Dungeon Masters Interview: Elizabeth Reesman

Elizabeth Reesman, dressed up as an underground-dwelling elf that lives in a completely matriarchal society, made her appearance in the Dungeon Masters movie. She was kind enough to answers the following interview questions for us.

1. How did hear about The Dungeon Masters and what process did you go through to become one of the DMs featured?

I actually heard about it at Gencon Indy back in 2004, while I was working as a "booth babe". They approached my then-boss about interviewing me, and I tentatively consented to talk with them and show them how the makeup worked and discuss gaming. It was a little weird, and after the convention I didn’t think much about it until they got back in touch with me in 2006. They had been "desperately hunting for me" since 2004– their old contact information didn’t work, I had changed my cell phone number. I have to every few years, because fanboys are scary things, and eventually my number ends up handed out to people I’d rather not have calling me at three in the morning. Somehow, they found the number to my parents’ house in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where I was living and house sitting since my parents had moved to Tampa. I answered, they begged me to be interviewed at Gencon that year, and I agreed. The director kept telling me how this would be a documentary to relieve a lot of the stigma of gaming, so I kind of felt like it was my duty, if that makes sense, to be willing to show that gamers aren’t all losers.

2. How much time did the documentary crew spend filming you? Was there any part of the documentary process that you considered intrusive? How long did it take for you to get used to having cameras film your life?

All of Gencon Indy in 2006 and 2007, plus a week and a half at the end of 2006 (right after Christmas until a little after New Years), plus another several days in mid-2007. Most of it was intrusive, but I considered that a necessary evil to show the relative "normal" aspects of my life.

I never got used to it. Not at all. Especially considering I was constantly being pushed to get into my dark elf makeup more– that was a convention and LARP-only thing for me. Sitting in the kitchen putting on makeup was a bit weird, but they kept saying that they had reviewed shots of the film from the day before, or the week before, and the makeup hadn’t come out right, could I just do it one more time while they do something different with the lighting or camera?

3. Did you develop a relationship with the production crew? Did you develop a sense of trust with Keven McAlester’s people?

Not really. The camera/light person and the sound person were both very standoffish. Keven went out of his way to be gregarious, but it was very frustrating to keep him on topic. He kept wanting to dig for things (like questioning me about my ex-husband) that I told him repeatedly were off-limits topics for depth. He wanted to interview my parents, I mentioned they are not gamers and are extremely private people. He pushed and pushed. Same thing with my kid sister (who was a minor at the time), even after I repeatedly explained she was under 18 and my parents would never consent to her being in a film– again with the entire privacy thing. He kept trying to drag my ex-husband and my supposed issues out of the closet like so much dirty laundry. I explained to him that my failed marriage has very little bearing on who I am and my gaming (my ex read fantasy but didn’t approve of gaming other than first-person shooters, anyway, so I didn’t get much done while I was with him).

I would say I wanted to trust him, at first. I needed to trust him, because I wanted to do something to help make people see tabletop roleplayers as more than just a bunch of fat basement dwellers eating Cheetos and swilling Mountain Dew while looking at Lolita pictures and lusting over Japanese schoolgirls. There is so much more to us, as gamers, and I needed to trust he was showing that.

Of course, by the end of the filming process, my trust was a forced thing, and watching the film and seeing that trust dashed– well, let’s just say I wasn’t shocked, though I was infuriated.

4. I have noticed from internet posts that you weren’t entirely pleased with your portrayal in the movie and felt the director edited your material to slant the narrative. Do you think you were portrayed fairly in The Dungeon Masters?

Not at all. The majority of the scenes I was in were interviews I gave in makeup– at the director’s demand. I feel it definitely gave an impression that I do this kind of thing all the time. Further, the fixation he had on the concept of "failed relationships" and "looking for love" was not only unfair, but untrue. I’m 26 years old. At that time, I was 21 (in 2004), 23 (2006), and 24 (in 2007). I’ve dated around– that makes me a normal 20-something, not a failure. And finding my next boyfriend isn’t my goal in life, sorry. He took out hours of interviews I gave about gaming, my goals for the future, my dreams, hobbies, thoughts on how gaming works with it, and sensationalized me as an airheaded little girl who can’t keep a boyfriend but needs one and can’t stand to be in her own skin. Neither of those could be further from the truth. I’m highly intelligent, very independently-minded, quite sought-after, and confident in myself to the point of arrogance sometimes. (And yes, I’m also aware of my flaws. Had he been showing any of my actual flaws, I wouldn’t have been as annoyed.)

5. In the movie, we were 1/3rd of the way through the movie before we saw you without the drow paint. How often do you wear your drow paint when running your local game?

Seriously. I don’t just get in makeup for the hell of it. And to run a tabletop session? Are you nuts? -laughs- I’ve got more important things to worry about than makeup then, like making sure Chris’s ranger doesn’t break his bow AGAIN on a double botch, and that I have enough minis to represent the swarm of undead my group is going to meet in the next room.

I wear makeup for the following reasons: one, because I am LARPing <i>and</i> playing as my dark elf (I actually have a high elf that I play as well, and a few plot NPCs, none of whom are dark elves). Two, because I am at a gaming and/or fantasy convention and showing up as a dark elf. If you see me at an anime convention, for example? I’m going to be rockin’ an anime costume, not the black bodypaint. Or, three, I’m testing new makeup– and even then, it’s not a full-coverage thing, generally just a large patch over a few hours testing for allergies and staying power.

6. The LARP scenes tended to make LARPing look like nothing more than cops & robbers in the woods. For those who saw the movie but don’t know what LARPing is, could you explain the game.

Live-Action Roleplaying is exactly what it says. It’s like playing a tabletop game, only instead of holding a piece of paper and rolling dice to make "Falstaff, sorceror of Light!" do his thing, you’re actually dressed up in a robe, memorizing spell verbals, and throwing representations of spells (generally beanbag packets filled with birdseed). If you play a fighter, you have a foam-padded sword you use to beat down monsters.

That’s only part of it, though. The game, like any roleplaying game, can be very simple and hack-and-slash, or complex and filled with roleplaying. As my dark elf character Halne, I play one of the villians at our LARP. I spend more time fueling political plots and manipulating other characters than I do killing monsters or even killing other PCs. It’s like stepping into another world and another life for a weekend. It’s very theraputic. It has rules though, like how much damage you cause, keeping track of how many hit points you have, you get the idea. A lot of it is relying on the players not cheating– you count your own damage, for example, and are expected to fall down "dead" when you’re out of hit points.

7. I saw on a message board where you said you would be happy to point out which scenes were taken out of context. For the record here, what specific scenes in the movie were taken out of context?

The first one I can think of that was taken out of context was the one between me and Jake, where it was mentioned that we might break up, and I said "I don’t think that’s going to happen." According to the director, there is no audio, and he didn’t cut out anything Jake responded with. However, my face makes the "O RLY?" smart aleck lifted eyebrow at Jake, and he looks equally as smartass. I even remember that part of filming, and I recall Jake making some smartass comment. So does he, because when we saw that scene, we both said "what the hell?!" and I hit pause so we both could kvetch.

The director was around us long enough to know that we bantered back and forth, instead, he turned what was just a little bit of friendly harassment into foreshadowing that I was going to be used and abused yet again. This frustrates me on so many levels, because Jake and I are still very close friends. Hell, he and my current boyfriend get along splendidly, I’m friendly with his wife (they got married this past October), and last weekend he came down to Pensacola to stay with us for a weekend and goof off and game. So all this "tragedy", as it was put in one interview with the director? It never existed. It was manufactured to make me (and by extention, gamers everywhere) out to be a loser who can’t hold a relationship and is delusional when she is in a bad one.

Not that it’s anyone’s business, but Jake and I split about five months after that was filmed. We split because we weren’t working out, not because we didn’t care deeply for each other, but because we were friends. -shrugs- We’ve maintained a very close friendship since. There was no abuse, no abandonment, and no anger.

The other major one that comes to mind right now is the entire drow thing. They asked me to explain drow society. I explained how that worked. In the same interview, they asked me why I liked drow society and why I cosplayed as a dark elf. They blended that whole interview together to make it seem that I like the drow because they are matriarchical and strong, and I am a weak female who always gets picked on by the mean boys so of course I’m going to like the dark elves.

Ugh! Just to set the record straight, I like the dark elves because they are an exercise in contradiction. They are law within chaos, chaos within structure. They are matriarical but depend on their males for their armies and their sorceries. If they worked together as a race, the surface would be doomed, but their petty in-fighting keeps them underground and concerned only with their own personal power. And, lastly, dark elves are fun to play. Their sense of time, morality, usefulness, and everything else is completely skewed.

To edit the interview so that I was basically saying "oh, I love the dark elves because the women get to beat up the menfolk" is ridiculous. And anyone who actually knows me would tell you the same. I’m not a man-hating bitch. I promise.

8. You were depicted on the movie poster, which is a great design (http://www.retroist.com/2009/03/25/the-dungeon-masters-poster/). What do you think about "drow girl" being the iconic image of The Game Masters?

I don’t mind it, except that I don’t like the drow girl in the film being the image, if you follow me. She’s a character, and not even a positive one. Had they actually not tried to build a stereotype? Sure.

I do think, however, the dice for eyes makes the chick look like she has crazy-eyes. I really hope that wasn’t what they were going for.

9. Do you have any advice for someone out there who is given the opportunity to be in a documentary?

Run, don’t walk, to the nearest exit. Panic. Roll a nat 20 on your Escape Artist check. Whatever you do, don’t agree– nothing good can come of this. You just can’t trust them to do right by you or the subject matter.

10. Now, on to the fun stuff. How long have you been a DM? Do you ever play as a character?

I’ve been running games for six years, gaming for much longer. I occasionally get to play, but it’s a rarity anymore outside of the LARP (and that’s about to end for awhile, as I am going to be a Plot Member, which is the LARP’s version of a DM/GM or Storyteller, from at least September until July of next year, possibly longer). I jokingly say in my Obsidian Portal profile "Always the GM, never the player… that’s the story of most GM’s lives", but it’s true. Once a group of gamers find you have a knack for spinning the web of storyline for them to play in, they generally don’t give you up to playerdom without some sort of fight.

11. In the movie, your players gave you rave reviews and really seemed to enjoy playing in your games. Describe your DM-ing style and the type of campaign (stories, conflicts) you enjoy creating?

Yeah, that was the only part of the film I liked, and I was beet-red the whole time. I knew I was a decent GM, but I hardly expected those kinds of reviews! My style is somewhat fast and loose. Because of this, I don’t do very well with pre-made modules. I usually reserve those for one-time sessions or just gleaning them for plot ideas.

I have a general plot woven for the players, but I allow them a lot of leeway in choices. Sometimes, like in the current campaign I’m running, this ends up with them getting stuck in the same place and not advancing themselves or the plot for a couple of sessions while they explore an entire city. Sometimes, it allows them to do the seemingly impossible by thinking outside the box. There have been many times a group of players have surprised me with a "does this work?" and me having to step back and go "well, damn. Yes. Yes it does."

I am a huge fan of the d20 system, so I do play Star Wars d20 as well as d20 Modern when I can get people to play it. I also enjoy xCrawl, which I describe as "Dungeons and Dragons meets WWE Wrestling" to new players. It’s a riot, especially for experienced gamers who love showing off.

BESM ( Big Eyes Small Mouth ) is always a good time, and so is the hilarious Kobolds Ate My Baby. I can have my arm twisted into playing White Wolf’s World of Darkness variants, but I am extremely picky about who I play it with– I hate dealing with emo kids QQing about their life of undeath. Besides, I prefer Hunter, so I can actually have a "stake" in the game, if you catch my drift. I love a good game of call of Cthulhu, but finding a good GM for it is rare.

Rifts is complicated, GURPs has so many books that it makes D&D looks light by comparison… I’ve played both but prefer D&D or d20 Modern for the same type of style. I’d love an updated version of Spelljammer and Shadowrun– I loved those games back in the day, but they seemed to have been orphaned in favor of newer, generally dumber stuff.

Though not strictly a tabletop RPG, but still in the same vein, I also love a good game of Munchkin.

I’m not fond of it for my personal long-term campaign play. I think it’ll be a great "gateway drug" for non-gamers to get into gaming. It’s very dumbed down, very "World of Warcraft"-y to me. Simple is better for new gamers, but I dislike how you become epic so quickly.

Also, I hate what 4th ed. did to Realms. Ahh! Plots I’ve been arcing from so many campaigns, characters I’ve ran for years? Trashed because someone at WotC decided to "simplify" things. It’s a world, man. It’s a game representing adventuring and life in another world. What’s simple about life? Also, the storyarcs I feel seriously jumped the shark.

So I’ll use it for the tool that it’s good for– introducing new players to the concept of tabletop gaming. Then I’ll bring them "down" to 3.5 once they have the basics.

Forgotten Realms. It’s high fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, but it’s got everything you need. Want a politic thriller campaign? You can find some country to work with. Want to play with "fun-dead"? Go to Thay, or about ten other places. Whatever you need or want to do, you can do in Realms. It’s the most well-built world ever.

15. Tell us about your favorite role-playing campaign you’ve been involved in.

Playing or GMing? If it’s playing, there was one campaign that started at 1st level and took us all the way almost to epic. We played probably three or four nights a week on the campaign, since we were all broke college students with nothing else better to do. I rolled sick stats for my rogue at level 1 (if the GM hadn’t been watching, she wouldn’t have believed me): 18 18 18 17 16 16. The party was very close-knit, the plots and scenarios challenging, and the GM kept trying to kill me because it wasn’t possible. The sheer luck of the dice went against the GM every time. I was locked in a dungeon, nearly eaten by a bag of devouring, overrun by orcs, fell off a tower I was scaling, almost mistook a sphere of annihilation for a sphere of darkness, broke a staff of power, played poker with the Deck of Many Things, placed a portable hole inside a Heward’s Handy Haversack… She gave me things to try and kill myself with, and my rogue kept trying to oblige her.

GMing, my favorite campaign I’ve run was a drow-in-the-Underdark one. One of the guys always played paladins, so he decided to play a "paladin of Lolth". We’re all like, "you mean a dark knight or something like that, lawful evil death incarnate?" and he’s like "no, or maybe, sure, I guess that works." Then he proceeded to spend the campaign defending the "virginity" of the NPC priestess that was escorting the party and otherwise trying to be a paladin. Of a chaotic evil deity. And wondering why none of his divine spells ever worked. It was a riot, I swear. All of us had a great time. We called him "Sir Clanksalot" frequently, though, because with his full plate he couldn’t make move silently checks to save his life.

16. What scenarios have you DM’ed at GenCon before? Do you plan on running a scenario at next year’s GenCon? If so, any ideas what you’ll be running (long time from now, I know)?

I try to avoid GMing at Gencon, or any convention, if I can help it. I don’t get to play much, so when I have a somewhat captive population of Game and Dungeon Masters who all want players, I can’t help but prefer jumping into a game over having to do the work of running one.

17. Of the other two DMs in the movie, which one would you rather play a session with and why?

Richard, if for no other reason than to thwart his evil plots. I am a Dungeon Master, and I know what it’s like to plot weekly to murder your players’ characters in various ways. I know how *I* would try and kill me, and so I would deftly move to avoid it, thus frustrating the GM as so many players have done to me. -laughs- Besides, it’s been awhile since I’ve played in a second ed. game.

18. When the "Sphere of Annihilation" scene happened in Richard’s story, I remember thinking it was strange that Richard assumed all the players would walk through that door, after having seen the first victim annihilated. Have you ever used anything close to a "Sphere of Annihilation" type trick on a player (or players)?

Yeah, it was very much like "rocks fall, everyone dies". Which I totally feel sometimes, so I understand it. I’ve never done something to that level. My players all know about the Dice. Not the regular dice with a small "d", but the special Dice with a big "D". The majority of the Dice are foam (d4s, d6s, and a couple of d10s), but the d20 is a hefty, weighty d20 the size of a baseball. When I throw the foam dice at you, you and your character take that damage (a lightning bolt shoots from the sky and smites your character, or a rock falls on your head, etc). I generally only throw them when I’m angry enough with the player and he or she has had multiple warnings to behave his/herself. I’ve only had to throw the d20 at someone once, and they used their real-life dodge bonus to escape a very hefty bruise. -shrugs- Of course, that person was also the one person ever banned from my table– he was being so rude and downright abusive to his fellow players (and me, but that’s beside the point) that he was ejected from the game and I informed him he would never be invited back.

I don’t generally try tricking my players to that level where they lose a character completely. I’ll do other dickish things, like putting a group of level 7 characters up against a dungeon where every room has a CR of at least 10 or 11, just to see how long it takes them to die or give up, but I won’t annihilate them.

On a side note, in that earlier campaign I mentioned? The DM taught me the most about running a game, but even she lost her cool with my half-elf rogue character at one point early on and nearly had her eaten by a bag of devouring. Sheer luck of the dice prevailed, and my now-epic thief-acrobat still carries that bag. It’s gotten her out of multiple scrapes.

19. In your review of The Dungeon Masters, you mention that you hoped the movie would be about the positive influence D&D can have in one’s life. Tell us how D&D can be a positive influence in a person’s life, or how it’s been a positive part of your life.

I gave many hours of interviewing for the film that never got used about the many, many ways Dungeons and Dragons, or any tabletop gaming, can be a positive influence in your life. It would take forever to detail all of it, so I’ll hit the highlights:

20. Tell us one thing that didn’t come across in the movie that you would want the public to know about you.

I’m not crazy! (Well, I am, but we all are in different ways.) I don’t spend my life in makeup, I’m actually a well-balanced individual, and I don’t hate men. (Just ask my Paige or Jess about that, they’d both roll their eyes and regale you with some stories I’d rather not have told detailing proof of that concept, hehe!) I *am* your average gamer– I have a steady job, family, friends, and a firm grip on reality with a base attack bonus of +7/+2.

No, seriously… I’m normal, I just have a hobby that’s shared by thousands of other people worldwide, including some really cool people like Wil Wheaton and Vin Diesel. I’m laid-back, cool, and moderately successful. I love who I am and what I do– I’m comfortable whether I’m painted or not, whether I’m sitting at a table rolling dice, chilling in a theatre watching a movie, singing in Rock Band, shooting pool with my friends, or bodyboarding down at the beach. As I’ve said many times before, that’s just me. Deal with it.

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Dungeon Masters Interview: Elizabeth Reesman

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