What is the most frightening thing you've ever done? As municipal recreation director, I forced the parasitic suburb to build proper recreation centers. (Four of the activities were getting national coverage.) I never got to work in municipal recreation again, and indeed had to leave the country to feed my family. Blacklisting is no urban legend, and a professor of recreation administration verified it in my case.

Which of your accomplishments are you the most happy with? Getting peer-reviewed papers on RPG published.

What is your favorite word? Bill of Rights (which, of course, includes obligations). So, it's
three sylables and a couple of spaces - it is still one word!

How many languages do you speak? English; read French fairly well; decipher Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, rusty on Dutch.

What is your favorite time of year, and why? Spring; wildflowers are in bloom.

What is your most prized physical possession? My library.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? Younger, but only if I could keep my knowledge; I don't want to make those mistakes again when I could be making new ones.

What was your favorite toy as a child? I don't remember, probably something scientific like my dad's old microscope.

What makes you cry? Figuratively - my lacrymal glands don't work too well. Injustice ended (or at least abated) - from the Berlin Wall being torn down with sledge hammers and cold chisels to the Marseillaise scene in Casablanca; Music, particularly Mozart or Beethoven, but so does Danny Kaye's rendition of Malvina Reynold's "Turn Around" - and that before I even had a daughter; "Tom's" letter to his sister about the 1914 Christmas truce.

What is your favorite section of the newspaper? Comics - the only place The People rather than multinational corporations get support in the papers.

What are three things you can't live without? Love, beauty, and imagination.

If you could have one superpower, which power would you pick? The ability to read, write, speak, and understand every language - including abstract ones like music and math.

What did you want to be when you grew up? As a child? Archeologist (never did); museum modeler (did that).

What is your favorite mode of transportation? An Arthurs hybrid (plug-in electric car with an onboard generator for long trips, and will fit on a flat car for very long trips). It and the rail infrastructure don't exist yet, but should, although a few of the cars have been home-made, but not by me.

You've just purchased a small island off the coast of any continent of your choosing, and you are preparing to start your own country there. What does your flag look like? As part of designing a six semester-hour course, Introduction to Appropriate Technology (the human-scaled, nonpolluting, non-exploitative sfsystems of living), I toyed with a term project of "describe a country which uses AT exclusively, explain how it got that way". I tried and ended up with a 105,000 word novel which no publisher would even read, much less publish. Set in the Pacific south of Cook, its flag was light blue with a yellow sun with wavy rays. I will use Vita's.

For non-combat, it would be Sabra Wellspring, a halfling alchemist. Again, another system's scenario with Mythworld rules, the missing courier from Iron Crown's Middle Earth. The band headed to the waterfront dives to get information while Sabra was cleaning up the house the band had rented and setting out her shingle. Late that night, the rest of the band returned, having barely escaped a couple of brawls and with no information. Sabra had hired some neighborhood kids to help with the cleaning, who knew exactly where the courier was held, traded some medicine for some training, and established her reputation for quality products. All with no particular danger - at least until the rescue where she took out two of the guards, one with a captured crossbow she had never used before.

What are your favorite RPGs? Mythworld, because I designed it, so it would be my favorite. I started RPG with RuneQuest 2 (Mythworld was originally a proposal for RQ3, but too detailed for Greg Stafford's tastes). I also like Toon. I designed Nuclear Winter, a nuclear holocaust survival game, but the Cold War fell apart before I could market it.

What was your first RPG session like? It went rather well for all beginners (including the referee). It was RuneQuest 2, and played on a rather dead Saturday afternoon in the back room of my bookstore.

What was your worst RPG session like? A convention game of Teenagers from Outer Space. The problem was that one player disapproved of jokes which are the heart of the game and the rest couldn't think of any, leaving me like a stand-up comic working a totally potted audience.

Who is your all-time favorite person to game with? As players, there are too many to recount. There are two as referee: Randy Ray because he was always testing the use of Mythworld rules and other system's scenarios; Dan Richards because of his undeserved reputation as a "killer ref" - he never tried to wipe out the PCs, he merely played the NPCs as though they were his own PCs and they never rolled over and played dead, and rarely retreated.