I’m not actually participating in Blaugust (or, as I like to call it, Bel-gust), but I’m not enough of a hipster to turn my nose up when I get called out directly.

I guess there’s something called a “Liebster Award” that’s something like a blogging chain letter. From what I’ve been able to gather, you present 11 random facts and then answer the previous person’s questions, then pay it forward to someone else.

11 Random Facts:

1. I spent my childhood traveling on vacations with my parents. It’s given me a very broad worldview and hunger to discover more about the world that I tend to take for granted.
2. I am validated by achievement and driven by romance. It’s an odd duality.
3. I spent about a decade as a game designer, and learned an incredible amount in that time about the inner workings of how games are made.
4. I graduated from MIT, and it’s an accomplishment that I cling to when I don’t feel like I’m able to do anything (often).
5. I have a bad habit of bouncing my leg when I’m sitting. It annoys me and everyone around me.
6. I’m really, genuinely interested in people and what they have to say. I’m an introvert who pours energy into people like an extrovert. I’m often very reticent to connect with new people because of this– I never feel like I’m giving enough energy to the friends I have, and the thought of spending even more energy on new people is scary.
7. I used to wear exclusively black t-shirts and cargo pants until I realized that I can pull off clothing combinations that other people can’t. Now I’ve discovered that I have a taste for fashion and, when appropriate, love to ‘dress up’.
8. I do not think quickly on my feet, but I am an extremely detailed planner. If I look like I have a snappy response or a quick reaction to something, it’s almost always because I expected it and had planned for it. I go deer-in-the-headlights when faced with something I don’t have a planned response for.
9. Alignment-wise, I am almost certainly True Neutral.
10. I have very little time or interest in strictly competitive games. Even the one competitive game I play regularly (Infinity) is, to me, more of a collaborative action scene than a competitive game, even at the tournament level.
11. I am absolutely hopeless when it comes to dating. Were I not single, it would honestly be really funny (it often still is).

Here are Ash’s 11 questions:

1. Why do you blog? Yes, I know it’s a repeat. Deal with it.
   • Discipline. It forces me to write on a regular schedule and keeps me sharp and constantly coming up with things to say.
2. What’s the first game you remember playing?
   • I don’t remember. It was either Quest for Glory 3 at a friend’s house or Star Wars: Rebel Assault. I have fond memories of both games.
3. Dogs or Cats?
   • Neither. I own a dog, but she’s the last phase of dog-phobia therapy. I can’t say I’m a dog or cat person.
4. Do you have a favorite villain?
   • Sephiroth, from FFVII. It’s cliché, I know, but for the first half of the game he’s an incredibly compelling, mysterious villain that you’re chasing but don’t *really* want to catch. Close runners up would be Darth Vader and Handsome Jack.
5. What are your thoughts on escort missions?
   • Like anything, good when done well. Ico is an incredible game that is a single, long escort quest, Portal and Portal 2 have very compelling escort sequences, and Bioshock:Infinite has similar concepts going on. There are a lot of examples of bad escorts, but the good ones really, really shine.
6. Borrowing from the “stereotypical interview questions” list, What would you say is your biggest weakness? (I did actually get this question a lot last year.)
   • I wear a lot of masks around people, because I want people to feel comfortable around me. It works altogether too well and it means that I have a bad tendency to keep people at a distance, behind the mask.
7. What character archetype do you find yourself playing most often?
   • The Mage. This comes in a lot of forms, but my favorite is the Duelist Mage, with sword and spell. Jedi are very close to this, as are Red Mages. I’m frequently disappointed by the experience, because they’re usually either ultra-weak or horrifically overpowered.
8. Other than games and the means to play them, do you own any gaming-related items?
   • I used to have a lot– figures, posters, etc, but got rid of pretty much all of it when I moved across the country. Now, I have a small-but-growing collection of tasteful game art.
9. Because I know who these questions are going to, I can ask this one: What’s your favorite system for Tabletop RPGs?
   • World of Darkness. It’s one of the few systems in which I feel like I’m making a character and not a selection of stats. It also enables interesting non-combat play in a way that pretty much no other system I’ve ever seen does well. I really enjoy coming up with and seeing players come up with interesting solutions to problems, and WoD really enables and encourages that kind of creativity, whereas I feel like a lot of other systems are an excuse to get into fights all the time.
10. What upcoming games (if any) are you looking forward to?
    • Persona 5, more than anything else. I’m also greatly looking forward to the next installment of Deus Ex, and Mass Effect: Andromeda.
11. Why can’t Ash count to 11?
    • I really don’t know.

With all of that done, here’s my set of (actually 11) questions:

1. What is the best spell to cast?
2. What food item(s) from a game do you want to eat above any others?
3. You’ve got an infinite supply of one consumable, and can never carry any others. Which consumable do you choose?
4. You have to choose a race and class that you’ve never played seriously before. What do you pick?
5. What game did you think you would hate but actually loved?
6. What game did you think you would love but actually hated?
7. Pick a zone from any game to live in. Why?
8. You can excise one class from every future game. Which? Why?
9. What’s your favorite story?
10. What hobby does no one (yet) know you have?
11. What is your favorite secret shame? >:D

Bel, Liore and Thalen, you’re up, if that’s how this works.