A little about me: I'm 25 years old and have been running pen and
paper campaigns for a little over 8 years now, its the one hobby that
has stuck with me for most of my adult life. Over these 8 years I have
DMed for nearly 100+ campaigns and nearly as many players, and while I
wouldn't call myself the greatest DM in the world, I think I'm above
average and for a certain type of player I might even be considered
exceptional. Below I'll outline some of my playstyles when running a
game so you can know a little bit about what you are getting into should
you want to play!
Playstyles:
I'm a very loose DM when it comes to rules, and what I mean by
that is I'm a big believer in the rule of cool trumps all. If you want
to try something unique and creative in a certain situation and the
rules don't allow it, I'm going to try to find a way to make it work. I try to give every NPC a disctinct personality and I love
figuring out what makes them tick and conveying that to the players,
sometimes I do great at this, sometimes I miss, but you'll almost never
get "He says X" from me, I love acting out interactions. I do not use the wealth by level chart in my games, I find that
most of the time due to the tone of campaigns or the situations players
find themselves in that this gets restrictive, So I generally make
decisions based on what I feel is best for the players and the game on a
case by case basis. Some players enjoy this, other players want the
guidance of the chart. I generally don't pull punches in combats, PC death isn't
something that happens often in my games, but it does come up. I play
combats according to the enemies the players find themselves
encountering, if you are fighting ruthless drow, I play them as
ruthless. I don't make huge outlines that players follow from point A to
point B. I try to tell a story in my games, but I also respect the free
form aspects the game allows. I roll with the punches and whatever my
players decide they want to do, I adapt to it. Some players prefer a
tighter leash and just want to experience a story, this isn't really
what's in my wheel house, I try to let my PCs experience a world.
What I'm bad at:
Using the roll20 tools, since we'll be using roll20.net for the
game this is probably my biggest pitfall, I am a much bigger fan of the
theater of the mind, so if you enjoy elaborate maps and tons of detail
with roll20 tools, I'm not your guy. Knowing exact rules for specific scenarios, for example ship to
ship combat, this came up in one of my real life campaigns, I wasn't
sure exactly how it worked with the official rules, and not wanting to
bog the game down looking it up, I came up with my own on the fly, some
players find this frustrating, and I'm trying to improve on it, but its
how I run games. Giving players clear direction in character creation, like I
said above most of my campaigns are free form with one basic idea tying
it all together, so if you want to make a ranger who hates orcs and ask
me if that will fit in to the campaign, my answer will be if that is
where the party wants the game to go. I can be borderline silly at times, I love laughing while I play,
so sometimes an npc might break the fourth wall or say something
downright absurd, if this is something that bothers you to no end, you
probably won't be happy in my games.
So if you are still here after this massive wall of text, thank you
for your patience! I'm open to pretty much any day of the week in the
afternoons, after we get a party(I want to shoot for the 4-5 player
range) we can discuss logistics of meeting times, and what kind of
campaign you guys are interested in.
If you are interested let me know by posting in the comments or sending me a private message as to why you are awesome to play with and what you think constitutes a fun game!
