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More questions: What has your favourite campaign been to run and play in to date?Favorite one I've run: A tie between one I ran for a bunch of friends back in college; they all played Shoanti tribe members defending their homeland from the advance of a nation of Lawful Neutral gun-wielding civilized expansionists, and Savage Tide.
Favorite one I've played in: A tie between Jason Nelson's game where I played Shensen (see our "NPC Guide" for her stats) and Erik Mona's Age of Worms campaign.
Cool! As it happens I have your NPC Guide and have seen Shensen's stats, they are damn fine. What was Jason's game about (if there was indeed an overarching theme to the campaign)?
Creative Director
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What are your thoughts on gay zombie porn?
What are your thoughts on The Human Centipede?
Even zombies need lovin!
As for "The Human Centipede," it's actually one of my favorite movies of the year. It's definitely not for everyone, but it's a really well-made movie that goes places NO movie has gone before. And the most awesome part? Those who only read about it and don't see the movie will invariably have MORE HORRIFIC IMAGES in their mind than those who DO see the movie.
I'm honestly looking forward to the sequel.
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Creative Director
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Cool! As it happens I have your NPC Guide and have seen Shensen's stats, they are damn fine. What was Jason's game about (if there was indeed an overarching theme to the campaign)?
It was a pretty sandbox campaign. He has a HUGE collection of modules and adventures, and he more or less let us decide where we went. Adventures we played included but were not limited to:
Against the Cult of the Reptile God
Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil
Palace of the Silver Princess
Gates of Firestorm Peak
City of the Spider Queen
Some old Judges' Guild adventure I don't know the name of
All of which he made SIGNIFICANT changes to.
And in between all of that, there was a lot of other character-driven stuff; the overall theme was that the mind flayers were working with agents of Kostchtchie or something like that to plunge the world into a sunless ice age, but I had to drop out of the campaign before we got to the end, alas.
Most of the "anti-Cheliax" stuff in Shensen's writeup in the NPC guide was, in Jason's game anti-Thay stuff. She'd actually managed to gain control of a key Thayan enclave in the middle of Thay by seducing and marrying a Red Wizard who she proceeded to convert from Lawful Evil to Chaotic Good and was going to use that as a starting point to spread rebellion throughout Thay, but another PC went BERSERK and burned the enclave down and forced the rest of the party into hiding, which kinda sucked.
FAWLTYOH!
Never. The bestiaries are plenty long as they are!
~laughter~ Sorry Moorluck. It appears that we will be left out in the cold.
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Creative Director
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What did you enjoy the most about the current version of Dungeons & Dragons when you played or, better yet, DM'd it?
I have not GM'd a 4th edition D&D game yet. I've only tried the game once as a player, and I don't recall anything from that session that was all that enjoyable. It's really not the game for me.
Favorite one I've played in: A tie between Jason Nelson's game where I played Shensen (see our "NPC Guide" for her stats) and Erik Mona's Age of Worms campaign.
So... Why do you like to play the little girl?
Favorite one I've played in: A tie between Jason Nelson's game where I played Shensen (see our "NPC Guide" for her stats) and Erik Mona's Age of Worms campaign.So... Why do you like to play the little girl?
Yeah! I'm older than your grandma! Sheesh!
You want us to take care of this troublemaker, boss?
Yeah! I'm older than your grandma! Sheesh!Favorite one I've played in: A tie between Jason Nelson's game where I played Shensen (see our "NPC Guide" for her stats) and Erik Mona's Age of Worms campaign.So... Why do you like to play the little girl?
You clearly haven't met my grandmother...
Golarion or Forgotten Realms?
When does the next RPG Superstar start?
Will there be variant classes for the monk? It turns out I actually can't build a monk with max ranks in Profession (herbalist) and Knowledge (local) who solves murders with the current rules; I have to use fighter for the chainmail and longsword proficiencies.
Do you know of the monk I'm trying to build? It's harder to convey now that Gather Information has been folded into things.
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Creative Director
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I am listening to China Mieville (sp?) on the radio right now, have you ever had an opportunity to meet him from the Dragon mag article or the stuff he wrote for River Kingdoms?
Nope. I worked on Dungeon back in the day and wasn't involved in that project. And James Sutter was pretty much the contact guy for River Kingdoms. I haven't Met China yet, but hopefully I will some day!
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Creative Director
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Fun one to play also, although apparently our GM deleted the controversial scene where a goblin eats some guy’s face. My character is a female elf called Elisile, do you think that is a good name?What is your favourite adventure of the ones you have written?Burnt Offerings.
Sure! Sounds great!
Of course, I game with a guy who comes up with names like "Davey Cricket" for a thri-kreen ranger, or "Kikoman" for a samurai... so I'm a little bit starved for PCs with serious names.
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As for "The Human Centipede," it's actually one of my favorite movies of the year. It's definitely not for everyone, but it's a really well-made movie that goes places NO movie has gone before. And the most awesome part? Those who only read about it and don't see the movie will invariably have MORE HORRIFIC IMAGES in their mind than those who DO see the movie.
No doubt.
It sounds interesting, I'm morbidly curious, but ... yuck.
How many people does he join together in the sequel?
Do you fear that with a sequel it will end up becoming another extended franchise like Saw?
Would that be a bad thing?
What material could the sequel explore that the original does not, apart from just adding more people?
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Creative Director
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When you originally came up with the shoanti, were they based on a real-world human culture?
The original Shoanti lived in the arctic region, in a place called (creatively enough) the Icelands—an IMMENSE glaciar wedged in between inhospitable mountains. The Shoanti had large ice ships with bone/wood runners that they sailed around on the ice, but basically had a tribal society that was more or less based on a mix of Native Americans, Picts, Inuits, and a little dash of Scottish Highlander. Apart from living in the ice, they were really rather similar to what ended up living in Varisia, though. The names of the tribes all stayed the same (although I had a few more in my campaign than what made the transition to Golarion), and some of their weapons came with them, such as the klar.
You are standing in a field. From all sides, house cats are approaching you. You will die in this encounter, and it will be the cats that kill you. How many cats will you kill before going down?
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Creative Director
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When does the next RPG Superstar start?
Will there be variant classes for the monk? It turns out I actually can't build a monk with max ranks in Profession (herbalist) and Knowledge (local) who solves murders with the current rules; I have to use fighter for the chainmail and longsword proficiencies.
Do you know of the monk I'm trying to build? It's harder to convey now that Gather Information has been folded into things.
RPG Superstar generally start around the holiday season. So the next one will probably start around December—January.
If you're trying to build a "Brother Cadfael" type monk, or a monk from "Name of the Rose," you probably shouldn't build that monk using the monk class. You should build the character as a rogue, as weird as that might seem. There's nothing preventing you from building a super religious rogue, after all.
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Creative Director
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Outside of D&D (3.x and older) and, later, Pathfinder, what other rpgs did/do enjoy? GURPS? HERO? BRP?
BRP, in its incarnation as Call of Cthulhu, regularly jockeys with Pathfinder (and before, with 3.5) as my favorite RPG system. I really REALLY love CoC's simplicity and elegance. It's not that great for big tactical battles, but those aren't the point of CoC so it's all good.
I'm also a fan of Gamma World, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what WotC's new incarnation plays like.
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Creative Director
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No doubt.
It sounds interesting, I'm morbidly curious, but ... yuck.
How many people does he join together in the sequel?
Do you fear that with a sequel it will end up becoming another extended franchise like Saw?
Would that be a bad thing?
What material could the sequel explore that the original does not, apart from just adding more people?
The sequel, supposedly, has a LOT more even more extreme elements. The director's said that he maid the first movie as a way to introduce themes and topics to get audiences ready for the REAL horror show he has planned for the sequel. He's even talked a bit about it being a trilogy. I'm not too worried that it'll end up a franchise—it's too counter-culture and independent, and it's still pretty tightly controlled by the director and not the studio.
The movie itself is in a sub-genre of horror called "Body Horror" that includes movies where the human body is mutated or transformed, often in gross and surgical ways. Many of David Cronenberg's earlier movies ("The Fly," "Videodrome," "Scanners") were in this genre. The genre's been around as long as movies have been; "Frankenstein" is in this category, for example. In a way, "Alien" and John Carpenter's "The Thing" are in this same category, with the mixture of metal and flesh in the alien's design and the contagious transformations in The Thing. I could see a sequel to Human Centipede going beyond where it went in the first, with a mad scientist creating all sorts of crazy chimeric human monsters stitched together in who knows what shape and form?
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Creative Director
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What did you take from your second viewing of Inception that enhanced your enjoyment of the movie? (wondering if I should see it a second time at the cinema or wait for dvd)
The thing that I really REALLY enjoyed on my second viewing was realizing how in control of the story Christopher Nolan was, and how he put a LOT of hints and tidbits in there that built toward supporting one specific interpretation without making it the only possible solution.
You are standing in a field. From all sides, house cats are approaching you. You will die in this encounter, and it will be the cats that kill you. How many cats will you kill before going down?Zero.
If I know I'm gonna die, I'm cool with all of the cats surviving.
same question only with 2nd graders, non-lethal damage is legal