Name: Jessica Pease
Location: Greater Boston area, Massachusetts
Age: 30
Sex: Female
Family: I have a husband with whom I game, and two children: a five-year-old son, and a 22-month-old daughter. Neither of the kids game, yet.
Pets: We have an orange cat named Omaha, who is notoriously bad-tempered.
Religion: I was raised a secular humanist.
Political party/affiliation: I'm registered with the Green/Rainbow party here in Massachusetts.

What is your favorite way to spend a weekend? Our weekends are always hectic, because we try to spend as much time as possible with our local family members (or go off to visit the not-so-local family). So I really appreciate it when we have a free day to spend hanging out. Harvard Square has something for everyone in the family, and we almost always run into friends there, so it's quite possible to spend the whole day going from bookstore to toy store to café to comic book store to lunch to the playground, etc. It's fun, but also relaxing, because there's no schedule and no pressure.

What was your first word? My first word was beer! I maintain that that says more about my parents and their friends than it does about me.

What was your favorite toy as a child? My Raggedy Ann doll. My mom made her, and she also made me an outfit that matched. Of course, going back and rereading the Raggedy Ann books with my kids, they're not quite as satisfying as they were when I was a child.

What did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to be the president. I was a really bossy kid.

Tell us about your favorite RPG character that you've ever
played. My favorite characters (I picked two, which is probably against
the rules) allowed me to try out moral systems that I would normally
eschew. Both characters were somewhat similar: they were both
extremely competant, and both were the ad hoc leaders of the group
when it came to combat situations. They were both characters that I
found really easy to get into, despite the vast difference between my own
views and theirs. They also both got me into frequent clashes with my
fellow player-characters, because of their extreme moral (or amoral)
stance.

The first was a character in an Ars Magica (4th ed.) game called 'The Aerie of the
Spirit's Breath'. Her name (the short version) was Cara Ayesha, and she was a Hoplite,
which is to say, she was an enforcer of the Code of Hermes (the rules by which
everyone was supposed to live). I played her as a very strict adherent to those rules,
who expected others to likewise follow them to the letter. One of her defining moments
for me was when she attacked an outsider mage, with whom the other members of the
group wanted to talk, because the Code's stance on outsider mages is “Join or Die”.

The second was a character in a Gurps (3rd ed.) game called 'Pantellos', which was a game about weird espionage (in the manner of Tim Powers' Declare). Amanda Grey was an assassin, and a former child soldier. She was a total realist, focused on money and survival, and she was willing to do almost anything to achieve her objective. A scene of hers that was particularly grueling (but also fascinating) to play, was when she tried to convince the rest of the group to torture the young son of an opponent to get that opponent to give up critical intelligence. She failed (fortunately).

What are your favorite RPGs? I tend to click more with gaming groups than with
gaming books. I guess I could say I like Nobilis, and Ars Magica, and Heroquest,
with the caveat that when I've played those games it's been with at least a few
tweaks to the system and major alterations (if not entire reworkings) of the setting.

What was your first RPG session like? My first RPG session was a game of
AD&D (2nd ed.). I was in high school, and a good friend of mine was the DM (we
played at his house). He and the group had been gaming together for a long time,
and I was both new to gaming, and a girl, so there was sort of a steep learning curve
for everyone. I remember he bought me my own set of dice and painted a miniature
of my character for Christmas.

What was your WORST RPG session like? The worst experience I've had was playing in a game of Vampire at a gaming store. I knew the storyteller, but everyone else were people who had answered the ad, and the group just didn't mesh well at all. It wasn't so much a problem with the game as it was a social problem; we just didn't get along as people, so it didn't make sense to try and game together.

Who is your all-time favorite person to game with? I think I'm obligated to say my husband. I really do love gaming with him, although, he's a fabulous GM, but a pretty lousy player. The people in the Boston area who I game with now (sometimes loosely referred to as 'the Ephemeral Circus') are all really great gamers and tremendous fun to play with.