I do not take part in pay-to-play games. No exceptions.
I do not take part in adventure modules.
I do not take part in games on Fantasy Grounds. No exceptions. Because telling them I don't care who would win in a fight between a beholder and a tarrasque apparently means I'm a bot.
I'm currently only seeking video-and-voice games.
I play my characters as people first and foremost. I hope for long-term campaigns that will lead to a chance to develop and grow them through personal and interpersonal experience. I also hope to be able to play my characters with a sense of agency, letting their actions affect what happens to them and their world (though not necessarily as intended). Without going into a lot of detail, my life has gone such that such a sense of agency has been thoroughly diminished, so I want to find it in something I do for fun. So to be explicitly clear: I don't do grimdark.
I've learned to not create characters who are supposed to be protagonists, choosing instead to make ones who have backgrounds and motivations with generally lower stakes so they're more willing to cooperate and interact with other party members.
I hope for an experienced GM (or a very experienced player who's trying their hand at GMing) who is flexible in terms of what brings our characters into their world, and for that world to be one that's lived in. I'm interested in a campaign that starts with a group of random shitheads who come together in loose pairs and trios to take part in small adventures to get by, progressively finding themselves more entwined with larger events. That has much more appeal to me than a bunch of level 1 to 3 characters being summoned by The King of All to save the world, or some similar nonsense. I also hope to play in an organic world where each of the races aren't unified; I'm pretty tired of worlds with "The Elf Nation" and "The Orc Nation" and so on.
I often play party faces - which are not necessarily Charisma casters in D&D - as I have learned a lot about empathetic listening and treat NPCs like real people. I tend to enjoy playing such characters, but like to shake it up with ones who are more misanthropic or bizarre instead. Either way, I come up with key background details to flesh out my characters as people, and I prefer to keep most of these details secret from the other players. After all, real people don't know the ins and outs of personal histories at the drop of a hat. As I said, I hope for long-term campaigns where the party members will grow closer and learn such details through trust and relevance. But I don't make hyper-detailed backstories, as I want to leave some ambiguous gaps for the GM to have potential to play with in secret and surprise me later.
I enjoy combat. I like playing characters who can be tactical badasses. I also enjoy narration of notable successes - in combat or otherwise - so I like any GM who will ask something along the lines of, "How do you want to do this?"
Sadly, I've been sorely disappointed when I've joined up with almost all groups, and I have spent a lot of time determining the factors that led to said disappointment. If I've applied to your campaign and you're reading this, or if you found me in a player listing, then you definitely should not invite me if your GMing style is not in line with the following:
-Don't start the campaign off with "You all meet in a..." Nothing is more awkward from the outset than trying to force a bunch of random strangers to work together. Why not require us to have prior connections with one or two others in the group? It doesn't have to be a deep connection, it could just be a familiar acquaintance. Even that can be enough to make a character motivated to work with a larger group of people they don't know or trust.
-Give out appropriate rewards. I've had GMs who handed out too little and too much loot. When it's the former, I get frustrated because my character doesn't feel inclined to work with the employers involved in the main story. When it's the latter, I feel like the world isn't a lived-in one and my character is comparable to a video game avatar. Strike the balance between the harsh reality I'm trying to escape from and the overindulgent power fantasy.
-Immerse me in your world. I've had a number of GMs who didn't put much - if any - effort into describing the surroundings and making the setting into a living, breathing entity. Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking for a Tolkienesque approach where every tree branch has an elaborate backstory with far too much detail. For example, if we're meeting with a barkeep, show/tell us about how tall they are, their physique, and whether they clean a tankard, spit in it and wipe it off, or just hand it to us dirty. Such details usually get brushed aside so the party can get to the action, and that's always a disappointment to me. If you make it clear to me that you don't care about your world or the people in it, then I'm simply not going to be motivated to care either.
-Don't let in Min/Maxers or Power Gamers. Seriously, why do GMs keep letting them in? In my experience, they are nothing but disruptive to games. Because of the disproportionate power of their characters, GMs have to design combat encounters that are much harder in which the rest of the party is basically impotent while the Min/Maxers and Power Gamers are the only ones who can do real damage. And in general, Min/Maxers and Power Gamers tend to be disruptive to the group out of character as well, given their obsession with making what is just an optimized list of stats that will always win at the expense of everything and everyone else.
-It is not the players' obligation to create a balanced party, but the DM's to create balanced encounters. This applies to non-combat encounters as well. Note: said encounters don't need to be winnable.
-Don't invite people to your game on a first come, first served basis. As I said, I hope for a good long-term campaign. If your attitude is to not be picky and cast a wide net because you figure some people are going to drop the game anyway, your game won't last.
-Pace the escalation. This is a big one for me. I've been in WAY too many campaigns that decided to throw a bunch of fresh characters into a grand scheme to save the world. And it has NEVER ended well, because fresh characters don't have the sense of party identity needed for that. Fresh characters don't know how to work together, don't have the rapport to feel like a dynamic group, and don't have any personal stakes in the successes or failures of their fellows. Keep the immediate stakes low while slowly building up the world-threatening aspects in the background and the peripheral. Same goes for dangerous elements from party member backstories. Keep the dangers the party faces impersonal for a while so we have a chance to learn how to synergize, and include periods of calm in which we get to know each other. That way, we can be invested in helping one another by the time we face challenges with direct links to party members.
-If you're going to skew the results, don't let your players know. I get it, DMs fudge rolls or outright ignore them and that's their choice. If they're nice DMs, they do it for the sake of the party. But PLEASE don't let us know you're doing it. It cheapens the victories and makes it feel like our choices don't matter.
-Talk to your players. I've been through multiple games that died because the GM didn't communicate with us and suddenly decided to shut the game down without a word at the first sign of adversity. Friction is going to happen, both between players and the GM and players and players. If you as a GM have concerns about something that's been said or done, please be able to discuss it, discretely if need be. And on that note, be receptive to feedback from your players. Feedback means we care enough about your campaign that we want to enjoy it to the fullest. Players caring about your campaign is a VERY good thing.
-On the topic of communication, be transparent about restrictions on character options. I'm not against such restrictions, as they can make a lot of sense. If your campaign is set in the stone age, for example, I wouldn't expect to be allowed to play as a wizard. But such restrictions need to be made VERY clear early on, or you're going to find people leaving your games VERY quickly.
-It's a game, not a life simulator. Longer rest periods; complicated body part mechanics; lingering injuries; hourly hydration; announcing whenever my characters defecate; none of these alternate rules interest me. In most cases, the default rules are sufficient for me and I don't want to replace them. Add to them, maybe, but not replace. I play RPGs to escape from overly complicated reality. I'm here to have fun.
-Put your foot down with players who miss or are late to sessions without (reasonable) explanation. The time and effort a GM puts into a campaign can indeed make it frustrating, but it's also frustrating to the players who make their own commitment to set aside multiple hours for a play appointment, get excited, show up, then find out that a session is going to be cancelled because half of the party hasn't shown up or contacted the GM.
-Now for an interjection: In a private message, tell me what your favorite animal is. This will show me that you've actually read this. If you don't tell me what your favorite animal is, I'm going to assume that you've either glossed over these points or have ignored them entirely and I will not join your game if invited. This list is intended to help me separate the awesome GMs from the shitty ones, after all.
-Don't try to convince us that a quest is optional when the enemies involved pose a direct threat to the party's well-being. Sure, we could ignore it, but if we have any inkling that doing so will pose a greater threat to us down the road, we won't. There's a difference between "optional" and "compelling."
-D&D does not stand for "Drunk & Drunker" or "Dope & Dank." I'm talking about the DM and players, not the characters. Need I say more?
-Be comfortable with roleplaying being roleplaying. You're going to have male players who want to play female characters and vice versa. You're going to have players who feel that their characters are falling in love with another character, be it one of the other player characters or one of your NPCs; be it heterosexual, homosexual, or something else. If you're not comfortable with any of that, then you really shouldn't be looking for games on the open internet.
-That said, there's a difference between roleplaying and being a detriment to the experience. If a player decides to have their character deliberately make mistakes at the expense of the party because it's "what my character would do," that's a problem. To be clear, I'm not talking about making a decision that's a sub-optimal strategy because the character's core values are at stake; I'm talking about knowingly making a bad decision that defies a sense of self-preservation, such as holding hands with a nasty-looking wraith or waving in greeting to a group of vampires we're trying to avoid the notice of (no really, both of those have happened, in the same session). We're not just playing characters, we're telling a story. And unless it's about a solo protagonist who succeeds despite how ridiculously buffoonish they are, no one likes a story that involves a central character who is too stupid to breathe.
-Respect your players' hard limits. Dark themes to a game are one thing, but don't go into elaborate detail on things like rape, torture, murder, and anguish. You can establish that such things have taken place, but understand that you may have players who are easily disturbed by such themes. You're more than likely to have a rape survivor among your players. So if a player tells you they're not comfortable with something dark, respect and oblige that discomfort, because there's probably a very good reason for it.
I don't hold it against you if you think I'm hard to please because - frankly - you're not wrong. As was said in "World's Greatest Dad": I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone.