Six of The Best With KEN NEWQUIST

As Ken Newquist prepares for the 50th episode of Nuketown Radio Active, his occasional podcast dedicated to life, liberty and the pursuit of geekdom … HeroPress caught up with him for a chat.

A 'rolemodel' for all readers of this blog: the host of Nuketown Radio Active is a writer, web designer, gamer and geek dad of two. His semi-regular show is a half-hour slice of all things geek - from role-playing, computer and board games to techie 'toys', interesting websites, book reviews and music.

(1) What's the secret to juggling a full-time job, kids, marriage and time-consuming hobbies like role-playing games, podcasting, comic collecting and video games?

Creating complementary standing waves of geekiness. By which I mean, having jobs and hobbies that tend to reinforce one another. So when I'm working on Nuketown, converting my D&D campaign web site to a wiki or experimenting with the podcast, I'm working with technologies that will help me in my day job as a web application developer.

My freelance gigs for Knights of the Dinner Table and SCIFI.com pay me for web and game reviews, which is great work if you can find it.

Some of the stuff I review ends up becoming a fixture in my gaming room, like HeroClix and Risk 2210, and then the cycle begins all over again.

And of course, having a wife who gets me is critically important. All the rest would implode without her understanding how important gaming, writing and coding are to me. We've never had the fights about Friday night gaming that some of my friends have had with their spouses - Sue understands that throwing dice and slaying dragons every Friday is part of what keeps me going every week.

That isn't to say I haven't had to make a lot of changes since we had kids. I've given up game mastering for the foreseeable future because I simply don't have the time any more to do all the game prep I feel I need to.

I don't play nearly as many video games as I used to, and when I do play them it's usually for an hour here or there after the kids have gone to bed.

Being a member of GeezerGamers.com helps on that front; my clan mates are almost all 30-somethings with wives, kids and jobs of their own - the site's motto of headshots between diaper changes rings true more often than not.

Nuketown itself has shifted from webzine to blog, and a lot of its previous content now shows up in a podcast instead.

(2) How did you get into roleplaying games in the first place; and can you describe the single moment in a game, either as a player or gamesmaster, where you thought: "yes, this is the hobby for me!"?

It was my mom's doing. She brought home the old red Basic D&D boxed set - the one with Keep of the Borderlands in it - when I was in grade school, read it cover to cover, and then gave it to me. I was hooked then, and started playing haphazardly with friends until high school, when most of my friends gave up the game.

When I was in college I started playing D&D again, joined a gaming group, and experienced a host of new games like DC Heroes, Call of Cthulhu, Star Wars, and Shadowrun. That's when I realized just how much fun the games could be, particularly when you combined good storytelling with solid game mechanics.

(3) Are there any roleplaying game systems that you would suggest for introducing children to the hobby, and any that you wouldn't let children play?

My kids aren't quite old enough for RPGs, so I haven't had to deal with that issue yet. Risus: The Anything RPG strikes me as a being a good starting game since it's so rules light, but the lack of structure could be problematic for fledgling rules lawyers.

A stripped down version of d20 D&D might do - either True20 or some homegrown version with skills and feats condensed down to their essentials.

The challenge with any game - RPG, video or otherwise - is that it will give rise to questions that you may not be ready to answer.

For example, a staple of Dungeons & Dragons is killing monsters and taking their stuff. But why is it ok to do that? And why don't we do the same in the real world?

As far as what I wouldn't let children play, it depends on the maturity of the child in question.

I think the first rule of thumb for playing RPGs with kids is that they need to be able to differentiate between reality and make believe.

At four, my daughter has a rich and vivid imaginary world populated with all manner of princesses and animals that she interacts with … but she's still fuzzy on whether or not Sleeping Beauty is real.

Once they understand that difference though, it becomes a question of maturity and parental awareness. I don't think Vampire and Werewolf are appropriate for 12 year olds, but they may be ok for 17-year-olds … assuming they can handle it. Some 17-year-olds are smart, insightful, empathic and ready to start exploring more "grey" titles. Others aren't.

My mom provides a great example here: she didn't just go out, buy D&D and give it to me - she took the time to read it and to see if it was appropriate. Now that I'm a parent, I plan to do the same.

(4) A key strand of your blog and your podcast is the drive for "geek fitness" – could you let us in on your fitness regime and why this is particularly important for geeks?

I try to get to the gym three to four days a week and spend 30 minutes cycling, jogging or using the elliptical machine. Depending on the weather, I also try to either walk or bike my way to work - it's only about ¼ mile, but every little bit helps. In the summer, I'll throw in a day or two of swimming laps during my lunch break.

The whole idea of "geek fitness" appears to be oxymoron at first glance. The geek stereotype has us working on computers all day, and playing games (video, RPG or otherwise) all night. There's a lot of truth to that, and when you throw in the natural nerd aversion to the gym as well as a diet of junk food and Mountain Dew would kill lesser humans, it's amazing we didn't all have heart attacks by age 25.

Of course, a few years (or decades) of geek living has its consequences, including weight gain, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease, and repetitive stress injuries. I'm not saying any of this is unique to geekdom - most of America has these sorts of problems - but a trip to your local gaming convention or comic book store may suggest we're doing worse than the average.

It sucks, but sometimes the stereotypes are true. I'm not looking to become one of those fitness freaks who wants everyone to have a perfect Body Mass Index for their height and weight, but I do want to point out that most of us could stand to lose a few pounds … and that doing so will probably improve (and hopefully extend) your geek life.

Rather than just rant about it, I've been focusing on changing my own habits, and then blogging about what works with the hope that a few others might be inspired to do the same. So far, it's worked: I've lost 24 lbs., and I've had a few readers e-mail or comment that my own exercise program had gotten them taking their own trips to the gym or after-dinner walks.

I'll also say that as a geek dad, I want to set a good example for my kids. I don't want them to think that exercise is something that only the popular people do, or that they don't have just as much right to go to the gym as the football team does. And I also want to be able to keep up with them … those 10th-month-olds can crawl surprisingly fast!

(5) Why did you decide to branch out into podcasting and what do you feel this medium offers that others, say blogging, can't?

The buzzword is "time shifting", but I think it's a good word. Podcasts let you download audio and then listen to it on your own time. While a blog is only readable when you're at a computer (or maybe on the go if you have a handheld), podcasts can be consumed while you're commuting, exercising, walking the dog, whatever.

Plus, podcasts are the perfect alternative to the vast wasteland that is American broadcast radio these days; rather than listen to yet another Clear Channel clone, you can listen to a show that's about topics that are important to you. I started podcasting mostly as an experiment: I wanted to see how easy it was.

Once I got started, I found it complemented the site by allowing me to talk about things I'd never get to write about. In particular, I've found it much easier to do a quick audio review on the podcast than to knock out a written review for the web site, probably because the written ones end up being so detailed.

It's also attracted a whole new audience for the web site, folks who might never have stopped by to read the blog, but do check out the podcasts.

(6) As a keen comic book reader, are there any titles around at the moment that you would recommend people to pick up?

Whatever Neil Gorman at the Comicology podcast tells me to read. Seriously, the two strongest titles in my current pull are both ones that Neil recommended: Ex Machina written by Brian K. Vaughan (Wildstorm/DC) and X-Factor written by Peter David.

Ex Machina is the ongoing story of Mitchell Hundred, a man who unexpectedly gains the ability to talk with machines, takes on the superhero persona of The Great Machine and manages - in one of the most gut-wrenching stories I've read in comics in a long time - to save one of the Twin Towers on 9/11. He then retires from crime-fighting and runs for mayor of New York - the title flashes between his ongoing political battles as mayor and his past superhero conflicts as The Great Machine.

X-Factor is a noir-styled superhero/private-eye book with Jamie Maddrox (aka the Multiple Man) leading up X-Factor Investigations.

He's joined by a handful of other dysfunctional X-personalities, including Wolfsbane, Strong Guy, M and Syren and together they try and understand what caused the devastating event known as "M Day", when so many mutants lost their powers.

The writing is consistently good, and David is finding unexpected depth (and complications) in Maddrox's powers.