Yes, I finally put together a FAQ, seeing as I've started to get the same sort of questions in the past few months and it's more efficient answering them in this manner.

Game Design Questions
Q: How did you get started as a game designer?
A: Well, let me tell you....

Q: Will you design a spell/prestige class/monster/savage progression/whatever for me?
A: Sorry, but no. I have a huge backlog of stuff that I'm working on currently and stuff I'd like to work on in the near future, which means my free time is full and I'm unable to make time for custom design jobs like that.
    Just to give you an idea of the workaholic schedule I normally practice, let me tell you what I'm doing at the time of this FAQ's writing. I quit my job (because they were six weeks behind on payroll) and I'm looking for another job. On top of that I'm putting together the notes for my New Argonauts campaign so I can publish it as a 32-page mini-campaign setting PDF. I'm writing a 96-page book of characters for Reaper. I'm writing two LARPs for Gen Con ... which means I'm going to Gen Con, so that's a week out of my life. I'm writing an adventure for Dungeon, which I'll be playtesting with some local gamer friends of mine (and I need to prepare and paint minis for that). I'm planning a Musketeers campaign, which hopefully I'll turn into a mini-campaign PDF as well (and I'll need to prepare and paint minis for that as well). Then I have plans for a Ghostwalk campaign (again, needing minis). I have a monthly series of FR articles on the WotC site and more in the works for the Eberron setting. I have regular updates to my own site. I need to finish my analysis of the 3.5 PH and possible the DMG and MM as well. I want to finish reading Arcana Unearthed and Mutants & Masterminds and maybe post reviews of those as well. Then there's the modern-world supernatural mini-campaign I want to put together and possibly publish (yes, more minis). I'm putting together another multiauthor charity book. I have over 150 unanswered emails in my inbox. I live with my girlfriend and I like to spend time with her. My family lives less than an hour away and I like to spend time with them, too. My plate is full, and I need to be really careful about adding more to it, as I have a tendency to overcommit and that just stresses me out and makes my work suffer.
    If you really want me to design something especially for you, you should consider paying me for it, as that'll move it way up in my priorities, but right my rate for freelance works out to about $100 per page of material. Do I really think I'm worth that much? Not really, but it discourages all but serious offers.
    However, I always take suggestions for things. If I think it's a neat idea, I'll add it to my folder of ideas I'd like to work on in the future (currently running around 130 items) and if I'm lucky I'll get to it in the near future. :)

Q: OK, if you won't design it for me, will you look at the version I designed and give me some feedback?
A: Likewise, I don't have a lot of time to review other peoples' work. However, there are a lot of sharp people who visit my message boards on a daily basis. Post your creation there and you're sure to get feedback from them, and you're actually more likely to get a response from me on the boards than you would in my email because an unanswered email quickly scrolls out of sight, but a board thread keeps getting replies which keeps it in view longer.
    By the way, let me add at this point that I hate reviewing prestige classes. I don't like doing it even if I'm paid to do it. Reviewing prestige classes makes me want to barf. So even if you post it on my boards, I'll probably only give it a cursory look.

SeanKReynolds.com Questions
Q: I run a foreign-language website. Can I translate the articles on your website and post them on our site?
A: Certainly, just ask first, give me proper credit (say that the material is copyright Sean K Reynolds) and put a link back to my site. Also, if the material is Open, be sure you're following the Open Gaming License. Finally, if you give me the URL for the translated page I'll put a link to it from the item's page.

Q: Can I advertise my product on your message boards?
A: If you're just stopping by to post an ad and never return, don't even bother as I'll delete it. If you're a regular or even a semi-regular visitor to my boards and you want to do a "Hey, I got published in this book, here's the link if you want to check it out!" post, that's fine with me.

Q: Are you ever going to put any epic-level material on your site?
A: Probably not. I'm not interested in epic-level play and I don't own the Epic-Level Handbook, it's just not my cup of tea.

Q: Are you ever going to put any d20 Modern material on your site?
A: Possibly, but I have a lot of other stuff I want to get to first. I have an idea for a PDF product using the modern d20 rules, so after I put that together I might be inspired to do more.

Q: I'd like to redesign your site for you. Would you be interested in that?
A: Thank you, but no. I do all of my HTML by hand (except in some cases when I use Mozilla to compose it for me when I'm going to be using a lot of formatting tags, like this FAQ) and I don't use any of the crazy newfangled stuff that so many sites use today. I prefer my site to be simple, and something I can update on my own.

Q: I'd like to buy one of your painted minis. How much?
A: My minis aren't for sale; they're all things I'm using in a game or plan on using in a game in the future. There may be some from time to time that I decide to sell for some reason (for example, I plan on auctioning off most of the historical Greek minis I painted for my New Argonauts mini-campaign), and I'll announce those on the main page when that time comes, but my other minis are basically off-limits.

WotC Questions
Q: How do you really feel about WotC?
A: I still have many friends who work at WotC. I miss them very much and I want them to succeed. At the same time, I realize that they are working for a big company, which is owned by an even bigger company that bleeds money like a hemophiliac in a pit full of jagged glass, and that puts a lot of pressure on them in terms of their books making money and what sort of things they need to do to be profitability. They've had to cut their design and editing staff many times since WotC bought TSR, yet the number of books they produce has stayed about the same. That generally means more work for fewer people, and an increased reliance on freelancers. If you squeeze more work out of people they're going to miss the little mistakes more often. Using freelancers means you don't have your design team working together in the same creative space and encouraging each others' ideas. It's unfortunate, but I understand why it happens.
    Monte Cook has expressed his dislike of working for a big company, and I understand where he's coming from. Many times at WotC I found myself getting frustrated about decisions made in other parts of the company (such as laying people off in the same season you spend a salary's worth of money to sponsor a robot for the Robot Wars show), and the only way I was able to settle down was to go into "typing monkey mode." That's where I force myself to understand that my job as a designer is to design the best stuff possible, no matter what anyone else does, and not worry about those people making stupid decisions because it's not my job to do their job or to worry about those decisions. It keeps you sane, but it some ways it's kind of a bummer.
    To sum up: I like most of the people at WotC, I like socializing with them and in many cases even working with them, but I don't like some of the business that the company does (much of which is tied to being a Hasbro company, but some of which is just that they're a business and have to focus on making money).

Q: So you don't think you'll be writing any more books for WotC?
A: Probably not. I think that some of my comments have burned some bridges at WotC. Plus I like having the freedom to write anything I want about any topic I want, and it would be hard to go back to that. Plus I don't think they'd be willing to pay me what I'd want (remember I haven't written anything for WotC since I was laid off in March of 2002, so perhaps). They also have a large stable of semipermanent freelancers for FR (the most likely subject for any WotC freelance for me), so it's not like they need me any more.
    That won't stop me from writing stuff for the WotC website, though; I have a good relationship with my web producer and we both know my skill set and what sort of things I like to write.

General Gaming Questions
Q: How can I get started in the game industry?
A: I wrote an article on that very topic. :)

Q: What do you think of the Open Gaming movement?
A: I think the Open Gaming License is awesome. It gets rid of many of the problems of 90's TSR's stance on fan-created materials ("If you use the D&D format, we own it because we own D&D") and actually encourages other people (and other countries) to publish D&D-compatible works. This benefits three groups of people.
    The players. WotC has a limited number of people it can employ in its RPG department, and they'll never be able to create all of the products the fans want. The OGL means the number of D&D-compatible designers (and products) increases by a factor of ten or more, which means the guy who wants the "troll PCs in anime-style superheroes" campaign might actually find a book on that, and be able to introduce it to his gaming group without them having to learn an entirely new game system. Sure, there's a lot of average-to-poor product out there, but the players are better off with more choices.
    The other game companies. No longer does the guy with the really neat idea for a campaign setting (or a variant magic system, or a whole new set of races, or the epic mega-adventure, or...) have to come up with their own game system and worry about balancing the core rules of that game system. They can just use the d20 system under the SRD, and know that it's a solid system that's pretty flexible and well-balanced after a lot of work and a lot of playtests. This means that the guy who's really good at making adventure plots doesn't need to worry about making his D&D-like races balanced against each other. The guy who's really good at convoluted histories with national and racial interactions doesn't need to create his own magic system. And so on. They can just focus on what they're good at or what they're interested in, and not worry about making mistakes with the stuff they're not good at; just use the core rules.
    WotC. Wizards is the real winner. All of those people writing for and playing with the d20 system need the 3 core books to do it (well, they can just get by with downloading the SRD, but most people prefer actual books). That means every time company X sells a copy of their Troll Anime Superheroes d20 game, it's going to someone familiar with the Player's Handbook (and probably owns one or more PHs). In other words, increased sales for WotC. And all of these other companies are filling the niche markets that WotC doesn't have the staff to write for, so WotC isn't getting annoying fan letters about "How come you don't publish what I want?" These other companies can also handle the smaller, less profitable books like adventures, which are too expensive for WotC to produce and still make money on; WotC has a large support staff and a large overhead, compared to "Three Guys In a Basement Games," which don't have to allocate part of their profits to a human resources department, shipping & receiving, or any other employees that are necessary for a good-sized business but don't contribute directly to the company's bottom line). If TGiaBG makes $500 selling 100 copies of their new adventure, they're happy; if WotC makes $5,000 selling 1,000 copies of their new adventure, it's a waste of time. True, some people at WotC still see the OGL as "competition" to D&D, but it's not ... the OGL supports D&D, drives sales of D&D, and strengthens the market share of D&D.

Q: Any comments on the Book of Erotic Fantasy?
A: Personally I don't think I would ever have need of this book in a campaign I ran. However, some people might, and who am I to deny them this sort of material for their campaign? I've only skimmed the book, but from what I've seen it looks like it's presented in a mature way, and the cursory look I gave to the game mechanics didn't sound any alarms; Gwen Kestrel (one of the two authors on the book) is a smart woman who knows the rules and I'm sure she put a lot of work into making it a quality book. Someday I'll get around to reading it in detail and doing a more formal review.
    I am disappointed that WotC changed the d20 System License so they can require approvals (note that it wasn't done in reaction to this book ... the decision was made before the book was announced). If anything, the change opens up WotC to potential problems because by assuming censoring-control over the content it makes them responsible if they choose to not censor that content. Plus, as it's worded, WotC can do a retroactive revocation of the license, which means a book that's been on the shelves for a year and ignored by WotC suddenly can be found in violation of the license and recalled. That's going to discourage people from writing about certain topics in d20-logo'd books.

Q: What books have you worked on?
A: The My Books section of my site (linked from the main page) covers all of that stuff.

Q: What magazine articles have you written?
A: That's a tougher question. I think the complete in-order list is (and sorry, I don't have issue numbers for these):
    Dragon Magazine: Alternity Vampires, How To Design a Feat (with Jonathan Tweet), Power Plays (written as one article but spread out over several issues, then reprinted in the 2nd printing of the 3.0 PH), Dwarven Language, Elven Language, Orc Language, Planetouched Feats (a preview of the stuff I wrote for Races of Faerûn), Saurials (later turned into a web enhancement for Races of Faerûn), War Magic, Ghostwalk Guild Secrets: The Bloody Swords.
    Dungeon: None ... yet.
    Polyhedron Newszine: Of Varsks and Winter Witches (a tie-in short adventure to go with the Polyhedron-only regional supplement for Vosgard in the Birthright setting).
    Living Greyhawk Journal: Enchiridion of the Fiend-Sage (a 7-part series of monster articles), Monkeyman (a somewhat humorous monster article in response to strange "monkey" attacks occuring in India at the time), Hero-Gods of Oerth (very minor deities of Greyhawk, co-authored with Erik Mona and Fred Weining).

Q: What's your favorite D&D/d20 campaign world?
A: It's a cop-out answer, but there are things I like about each of them. Ravenloft is cool and spooky; FR is full of interesting and old magic and the idea that anything can happen if you put your mind to it; Greyhawk is old-school with racial tensions, dead civilizations, and complex political interactions; Dark Sun is weird and different; Ghostwalk changes your conceptions of death in a D&D campaign; Dragonlance is backed by six interesting novels and cool concepts for magic; Birthright has the bloodlines and the awnshieglen. And so on. I'm not really familiar with the Scarred Lands or any other non-WotC settings, so I don't have anything to say about them.

Real-World Questions
Q: Is the story of your ex-girlfriend with the multiple personalities really true?
A: Yes, it is. She really has multiple personalities (after all I saw with my own eyes in the year that I spent with her, I believe it's true), she really did plan on killing me in my sleep, and she really did cheat on me with my best friend and dump me for him. And so on.

Q: What are your feelings on internet piracy?
A: I'm of two minds.
    One, as writer I think people should respect copyrights because that's how I (and many other people) make a living. Copying a book or downloading a PDF without paying for it is basically like taking money out of my pocket, especially if I'm supposed to get royalties for each sale (and a person who downloads it for free doesn't have much incentive to pay to download it again).
    Two, I'm aware that most of the people who pirate books rarely are the sort of person who's into buying the book anyway. They're either collectors with huge collections which they see as some sort of status thing but never have time to read let alone play, or they're "career pirates" who scan stuff and post it to gain status in the pirate community but (again) aren't interested in playing the stuff.
    There's a very small number of people who do download illegal copies, either because they're curious about the material (they want to browse it like they would a print copy in a store) or they can't afford to pay for it. But it's a really small number and I don't think it has a significant effect on sales (most people in the first category who like the book would choose to buy it, and the people in the second couldn't buy it anyway, so may the sales go down by a handful, but it's miniscule compared to the number of copies sold).
    Now, I don't think "can't afford to pay for it" is a valid excuse, especially as (1) gaming is a luxury, not a life necessity like food, clothing or shelter ... if you go without a new gaming book this month you're not going to starve or freeze to death, and (2) there is so much free material out there that you could spend a year reading it before you had to start looking at for-pay material (on my site alone there's probably at least 10MB of material).
    But anyway, I strongly discourage people from downloading pirated PDFs, but unless they wave the fact that they do so in my face I'm not going to worry about it.

Q: Are you saying you don't have illegally-downloaded music, books, or movies on your computer?
A: That's correct. I don't own any movies on my computer. I prefer reading novels in print and all of the RPG books I own in electronic form are either books I wrote, books friends wrote and gave to me, archives given to me as resources for various writing projects, or books I purchased from RPGnow or similar sources. All of my MP3s are either from CDs I own or owned ("owned" in the sense that I used to have them but they have since been stolen) or downloaded legally.

Q: Are you a sexist? You use "guy" a lot in these examples.
A: I don't think so. I'm a liberal feminist, but I don't buy into the whole trend of political correctness. In a professional environment I don't use language that might offend a reasonable person, but I don't consider "guys" to be sexist when it's applied to a group of men and women. I like WotC's used of different-gendered iconic PCs and how the gender of those PCs determines which pronouns you use (references to rogues in the PC are assumed to refer to Lidda, the iconic rogue, who is female, therefore pronoun references to rogues use "she" instead of "he"). Likewise, I like White Wolf's approach in their Storyteller RPG books (such as Vampire: The Masquerade) where the pronouns assume the storyteller (DM) is female and the player is male, so they can write an example paragraph using "she" and "he" consistently and you always know who they're referring to.
    So no, I don't believe I'm sexist. Most of my closest friends are women. I support womens' causes. Just because I say "guys" doesn't mean I'm making sort of snub at women. And it's certainly better than English-speaking male literature snobs who insist that "he" is a gender-neutral pronoun.

Q: Why are you such an opinionated bigmouth?
A: Maybe it's because of my science background, but when I form an opinion on something it's usually after careful deliberation and the examination of a lot of evidence, so I'm on pretty solid ground. That covers the opinionated part. As for being a bigmouth, well, I used to say that I'm shy, but my friends convinced me otherwise, so now I just let it all out. I'm truthful, I don't mince words, and I tell it like it is. I just don't like lies.

Q: What's your take on religion?
A: I believe that some people need a supernatural explanation for how things work in the world. I don't. If you need your faith to get you through the day, or your faith makes you a better and stronger person, more power to you. If you use your faith to belittle, oppress, hate, or objectify others, get out of my face.

Q: How can I email you?
A: Send an email to