

What’s next for you?

I also am writing a lot of fiction. You'll see some of my short fiction popping up in various places this year.

Do you have any other parting words for all of the gamers out there?

Worry less about what other people are doing in their games, and focus more on having fun in your own. Edition wars are so tired, and have done terrible damage to the game and the audience. If you love your Honda, but someone else drives a Ford, it doesn't affect how you drive. It's a game no one is going to win, no matter how pithy your criticism of someone else's system might be. We're all gamers, and we all love games.

COMING SOON

Fumbl Tv intro video finally started

Its been a while but I have finally gotten a start on the videos again and also have a co host more to come soon please leave any comments on the intro.

Interview with the Chatty DM from Critical Hits

First off, let me thank you for taking the time to be interviewed for Fumbl. I truly appreciate you taking the time to talk with us, especially with your busy schedule. And Congratulations on your second
year at Critical Hits!

Could you please tell us about yourself: what you do, age, hobbies
Outside gaming, so on?I'm a 39 y.o. French Canadian Montrealer I'm a self-employed consultant in the field of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Quality Assurance. I'm a voracious reader (Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Young Adult and graphic novels of all kinds). I love movies, biking and eating in good restaurants. 

How did you initially get into playing RPGs?
One day when I was 9 or 10, a friend showed me this game he had played at his cousins over the weekend. He then made up a game based on his experience. He'd took 2 sheets of paper, gave one to me and a d6. He told me: Write the name of your adventurer on that paper and write "Sword" and "Shield". He drew a corridor on the second sheet, then a room and drew a monster in it (he was quite the artist) and said: Okay, there's a monster here, he says you can't pass, what do you do? And thus I started playing RPGs. For the record, our rules were awesome: Whenever we fought a monster, we rolled the d6. On a 1 the character died on a 6, the monster died. We roleplayed all results in between.

What was the first gaming system you played in? Can you remember anything about your First Character?
Oh yes, we were playing a bastardized version of AD&D 1e (didn't we all?) and I was playing a Gnome Illusionist! Because illusionist spells rocked in my mind. I eventually changed my mind. :)

Do you get to play in a campaign, how often do you play? When you do,what system do you normally play?

I have not played in a campaign for a long time. I've been a GM for more than 95% of my games of the last 3 decades. The last 3 campaings I played were D&D 3.5, Star Wars Saga Edition and d20 WoD/Modern

What is your favourite character you have played, could you tell us something about them?

My absolute favourite characters I've played were, predictably, NPCs. One was a Halfling priest of the god of food. He was huge, always happy and used a half-eaten turkey leg for a holy symbol. Getting healed by him always left you with grease stains on your tunic.

Do you have any funny gaming moments?
A ton, after 30 years you collect them. One of my fondest memories was this story.

AD&D's Queen of the Demonweb Pits, the characters enter a room with this huge mirror in the back that just happens to be a very powerful magnet. As the cleric in full late enters, he gets pulled into the room and crashes into the magnet while dozens of gnolls come out from each side of it. The party's Magic User, seeing so many Gnolls filling the room retreats and casts "Wall of Iron". When he said that, I paused for a few seconds, looked at the Magic user, and said: "As the wall materializes in the room, cutting off the gnolls from reaching you, you notice it start wobbling. Before you can do anything, the wall flies through the room, knocks down several gnolls and CRUSHES the poor cleric stuck on the MAGNET! I still laugh when I think about that story... I was 15. 

Do you have any gaming superstitions?
Not much... I do kinda like to believe that dice can "run out of juice" but I don't have a lot of gaming superstitions. I do like to arrange my dice by size though. But that's not crazy right?

Considering all of the items you’ve published throughout the years, what is the one thing you’re most proud of?

That's a trick questions for me since I barely started. I'd say two of them: My "When Madness Seeps Through" adventur

e that I wrote for the Goodman Games anthology "From Here to There". That was my first official gaming publication and I managed to complete it while in in the grip of a severe depression. I channeled my energies to completing the project and it probably helped me recover. The second one was my 1st Dungeon/Dragon magazine articles about level 0 characters for D&D 4e. I'm happy that WotC let me express my crazy ideas for the rules I made and the adventure I wanted to write. They left me a lot of creative liberty and I'm extremely grateful for that.

What's a typical day in the life of a Chatty DM in terms of preparing your own role playing campaign?
In the last two years I've moved campaign preparation to the gaming table. I will make "world making" sessions with the players by asking them questions and using their answers to generate allies, ennemies, places and situations. I then build the first scenes of the campaign with these elements and build the campaign from there. It saves me a BUNCH of time and the scenes are always engaging to the players

What's the secret to being a good GM outside of following the official DMG's?
The one secret I can share is this: You aren't as bad as you think you are, you aren't as good as you think you are. People show up week after week to play with YOU as the GM, it means a lot. Empower yourself with that. Yet, don't become complacent and overconfident of your GMing style. Always be ready to become a better GM by listening to and observing your players. Read GMing blogs and forums. Talk to others and try to make the next session a little bit more awesome by trying something you've never tried. Try making funny voices, try a non-linear game, ask your players to create the next scene... go wild. The GMing experience is limitless in it's application, spend your life perfecting this noble art.

What do you think of the changes the way the RPG industry is currently
changing, and heading towards more digital products?

I've started running whole session with nothing but index cards, pencils, dice and my iPad. I'm ALL for RPGs making it to the digital age. Books are absolutely great for references (Adventure design)

What’s next for you?
I've been hired to be the Development Assistant for the next Marvel RPG event book: Civil War. I can't wait to tackle that one.

 

 

Interview with Filamena Young

First off, let me thank you for taking the time to be interviewed for Fumbl. I truly appreciate you taking the time to talk with us, especially with your busy schedule. 

No problem at all. Without dialogue and contact to the outside world, game designers can turn into very grumpy cave dwellers very quickly.

Could you please tell us about yourself: age, hobbies outside gaming, so on? 

Age? Ouch. Well, I’m just over 30. Steven King says you can’t accomplish anything serious as a writer before that, so I’ll take it as a good thing. My hobbies include chasing my two kids around, erm, between that and writing, I have no time for much of anything else. I like the occasional video games. Minecraft and the Sims. That sort of thing.

Who have you worked for, what games have you worked on?

So I worked on supplements for Vampire, Werewolf, Hunter and Mage for the New World of Darkness Line for White Wolf. I did a little bit of work on Blood in Feraldyn for Green Ronin. I worked on the High School Yearbook for Margret Weis’s Smallville, and a lot of small stuff here and there, plus the three games my company has put out in the last few years.

How did you initially get into playing RPGs? 

About a hundred years ago, when I was young, my parents got me an NES and the first Final Fantasy game. I was hooked, my friend and I spent hours playing it to completion with a Nintendo Power as our guide. Later, my dad gave me a friends old (incomplete) box set of AD&D. It didn’t have all the dice. That didn’t stop me. I GMed for some friends and it was love at first roll. Soon after, I was in highschool playing games probably more than I spent doing school work. (Whoops. Don’t do that, kids in school.)

What was the first gaming system you played in? Can you remember

anything about your First Character? 

As a player, I started with AD&D. I played a pacifistic priestess of a fertility goddess. You can imagine, AD&D was not kind to the roleplaying leaning-type, but my group loved it, and we adapted things to fit that style quickly. It got very political and social very quickly.

Do you get to play in a campaign, how often do you play? When you do, what system do you normally play?

 I haven’t played a real campaign since the Carter Administration. The closest I get are some longer running World of Darkness chat-style games. It’s a very strange animal and I don’t have much time for even that these days. There’s just too many games to try and too many games I want to make. I miss the five-year long games of my youth, but I know I couldn’t go back even if I wanted to.

What is your favourite character you have played, could you tell us something about them?

 It would probably be easier for me to tell you which was my favorite child. When I first met my husband, I had a Requiem character. She was a horror writer, and didn’t have much patience for the sillier sort of vampire she met. It could get snarky, but ultimately, she ended her story heading off to seek vampire-nirvana. A lot of fun.

Do you have any funny gaming moments?  At least a year or two back, we played a semi regular Hunter game. My husband was running it, and all the players were ladies. We did a lot of clever things to handle monsters from a distance, none of us were front-line sort of killers. Ultimately, we decided that there was almost no monster that couldn’t be handled most easily than by hitting them with a truck. The mental hoops we jumped through to get all manner of evil monster into situations where we could hit them with a truck were hilarious. I highly recommend it to any monster-slayer out there. It’s my weapon of choice now.

Do you have any gaming superstitions? (personally I wont use a Dice in a game until its rolled 1000 times!) 

I don’t think so. I do pay attention to a sort of, mmm… Feng Shui at the gaming table. Sometimes if players are sitting in the wrong place, you know, it’s just not going to flow as well. But that might be practical too. Put the mousey, quieter players nearer to the GM, the loud attention cravers further. That sort of thing.

How did you get started with Flatpack? Where did your inspiration come from?

I wanted a game I’d feel happy about my daughters playing when they’re old enough. I also looked at the sorts of things I wanted to do in a game, and rather than wait for someone else to do it, I did it myself.

Why should we play it? Does it bring anything new to our gaming?

I wanted to focus on non-violent conflict resolution, community building, and borrow back aspects from video games I thought were cool. My character advancement system, for example, is drawn from video game Achievements. You do X, your character is now a little bit better at Y. People seem to be really digging that.

Considering all of the items you’ve published throughout the years, what is the one thing you’re most proud of? 

Aww, that’s not fair. I really really enjoyed writing fiction for Amaranthine, our second game, but there’s something about doing all of the development and writing for Flatpack that’s very exciting.

What's a typical day in the life of Filamena in terms of preparing her own role playing campaign? 

Prepare? I’ve heard of it. I don’t know that I’ve ever actually done it. I’ll sometimes write down some clues or plot hooks and NPC notes on index cards, but by and large, I’m a by-the-seat-of-my-skirt sort.

What's the secret to being a good writer?

Sit down and do it. You can always fix it later. Talking about the processes, reading about it, that’s all cool, but a lot of people let that get in the way. Theory is only good if you apply it to practice. I’d rather be polished through practice than study. JD Salinger types only confuse me.

What do you think of the changes the way the RPG industry is currently changing, and heading towards more digital products?

Yay! More games is better than fewer. More games that break the same molds over and over. That’s the way to go.

What kind of new goodies are coming out from Machine Age Productions?

Aside from the million books I’ll be doing for Flatpack to go along with the Kickstarter, (three, at this point) We’re doing series three of Guestbook pretty much as we speak. Next up, and hopefully for Gencon of this year, David’s designing what he calls a ‘progressive post-fantasy’ game. I’m not sure how he’s going to unpack that statement yet, but he came up with calling Flatpack an ‘Optimistic Apocalyptic’ game, so I’m ready for the fun. I believe the scientific method will be a big part of the system. Also, archeology. Really. It’s gonna be cool.

What’s next for you?

Rumor has it I’ll be working on something that Margret Weis is rolling out now. (Its okay to be a little jealous.) I’m also likely going to be doing a game hack for Evil Hat’s Don’t Rest Your Head book of hacks. After that, it’ll be rushing to complete stuff for Gencon, and having a third kid in May. (Woo!) So basically, I have to type in my sleep to get it all done. But it’ll be worth it.

Do you have any other parting words for all of the gamers out there?

Yeah. We can make gaming better, safer, and bigger with room for all sorts of games and players. We can be welcoming and increase our numbers and make sure the industry thrives. There’s room for everyone, if we just make room. 

More to come!

Ok so everybody knows I have not gone away. In fact I have been busier than ever. Its been a hectic Holiday period but I have some great content coming up. we have the long awaited interview with Jess Hartley of White Wolf  fame. Another with Filamena young the Creator of Flatpack (more on this soon)  another with the grande master of D&D Monte Cook! and thats not all. I will also be conducting a video interview with Kevin Siembieda and will also be starting the video cast Fumbl TV! If anyone wants me to cover anything specific or if there's any companies out there that want me to post their latest news please let me know.