So, fellow GMs, DMs, Storytellers, Labyrinth Lords, and whatever other terms there are for this role

So, fellow GMs, DMs, Storytellers, Labyrinth Lords, and whatever other terms there are for this role...

What are your interests outside of tabletop gaming? Do you like history? Physics? Medieval weaponry? Do you study anything academically?

Has your knowledge of a topic ever influenced your game, be it through shaping your world, inspiring plot hooks, getting technical with some player about what would happen in a given situation, or something else? If so, do you think it's had a positive effect on your players' experience?

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Rockclimbing.
Hacking.

I don't bother bringing up the technical aspects of climbing in games as it just annoys non-specialists.

I try to use my knowledge of hacking to roleplay hackers better, use better descriptions of how an exploit might work, but I don't get too technical either because RPG hacking is like movie hacking: mainly hand-waved magic. And it's more fun that way. I don't want to roleplay sitting in an office for 2 weeks reading blade server specs or generating rainbow tables.

Do you want to roleplay social engineering to get someone to download a .zip file that secretly has a program on it to let you into the system, though? That kind of thing could be fun. Different element of realism.

I've tried that but it depends on how rigidly the game defines "hacking", and how detailed the rules are for it. Current real-world hacking is likely to be quite different from future-scifi-world hacking too.

I like masturbation

Amateur mma fighter here (MT, TKD, Judo, Wrestling, BJJ in that order), and MA movie buff. I always get compliments on my combats and descriptions of actions.

I have a friend who is into sailing, so whenever a question or detail comes up he's the de facto authority at the table. Helps make the sailing aspects a bit more realistic (naval combat, details about exploration/ maneuvers, etc.)

Another guy is pretty much a country roughneck, so he usually sticks to playing ranger. Helps me out with survival and exploration stuff. Other two players are engineers and programmers. We also all make our own brew together, so that influences alcohols in game (how they keep, how long to make, makes and types available in different regions, etc.)

Programming, music, motorcycles, other kinds of games.

Domain knowledge almost never makes it into my games. A lot of real world stuff isn't very exciting or interesting. Programming for instance is a lot of sitting in a chair, staring at screen, hating yourself and whoever wrote the mess in front of you (which was probably yourself).

I'm a graduate student studying cultural anthropology. I'm brainstorming for a campaign setting at present, and my knowledge and the ways I've been taught to think about society and such are likely to come in very handy throughout the whole process.

You should be an expert on railroady GMs, then, right?

I'm an MD/PhD candidate earning my doctorate in biomedical sciences. In a few Call of Cthulhu games I've inserted random medical facts as they pertain to the story.

Meming. Shitposting. Post-ironic posting. Baiting.

>cyber hacker
Pentesters call themselves security consultants.

>interests outside of tabletop gaming
Playing classical music, business, polisci, and data science.

When I want to, I can find bangin-ass music to turn on during the game. Also I have a slightly better idea of how merchants and economics work. And my stats background allows me to crunch numbers like a boss when I need to. If I really applied myself, I could make a good estimate of how long it would take the players to beat a given enemy.

I studied/got a degree in philosophy, been brushing up on physics, programming, Legal stuff, and chemistry, and like to write both novels and Rules.

This has resulted in some fucking weird cosmology, when the players actually find them.

I like story telling and makin games.

It all blends together very nicely.

I like to draw. I vgame and Lift. I just got into cooking which has been taking up a lot of my time, recently. Terrible literature, movies and anime are in my downtime. Fucking my gf and best player also take up a lot of my time

Drawing comes up a lot since I doodle certain encounters, characters or environments. Videogames in my games gives me a bad taste in my mouth but buff girls and guys are usually my character or a feature in my games. I do have an appreciation for cooking skills and the money or party bonding that comes with it.

I try not to make tasteless references but only half succeed. The last thing doesn't usually come up but if it is it's jokingly.

I'm a communist. I haven't told anyone, though my choice of settings could have tipped my players off.

Biology, Astronomy, History, Art, Music, and Cooking. ...And all of it finds its way to my gaming table.

HEMA-fag and local amateur glíma champ, utterly useless skills to have, even in systems like SoS or Audatia.

only use i have of them is that i can play really technical masters of combat well becuase i can just ass-spew a bunch of technical words and wew NPCs and players alike

operator skills find some use in GURPS games, but only as autism flavouring.

I'm OP and and I'm an anarchist. Everyone knows. Nobody cares much. What setting did you choose that tipped them off?
Nice. How does astronomy tend to factor in?

I did microbiology at uni and have a good foundation in most other fields of science.
I am interested in history andalso used to do medivial reenactment for several years till my wife asked me to stop due to injuries.

Both the study and knowing how to fight have made some of my more martial quests and world building better. The microbiology has yept when i did a post apoc world set after a global pandemic.

Outside my gaming hobbies? I like my job, books and my wife. Mostly I read a lot of lit and poetry. I'm the director of an account management department for medical tech stuff, and I guess a workaholic. Those two probably have a lot to do with the length I go to, developing adventures and campaigns. My literature background definitely influences my games. My big thing is Arthurian Romance, and I steal from it regularly. My job probably explains why none of my players consider charisma a dump-stat, any more.

Pursuing an MFA in creative writing (lol) and I sometimes use the same kind of strategies from DMing for at least coming up with concepts for stories. You know, the narrator will be doing his/her/their thing, and then I'll roll for a random encounter just to shake things up.

Not like running into bandits, of course, but like, suddenly remembering a childhood trauma, or a friend he/she/they haven't seen in a while shows up at their door. Or they find an envelope with a photo of them they don't remember. Stuff like that.

I treat DMing as a writing exercise, anyway. It's too bad that genre stuff doesn't really fly in MFA circles so much (unless you're phenomenally good at it, which I am not).

Occultism, literature, mythology, medieval weaponry, history, philosophy, ethics, theatre, bit of ecology.

Studying network administration and information security, would rather study anthropology, but who's going to hire me?

I'm a huge gun nut, and I know there are other gun nuts on Veeky Forums. I've taken some of my players out shooting after playing modern-day games where their characters used guns, and now a couple of them are gunfags too.