Your name: Maja (my aliases shall remain unstated)
Location: Norway, just above the bulky part, on the shoreline there somewhere
Age: 28
Sex: Female

Family: I have two parents who are divorced and who have new (pretty great) partners, I have a sister five years younger than me who's got a boyfriend a year older than me, and I have a boyfriend that I've been with for almost eleven years.

Religion: A zen monk walks in to a McDonalds. The guy at the counter says: "What can I get you?" The monk replies: "Make me one with everything."

Which of your accomplishments are you the most happy with? Seeing
as I was a very quiet kid I could have gone the way of the Unabomber.
Instead I became more socially adept. I learned to voice my opinions
and reflect on social behaviour. I'm still socially awkward and at times
very introvert, but at least I'm aware that this is me.

What is your favorite time of year, and why? Late summer/early
autumn, when it's just hot enough to not have to wear heavy clothes and
cold enough to wear long trousers and boots.

What is your favorite word? Wildebeest. I have a hard time explaining why.

What was your favorite toy as a child? A stuffed doll called Ole (pronounced "Ooh-lay"; it's Norwegian).

What makes you cry? " The Lion King". Every time.

Do you have a useless talent that no one else that you know can do? This disqualifies as an answer in that a few people actually DO know of my talent, but I can have a look at a person and instantly tell what animal he or she corresponds to. Not like their favourite animal, but their "totem" or something. At first I thought I was just nuts, but then I mentioned it to some of my friends, who told me they thought it was fascinating and that they actually agreed with me in nine out of ten cases.

What did you want to be when you grew up? A writer. Hands down. I love to write.

What is one thing that you regret that you would go back and change if you could? I chose this question because I may have an unusual answer. There are plenty of things I regret, but I can't say I'd like to change any of them. Everything that's happened to me has contributed to make me into who I am today. I can't change that and I wouldn't even if given the chance. I don't think "everything happens for a reason", but I think that if I went back and changed something, I might ruin the person that I became because of that thing; namely the person I am today that wants to change that particular thing. Ergo I think that such changes in the end are useless or, at the very least, counterproductive.

What is the one thing you want to do before you die? See, there are many things. There can't be only one thing. The only "One Thing, capital O, capital T" that I needed to do before I died was to see Tom Waits live. Which I did this summer, in Paris. Nothing can quite live up to that.

Tell us about your favorite RPG character that you've ever played.
For about a year and a half I played a character in Star Wars d20
(2nd ed I think) in a campaign that later became converted into the
new Saga system. Though I hated both systems I loved the
character.

We played in the time of the three earliest movies, but in the
expanded universe, so forceusers could exist without Darth Vader
automatically and immediately popping by to explode
their heads.

My character was a cold-blooded killer who had tortured countless of Bothans during medical experiments on a moon base near Bothawui, he was deadly with a blaster pistol and almost never got hit. What made him so extremely interesting to play, though, wasn't the fact that he had pretty good stats or that he was an evil sonuva. No, it was the fact that he (the character) realized he could've been someone else entirely - that he could've been a good guy but that he had consequently made the wrong choices in life and thus had ended up on the wrong side of everything. Then he fell in love with the ship's pilot, and when she ended up falling to the Dark Side, he realized he had to be the one to bring her back into the light. Which he did, labouriously, while at the same time changing himself into a better (though no less sarcastic and unattractive) person. It was amazing, and couldn't have been done without my wonderful co-player (who played the pilot girl). That campaign is now all but ended, and I'll truly miss playing him. His name was Dr. Rebo Joon.

What are your favorite RPGs? D&D 3.5: Forgotten Realms is the one game/setting in which I have had the most successful campaigns. Even so, Unknown Armies, together with Fading Suns, are hands down the best games that I've ever played. I also like the Ravenloft setting and the Unisystem, and Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu and Stormbringer. Mind, the campaigns I participate in are ALWAYS heavy role-play sprinkled occasionally with some enjoyable and meaningful combat essential to the plot(s).

What was your first RPG session like? I played Vampire: The Masquerade in a friend's dingy apartment. I had no real concept of the game and spent less time trying to play the game and more time trying to understand why there were mushrooms growing under the dirty socks piled onto a frying pan that was partially hidden under my friend's bed. Sadly.

What was your WORST RPG session like? One out of two: The session I played Kult when the GM wouldn't give me any attention whatsoever despite that I'd previously written a three-page long background story for her, or the session when I GM'ed D&D and one of my players kept trying to munchkin all he could and didn't care about ROLE-playing, and two of my other players fell asleep because they "didn't like the d20 system anyway".

Who is your all-time favorite person to game with? My entire D&D Forgotten Realms group and the friend who played the pilot in our Star Wars campaign (see above).

Do you have anything gaming-related to plug? At the bottom of this journal entry are ten questions about RPGs. I'd like them answered by as many as possible, since it's for my master's thesis. smallchange.deviantart.com/journal/20135247