Monday, August 9, 2004

Ben's Mini-Interview

The weekend proved pretty much as hectic as expected. We didn't make the party - didn't leave my parents' until gone ten-thirty, so there seemed little point, and we were knackered. Other than that, it has been a fun and fairly successful weekend. In between visiting my parents and Ingo visiting us, we managed to get a number of jobs done. The new bird bath probably being the nearest to exciting.

The first set of questions for the interview fad I mentioned have arrived. I was going to try and post them all together, but hopefully posting this one will inspire the others. Anyone wanting to join in can either send me five questions, or ask me to send them five. If you ask for five, you're supposed to post them publicly, agree to interview anyone who asks you, and impose the same conditions on them.

Ben's Questions, My Answers :

1: Why Glorantha?

RuneQuest was the second rpg I ever played. In 1984, we killed come Broo. Because they did bad things. I've been playing in Glorantha on and off ever since. I didn't really become hooked until I read about the God Learners, who are weird in a serious, scary kind of way. Hard to say what keeps me hooked. The humour which is all through the setting, but doesn't distract from it. The many levels you can approach Glorantha on. The fact that it is the only fantasy setting I've ever come across where the religion feels real. But mainly the fact that if some smartarse comes up and says "but it says in this out of print book that..." you can just reply "YGWV".

2: Elvis or The Beatles?

The Beatles, without a doubt, although neither are that high on my list of favourites.

3: Why do you still run and play games with students (not that we dont really appreciate it) despite the age difference?

Is there an age difference? I hadn't noticed. A number of reasons - if I don't game with students, I'm not sure who I would game with. A certain amount of bringing through the next generation of people interested in the same games I am. But primarily by default. I've been part of Watt Gamers for something like seven years now. Initially on the edge, as I was also part of GUGS at the time, but when gaming in Glasgow got too difficult, moving to Edinburgh was the obvious move.

4: If someone had told you that your life would be like this ten years ago, would you have been happy?

Ten years ago I was just playing with the idea of maybe doing something with computers as a career move, and was just coming to the end of a pretty unhappy relationship. If I'd known then that I'd have got a degree, made many friends, be happily married, the "owner" of two cats, and still roleplaying regularly, I'd probably have been pretty happy. I would have wanted to be richer, and I would have wanted children, but then I still would. A lot has changed over the last ten years, but I don't think my ambitions have changed much - I'm just a lot closer to acheiving them.

5: Where does the name buserian come from?

For several years I've signed up to pretty much everything with the username "albionsoft". I own the company and the domain, so it's pretty much guaranteed that no one else will want to use that name. So, this was the name that I used when I signed up at Goats, not expecting to post anything. But I do post there, and the name isn't really great as a username. When I was setting up Lokarnos I tried to come up with a "better" name. Lokarnos is the Dara Happan god of merchants (following on from Issaries (the Orlanthi merchant god) and Etyries (the Lunar one)). Which led me to the Dara Happan god of geeks - Buserian. He's the god of librarians, astronomers, bureaucracy, and taxonomies. If they had computers, he'd be the god who invented programming. Probably in Cobol. Somehow the name seemed appropriate. Now I use it anywhere I'm expecting to appear in public. There's at least one other person who uses it (Steve Martin) but normally Buserian is me.

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2 comments so far.

ben wrote :

ill take 5 back. thats only fair

12:16 am, 11/08/2004

Claire wrote :

Me as well.

11:04 am, 11/08/2004