The prompt for day 28 of #AprilTTRPGMaker is “Favorite interview?”. As I mentioned in my answer to question 5, I have a tough time with giving answers to “favorite” questions. But I can describe some superlative moments related to interviews.
(image from Pixabay)
This wasn't an RPG-related interview, but in an interview on the I Should be Writing podcast (which I can't find a decent link for), sci-fi writer David Drake of Hammer's Slammers fame, said something that really stuck with me. He was discussing some of the things that had happened in his life, and had an anecdote about how he worked as a bus driver for a while. He said something like “I was a terrible bus driver, but I was an excellent bus company employee.” (I'm working from memory so that may not be an exact quote, and he elaborated what he meant.) That phrase has symbolized for me the idea that the traits, talents, skills, etc., that get you into or keep you in a position are not necessarily primarily related to competence at the tasks that a person in that position performs (see also: politics). To circle it back around to the RPG world, whether someone can sell their game well may not be correlated with how well they can design a good game, and whether someone's game-design advice is any good may not be correlated with whether they get selected to be a convention panelist who dispenses game design advice.
I got a lot out of Clyde Rhoer's Theory From the Closet interview with Vincent Baker where they discussed Vincent's “Clouds and Boxes” theory metaphor (sorry, I can't find a good link). I eventually realized while listening to this interview that the idea Vincent was trying to convey was actually a pretty basic one, but he had expressed it in such a complicated way that it was difficult to back up from the notion that he was trying to say something complex. I also found Clyde's interview with Vincent Baker and Luke Crane about “Mutualism” to be revealing, in that Vincent seemed to be happy to take an “I got mine” approach to the indie world and felt absolutely no obligation to help anyone but his personal friends. I think that is, unfortunately, a pretty common position among the high-status people in the indie games / story games world.
In a social media discussion before #AprilTTRPGMaker started I saw that Kira meant this question to relate to an interview with the person answering the question. In that case I actually can answer what my favorite interview was, because there's only one that I recall: My appearance on the second episode of the New Style podcast with Scott Dunphy (sorry, once again I can't find a good link). I think the basic idea of the podcast was to highlight or showcase newer designers in the indie game / story game scene. I recall that one segment of the podcast, which was sadly illustrative about the state of the “design community”, was that Scott would ask the guest about an in-development game they were interested in and following. You could tell from the reactions that this would frequently be a hard question for the guest to answer, because most people didn't seem to be very engaged with the work of other designers. I haven't listened to it since it was originally posted, but I recall that when I did it I was still coasting on some of my initial optimism about designing games in the indie scene and my disillusionment hadn't fully set in yet. I do recall that in one segment I was trying to make the case that the internet existed because I felt that the cliquish convention scene seemed to have achieved dominance.
Podcast listening used to be a big element of my engagement with internet stuff. Finding it so difficult to find links for the shows I wanted to reference is somewhat depressing. Normally with internet stuff you expect it to be around forever. If these episodes do exist in the ether they're no longer easy to find. If this question had come before Thursday's question about podcasts I probably would have had an even less upbeat answer to that one.
(From Kira Magrann's twitter)
