AMA Russ Morrissey (Morrus) (EN World, EN Publishing, ENnies, WOIN)

[Morrus]

I'm no Keith Baker or Wolfgang Baur, but I figured I could set another example of how to do an AMA right here on EN World, so here I am. Ask Me Anything!

Remember, anybody can start an AMA here. Just go right ahead and start it!

For those who don't know, I'm Russ Morrissey, better known as Morrus. I run EN World, and am responsible for exciting things like the ENnies, EN Publishing, my own What's O.L.D. is N.E.W. roleplaying game system, EN5ider and TRAILseeker, and more. I've been doing this since 1999, which makes it 16 years now that I've been posting rumours and news scoops about roleplaying games, and selling PDFs of awesome adventure paths. I also have a cold.

I'll let this run for a couple of days and pop in when I get chance.

I'm happy to answer most questions, but I won't deal with tech/site support or customery/producty support type stuff here. I do that all day every day, right here on this forum, so if you need that stuff, it's easy enough to get pretty much all the rest of the time! I'm also not the go-to expert for ZEITGEIST, so you may be better asking Ryan Nock in the ENP forum for that stuff!

 

[bedir than]

With WOIN, why did you decide to go with a broad do everything game rather than something narrow and specific?

 

[Morrus]

With WOIN, why did you decide to go with a broad do everything game rather than something narrow and specific?

Actually, it isn't a broad, do everything game. There are many things I'm sure it really can't do, and I wouldn't want to try -- high powered supers, for example, or very narrative gaming. Or even super high fantasy gaming like D&D. What I originally wanted to do was emulate two specific genres very well - my two favourite RPG genres, being medieval fantasy, and futuristic sci-fi. Tolkein and Trek. The third game, N.O.W., came later; and that's written by somebody else, Mike Myler, who is far more of an expert on that genre than I am. I guess, with the three, you do get a sense of a reasonably broad range of possibilities, especially when you start mixing and matching them, but the intention isn't to be GURPS, FATE, or Savage Worlds. It's much more focused on doing a couple of things as well as I can.

Now, if third parties were to take that and find other things to do with it, that's fine with me. They can likely bring stuff to it that I can't!

 

[Mike Myler]

Why do you guys call chinese food "curry"?

 

[Morrus]

Why do you guys call chinese food "curry"?

Uh... we don't. We call Indian food "curry", on account of it being curry. We call Chinese food "Chinese food".

I assume by "you guys" you mean "astonishingly handsome people"?

 

[Mike Myler]

We don't. We call Indian food "curry", on account of it being curry. We call Chinese food "Chinese food".

Well that would explain what confused me about this.


What was the inspiration to get EN World up and going? Were you up to RPG scoopery/design before that?

 

[bedir than]

As a fan of lower fantasy settings that has to reskin a lot of DnD for his homebrew I'm kind of enthralled now. Thanks for the response.

 

[Morrus]

What was the inspiration to get EN World up and going? Were you up to RPG scoopery/design before that?

16 years ago when I was ... yikes.... in my early 20s. Wait, I'm not in my early 20s any more? What the hell? That wasn't the deal!

Anyway, Eric Noah ran his Eric' Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News site. It was awesome. I have it archived at that link. Eric and I became friends, and at the same time I create EN World for the creation of homebrew 3E game settings. To that I ended up adding a reviews database and d20/OGL news reporting. Back then, nobody else was doing that stuff -- now everybody is! It was an exciting time - pre social media, the OGL was new and people were doing awesome things with it (they still are, but we're used to it now).

Anyhow, Eric emailed me one day to tell me he was closing his site. I was devastated, to be honest. I loved that place, its forums, his news scoops, the community. But then, after we talked it over for a while, we both agreed it would be a real shame to close the community (and, again, it wasn't like there were a billion RPG forums back then, or Facebook, or Twitter) so we figured I should take it over. Which I did. And now it turns out I'm, like, 40 and have been doing this for most of my adult life.

So I've been doing this 16 years now. The site's grown, shrunk, crashed, been rebuilt more than once, been hacked, been popular, been unpopular, but we're still here. The community has evolved, and the faces change, but having made so many friends through this job, I can't imagine doing anything else. To be honest, I doubt I could do anything else now. It's too late!

 

[RangerWickett]

What games are you playing in or running these days? What do you like in a game - by which I mean both a rules system and a particular ongoing story?

 

[Morrus]

What games are you playing in or running these days? What do you like in a game - by which I mean both a rules system and a particular ongoing story?

I've just finished running a 5E campaign, and I'm also playing in a Pathinder Kingmaker campaign.

My tastes fluctuate a lot. I flit between sci-fi and medieval fantasy; right now I think the former is in ascendance, but it changes! As far as rules go - it depends on what I'm doing with them. For a one-shot, a convention game, etc. I like an easy rules-lite system; for an ongoing camapaign, I like my rules to be heavier and for a strong sense of character advancement. In terms of game flavour, unless it's a licensed system for a specific property, I like fairly neutral sounding terminology - in D&D terms, a class name like "fighter" is good, and a class name like "astralzoom shadeassassin" is bad. I guess I like the class name to do what it says on the tin, and if I have to ask what it is, I don't like it. That's probably just me, though!