3. I see from your profile that you have been a solid user on SO about 2-3 years ago. Was that your discovery of SE? Did you join for work related reasons?
Yes, I found Stack Overflow when I was looking for answers to a work-related programming problem I had, and after a bit of lurking, I decided to participate.
4. Again from your profile, I see that soon afterwards, you joined RPG.SE and SFF.SE. And I believe you mention a few RPG with friends. Furthermore, RPG.SE is one of your highest reputation on the network. Are you still playing?What is your favourite ruleset?
I still play RPGs occasionally, though my last proper session was a year or more ago. Since my children were born, I just don't have the time for it I once did. I used to play during my lunch break, since it wasn't too hard for my fellow players to meet me, but since I changed employers last year, it has been too difficult to get together.
I'd just found Area 51, and was browsing around, when I noticed Worldbuilding. Since I've been making up my own worlds just for the fun of it since I was 7 or so, and then for my RPG game worlds, I had a look, and joined in at the Definition stage. I did a bit of vote-juggling to help the site over the line into commitment, and the rest is history.
//I don't know about missing players, but I have 2, and used to have 3 many years ago, and things work a little better with 3, so it's a possibility. My campaign is the one I detailed in worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/8432/75
I don't have anything published, though I've wanted to publish something for a while now. I'm also working on a novel based around my game universe, which is possibly a better candidate for publication, though the market for fiction is more difficult to enter than the market for RPGs, I suppose.
// I'll be checking that later, but if you do get around to run some email-based game, and feel that the more the merrier, I'd be generally interested. I miss playing. But kids essentially prevent me from playing at all...
7. There are some publications dedicated for RPG. That might be an opportunity to get a quest in one of your world published. Are you working on a specific world at the moment? Could you describe it?
I'm not so much working on a world as an entire galaxy. I started this campaign out in a world called Cyradia, where a magical war had left the world (or at least a whole continent) in a state similar to The Magic Goes Away by Larry Niven.
//Still going...
My players were piloting mecha - called Panzers, since their nation had a Germanic flavour - at the time, and then branched out into shipping with their prize money from capturing enemy panzers. They went exploring and found all sorts of interesting placed on their own world before accidentally discovering a hidden interplanetary tunnel network high in the air. From there, they developed aircraft and went exploring the galaxy - or at least the oxygen-compatible worlds in it.
Obviously, I had to develop all these other nations and worlds.
//done. I have to get off the train next stop, but we can continue when I get to work, which should take 10 minutes.
8. That sounds like a large amount of work to be done. It hasn't much transpired so far, but from your own description, and confirmed by your posts, you have a certain affinity with biology related subjects. Is that correct?
It has taken quite a while - over ten years so far.
As for biology... I have a degree in human physiology and pharmacology, and also studied zoology. However, when I graduated, there was an unemployment problem, and I couldn't find work in that area. However, a Graduate Diploma in Computer Science that I undertook to satisfy a purely personal interest in modern programming languages led to employment.
You have to go where the work is, but my training in the life sciences has led to an interest in designing realistic creatures for my worlds.
For my Gyre campaign - that was the name my players gave the air-filled interplanetary tunnel network - I designed a whole lot of worlds, some inhabited by creatures derived from terran biology (from where Cyradians ultimately came), but also some completely alien biomes with their own sentient creatures.
The species I'm most proud of, that call themselves the Tourists, comes from a trinary solar system. Their home world orbits a K5V star at 0.65 to 0.85 AU. This system orbits a F6IV star at 4.25 AU. This system captured a B5V star relatively recently, orbiting that at around 100AU. The world has a 32 degree axial tilt, is ~12500km in diameter, and 1 degree of polar precession every 27 years. Obviously, all this leads to a very unpredictable and highly variable climate.
The Tourists incorporate a lot of metals in their bodies, and can precipitate metal in their bones and dermal armour. They have a large solid thorax that houses their lungs, with their brain in an ever-expanding metal shell behind that.
Think of them as looking a little like a fist on two legs, with two arms coming from the sides of the fist, plus a head that looks a little like that of the Queen Alien from the movie Aliens on a long neck, with two smaller arms coming from the neck just behind the head, and a long tail.
All the limbs (including the tongue) end in four digits tipped with self-sharpening tool-steel claws. They have metal-cored nerves that conduct at light-speed, and mechanical neural junctions, making them inhumanly quick.
Because of their highly unpredictable environment, they have a need for change. In predictable environments, like cities, they tend to get stressed-out from the monotony, and when that happens, they can go psychotic. To prevent this, they have a very active real-estate market, plus an occupation that I call the Stealth Decorator - someone who is paid to sneak into homes and rearrange them at irregular intervals.
The term Tourists comes about because of their need to visit new places.
If they sound like tough critters, yes they are, but their natural enemies are far larger critters about as dangerous to them as African buffalo, hippos or lions and tigers are to us.
// unfortunately, it's now past 00:30 for me, and I should wake up at around 6:00... so what I would suggest would be to write here the next questions, and you take your time answering them...
// with the numbering, you can make clear to which you answer
They were intended as a test for the human characters - if they could see past these terrifying-looking critters appearance and unintelligibility when they crashed their gyre-craft in a desert on Cyradia after having been shot down by yet another totally alien species.
10. I suppose that my favourite - and most upvoted - question is, worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/13094/75, even though I still haven't received an answer that is completely worthy of being accepted. However, both celtschk and HDE 226868 provided very interesting answers.
10. However I can't decide between worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/510/75 and worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/11652/75. The last was an easy one - I'd already done something very similar with sentient lions for my Cyradia RPG campaign, though my Ghost Lions were a little more open to communication with humans than Serban Tanasa's Ligers.
11. It's always good to be able to ramble on about my worlds and their creatures. Since my life is so busy, I don't get much chance to do that, except on WB.SE these days.
12. Thank you for considering me interesting enough to interview.
//I'll post a picture in a little while - probably one of the maps I did for Cyradia - but I have to convert it from .CDR to something more internet-friendly.
itw monty wild
itw monty wild