Interview with Bill Collins Part III (Tell It To my Axe).

This concludes the long interview with Bill Collins, as we talk about Tell It To My Axe (his choice). You can find Part I HERE and/or Part II HERE

25. What has been your best moment playing with an AE product?
I think I have too many to chose from. The best has to be the time at Gen Con when I was running a one-shot adventure called "To the Coast", set in the days of the giant's arrival. All the PCs were litorians. At a point in the game, something happened to an NPC. And four of the players opposite me at the table howled. The room went dead for a moment and I got shivers up my spine. You don't get roleplaying like that very often do you?

26. What has been your most memorable fan response to Tell It To My Axe?
When someone played in one of my games, asked me about the book on my t-shirt, went out, bought it and ran a game using it!

27. What role do you think Tell It To My Axe plays in the AE gaming community?
I think it gets used for crunch mainly, as an option for players looking for a Prestige Class. Several DMs have used it to help work out bits of their campaigns, so I'm really glad to know that it's been useful.

28. To Your knowledge has Tell It To My Axe ever been played with using Fantasy Grounds?
No. I don't believe it has, but I haven't been able to get to try out Fantasy Grounds.

29. Could you tell us a little about the difference between professional game design and designing for play?
That's a good question. In play, you only care about your own game. So an ability, item, feat, PrC or some other option you probably are giving to a player. It has to work for them. They want it to customize their character. You don't have to balance it off to the core books. To be a professional, you have to a) deliver timely and b) make sure your stuff is playable. I like clean, well-written rules that offer expanding options, not "must-have" options that lets one PC shine too much over others.

30. Why do you think the "Obvious Books" (racial and class books) for AE have never been done by the non-malhavoc publishers?
First, because there's so much depth to AE. You would have to get tired of all the classes and races in that book to write new ones. Second, because only three publishers jumped on the AE bandwagon and chose other directions to go in.

31. What is your feeling about Lands of the Jade Oath?
I love the setting. It has flavor, great flavor. It has a lot of new options for players, imaginative ideas, and does a great job of tying together AE and D&D (because it has a lot of standard races). I feel bad for Ashanderai that its taken time to get it ready and now 4E is taking up everyone's attention. I've run several games using the playtest rules, so I hope it does get published.

32. What is your home AE game like?
Ended. Okay, that's not helpful. It was a fun romp for a small, tight-knit group of players and characters through a corner of the Diamond Throne. Set up in the Devanian Coast, we got to do a lot of cool stuff. The PCs migrated from neutral, somewhat nice types to wearing dark sunglasses and being one step away from bad guys. This was a different flavor for a game. It was an exploration of a tiny corner of Serran, that turned out to have a lot of big things in it.

33. What is the AE product you want to buy?
A book of spells that "fills the spell list gaps" to make the options for each template more equal and available. Example: there are a lot of Fire template spells, but less of other types. Actually, this is a product I started to write before Spell Treasury, but I don't think there would be enough of a market for it now. If someone else did it, I'd be happy.

34. Can you name for us a totem type, champion type and a witch type that would be cool but you have never seen from the fans?
Good one. I'd like to see a lemur totem warrior, a Champion of Anti-magic, and a cave witch.

35. What kind of player experience did you hope to create with your game? Did your goals change during the design process? Do you feel that you met them?
My first goal was just to run an AU game. Monte had asked me to join the Council of Magisters, so I wanted to really know what I was talking about from behind the screen. It was a perfect excuse since I had taken some time off and wanted to start a new D&D game. I didn't really have a goal in mind other than running a game that built toward a final confrontation foreshadowed for the players from the start. That goal changed in one significant way during the game. Two players (a married couple) announced that they were moving to Ohio. Suddenly I had to end my game, and eliminate several things that I had planned to do. I really wanted to end it with the final battle though. So my goal changed to "End it now!" Because it was the last game for our group of five, I also wanted to make it memorable. That meant that I put a lot of time into building a cardboard dungeon, drawing some illustrations, and preparing. I was very happy with the way it turned out because I didn't know how it was going to end, just that it had to. My players really made those final sessions special.

36. What does AE need more of?
Visibility. Well no, that won't work. Todays gamer is fickle and prone to leaps of interest to new things. If anything, AE could use a renewal with a new inherent setting and revision to 4E. That's a task that I think you'd have to be a full-time designer to conquer.

Continue to Part IV HERE