Ask Me Anything: NABO

So... just how popular is baseball in Austria?

Not very... The closest team in our league is still 1 1/2 hours away and that's in a car on the highway. The teams are more concentrated in the north though. People here have heard of the sport but unless they're involved in it, they almost certainly will have zero idea how anything works.

Tell us about one (or more) of your own worldbuilding projects!

Also, what are some of your favorite podcasts?

Do you follow F1?

Oh wow, there's a lot of those I have going on at any given time. I'm currently working on a project for this minimalistic game jam which I set in an earth where nuclear war drove everyone off and everything but the most highly elevated areas are now covered in water. Still have to come up with a good reason for that because even if all the ice on the polar caps melt, the majority of land would still be well above the waterline. The player plays a human returning attempting to build a habitat. I think the trick is small-scale world building that comes up which tells you about the world at large. Rarely does anyone enjoy sitting through lore dumps, in books, games, or anywhere else.

There's also a project that I'm chipping away at and won't be done for a long time, my attempt at finally making a fantasy setting where I let magic be magic and not explain everything into minute details (I tend to do that). It has a king who won't die, a sort of ever-raging storm people just have to live with, and dragon-ish birdlike things. But again, chipping away slowly.

Then of course I have all the world-building for the games I play. The one with you, I liked that so far. I recently left a game where we had a maya/inca+magic theme going on, that was cool. I'm also building as I go for my solo games; one game of Cortex Prime Hammerheads and I recently jumped on the opportunity to purchase the Doctor Who RPG Humble Bundle, and anyone who knows Doctor Who knows there will be lots of worldbuilding to be had.
Top 3 non-fiction: Blackbox Down (they talk about and explain airplane crashes), 99% Invisible (long-running show about all kinds of design-related stuff that often gets overlooked), This Podcast Will Kill You (epidemiology, each episode they take a close look at one disease/illness). Honorable mention: NASA and NOAA (the US' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) both have a whole host of wonderful podcasts.

Top 3 fiction: The Offensive (Mockumentary about the executives of an english football club. Warning: Contains a lot of swearing), Victoriocity (not-quite-Victorian London + Strange happenings + 2 Investigators), Fitzroy Diaries (I'd call it slice-of-life, probably. It just puts me in a good mood because it's quietly humerous and appreciative of the little things in life)
Not even a little bit, sorry. My uncle is obsessed with Formula 1 and MotoGP, he's been to Red Bull Ring before, but I just don't get the appeal.

What's the latest "rabbithole" you've been down?

What's the oddest "rabbithole" you've pursued?

*If you're looking for a science podcast, I highly recommend This One.

I was literally only looking for a cool profile picture for a random online account and now I know more about the pit organs in vipers/infrared sensing and the associated biochemistry than I will ever need to know. Bonus fun fact: Shrimp eyes kick our puny looky-orbs' butts
I don't remember where or why it started but an all time favourite is the one that lead to this quote in an article I dug out:

"a deputy sheriff, armed to the teeth and mounted upon a "very fractious" horse, dropped one of his three guns, fatally shooting a lovely young woman, as she walked past in the street. A contributing factor in her demise was, of course, that essential means of transportation and ancient menace to human life, the horse."
Thanks, I'll add it to my list of podcasts to check out!

Why don't you ski?

What's the story behind your profile picture? Is that a famous javelin thrower?

Also, while we're at it, what's the story behind your username

I have terrible coordination, an apprehension of heights and a small budget. In Austria it's traditional to go on "Schullandwoche" every second year or so from middle school through high school; a class trip of usually a week. Common variations include ski courses and language trips. So I have tried and I enjoy cruising on the flats but it's just not meant to be.
So glad you asked, I have no idea who that is LOL. I needed a profile pic on Roll20 when I first started playing and so I decided it was going to be a faithful representation of my first character. D&D human noble fighter Ikara Tinley: Javelin thrower extraordinaire and devourer of Goblin casserole. By the end of Lost Mine of Phandelver, she had started a business venture with Daran Edermath to sell his delicious apples all over the realm.

I just image searched for a picture of a woman throwing a javelin, a piece of armor and then I professionally 'photoshopped' it together (in Microsoft Paint)
That's much more boring, just a handful of letters that occur in my name. Came up with it one day and I have this username on a couple of places, it's easy to remember and not usually an existing handle

How did I never realize there was armor photoshopped onto her? 😄

'Cause that's how well I did it LOL

It's real art 😄

I guess I never zoomed in on it and just assumed that that's what javelin throwers wear

What’s your favorite genre or settings for RPGs?

Do you create your own art or scour to find the right things for what you need?
If the former, anything you'd like to share?

I think if you made me choose, my first pick is always going to be sci-fi. Preferably of the grimy sort (think Firefly rather than Star Trek) because they tend to have one big change to current society and they explore that change (commonly space travel). The issue is that from a certain level of technological advancements, what it means to be a human and a member of society changes so drastically that it gets difficult to imagine relatable storylines. A lot of people don't care but I've got that nagging voice in the back of my mind.

I also enjoy historical and alternate history settings. Played a game of Microscope once where we had the "plant of immortality" change hands throughout the centuries/millenia on earth. That was fun because we had like vikings and romans and victorians and modern people and everything in between - all in one setting.

Present settings also work well for me, especially for anything relating investigative work and if the theme is "strange happenings in aotherwise normal place". That said, I have my favourites in any genre. I love the Numenera setting and I'm perfectly happy playing in the standard D&D fantasy settings with my live play group.

As for genre, I can't pick a favourite but things I don't really like are horror, pure combat games and games that depend on resource managment (which is unfortunately often exploration - which I do enjoy a lot)
Scouring, lots of it. Inordinate amounts, in fact. If I do it myself, I enjoy creating flags (and, sort of by extension, logos). I also like making digital collages, my most recent work being this zine for an itch.io game jam. The content is very obscure so don't worry if you don't get it, just look at the pictures LOL

I even started learning Blender for 3D models but that's quite the time investment so I haven't done anything in it for a while. I sketch a lot of stuff out but unfortunately I'm not a very good drawer, so I don't show that to people.

You’re still relatively young. Where (metaphorically or literally or both) would you like to see yourself in 10 years, in 20, in 30?

I don't have any grand ambitions. A job that keeps me mentally engaged and pays okay is practically the entirety of my career goals, I'm not really interested in starting a family either. I do want to move to a coast at some point but there are a couple of things keeping me where I am, so we'll see how that turns out. I've got some personal, less overarching goals such as learning some stuff (languages, how to sail, human anatomy...), progressively improving baseball stats, and I want to someday make a game that's popular enough to be mentioned as a "look at this niche thing that fits exactly what you're asking for" when someone asks for system recommendations on reddit.