Ask Me Anything: Windyridge

What's with all the palm trees?

What's your gaming history like? As in:

What got you started your RPG hobby?

When did you start & with what system?

What's your favorite system that you've played/read through?

What your fist/favorite RPG character you've played/created? (On GP or not)

Sail or motor? Ocean, lake, or river? Yacht club, or marina? Prior service?

Do any of your family members also game, or have any of them played TTRPGs in the past?

@Adam I got the idea from you! I loved the idea of using emojis in game titles so threw in a bunch because I like silly bling. I like warm weather and palm trees so that emoji seemed like an appropriate choice.

As to gaming history, It's really short! I started playing board games with a friend and stumbled upon Board Game Geek back in 2018. One day I saw that they were running a PBP New Player Initiative. It sounded interesting but intimidating as I am not a writer and wasn't much of a fantasy fan at the time either. The perfect game showed up consisting of just me and the GM so if I made a fool of myself there would only be one other person to see it. The game, Cthulhu Confidential, turned out to be great fun and I signed up for a regular PBP game there after that ended. Then somehow I discovered GP and the rest is history.

My favorite system would be impossible to pick but I like Savage Worlds for the enormous amount of lore and content available. I enjoy the less popular or quirky games and I've really migrated toward rules-light RP-heavy systems.

For characters, I really enjoyed the mouse I played in my second PBP game on BGG but I also had a blast playing drunk Patty in Nezzeraj's Halloween game and Tara in Harrigan's zombie game. Andy in KCC's Tales from the Loop and subsequent Flood game was a blast.

Both but currently, we only have motor-powered or human-powered vessels. My favorite is and always will be sailing. I used to race with my father every week way back when I lived in Ireland and I enjoyed that immensely. We kayak in lakes and rivers and I bought a kayak sail to try which I have yet to use.

My husband and I played in a Pathfinder live game that a friend of mine's son ran a few years ago. He wasn't enamored with it but I enjoyed it as I had always wondered what that whole DND thing was about ever since college. He does enjoy board games though and I've explained PBP to him and my addiction. The area I live in is very rural and there are little to no opportunities to play live games.

One of my sons plays card games and the other doesn't play games at all.

You have listed "Indie, rules light systems" as your RPG interests, do you have any favourites? Is there something about any of those games that you'd like to see other systems incorporate? For example, Advantage/Disadvantage in D&D 5e is a rule that could very easily be used in another game. What are your thoughts?

I see all your favorite characters are the complete messes

What's your guilty pleasure movie of choice? Like B-movie guilty pleasure.

What's the weirdest character you have yet to play?

What have studied? What did you do before retirement?

It's hard to pick a favorite because there are so many of them and I am still going through my first Bundle of Holding that is chock full of the stuff. Ask me again in a year? I am happy to see that the TTRPG world is currently witnessing an explosion in popularity of these types of games with more of them being run here on GP.
Absolutely because for me the messed-up characters are the most entertaining to play. I generally lean toward broken or unsavory and villainous characters because I am such an angel myself and want to see how the other half lives. Now if you believe that I have a bridge for sale...

I know a spot that could use a bridge. I'll give you three euros

I went to Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and obtained a degree in Physiology with a minor in Zoology. I used my science degree for 6 years at my first real job out of college working for a cancer research startup firm. Some of the older members of this site may have heard of interferon which was hailed as a magic bullet cancer cure back then. This company wasn't using recombinant DNA technology which got all the press at the time but rather used blood cells to make interferon. It was a great work experience because it started in an oncologist's office and eventually scaled up to a pilot production plant.

More recently I worked for Chobani which at the time I joined the research and development team was very small and new. They totally disrupted the yogurt market and are still growing by leaps and bounds today with all kinds of line extensions. It's still in my somewhat biased opinion the best yogurt on the market today, and I ate more yogurt in the 7 years I worked there than any human should.

Guilty pleasure B movie of choice - I'd have to say Piranha. I laughed so hard at the carnage.

The weirdest character I have yet to play? That's a really difficult question since I haven't played it yet. But years ago I spent a few summers competing in an outdoor archery league shooting at fake targets in the woods. An odd character to play would be a blind archer with a crazy good sense of hearing that could land an arrow in the vocal cords of an enemy based on hearing the opponent speak.

1. Are you Irish? Are you secretly related to KCC?! I want to believe you are his mom posting secretly lol.

2. Are there any games you've read/played where you said "Nope, not for me!"?

3. You mentioned not being into fantasy originally, do you have a favorite genre? Have you warmed up more to fantasy now?

You're not old enough to be my mother. =]

What really happened that night with Andy and Em in KCC's Things From the Flood game?

What's the game you most want to try that you haven't yet been able to play?

Just how crazy do your sons think you are to have now picked up PbP RPGing as a hobby?

Cats or Dogs? Dogs or humans?

Of all the music I've exposed you to, what's your favorite? Least favorite? ;)

Lol! Not at all but my husband is. My father got transferred there for work when I was 10 years old so I grew up there and left to come back to the US after college. As for KCC, well that's a secret.
Probably GURPS. While I didn't hate reading it, I did not enjoy character creation.
I was and still am a big fan of historical fiction and some sci-fi. If you had told me three years ago that I might play a druid or leap from a tall building as a character in a TTRPG, I would have looked at you as if you were crazy. I have not only warmed up to the fantasy genre, I love it as far as gaming goes but I'm still not a big fan of reading it.

Huh -- I remember you looking forward to learning / playing it. It's definitely a certain style of (very 80s/90s) game. What put you off?

There are some exceptions =]
Only Em knows and she's not telling.
It was Mork Borg but now that I'm in a game I don't have anything particular in mind ... yet ... but give me a minute.
Nothing surprises them about me anymore. I think my older son was delighted and I discovered that a few of his friends are into gaming and TTRPG's as well. The younger son thought it was cool. What they say to each other about it when I'm not around though I have no idea. Mom's gone crazy! 😁
Dogs and dogs!
So many favorites! Eels, Pavement, Heatmiser, Guided By Voices, Gomez to name a few. Least favorite would be any less than stellar production and noisy stuff. Weezer etc.

True! But I was put off by PC Gen. Maybe one day I'll give it another shot.