The Curse: Desperation in Ravenloft 🏳️‍🌈

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.” — Bilbo Baggins The road awaits. I’ve been a professional Storyteller for several years now, and I still wake up some mornings a little astonished that this is my life. Making a living from my imagination was once the sort of thing one says wistfully into a drink at 2 a.m. Now it’s what I do. I build worlds. I breathe life into monsters and misfits and heroes. I open strange doors and invite people to step through them with me. And oh, what marvelous trouble we find on the other side. These days, I find myself more and more enchanted by games that move like stories ought to move, boldly, unpredictably, with a little blood on their teeth and a little poetry in their bones. Lately that means a great deal of love for SWADE and other systems that prize momentum, improvisation, and player agency. I like games that feel alive. I like stories that can surprise me. I like the delicious moment when a player makes a choice so unexpected and so perfect that the entire world tilts on its axis. That, to me, is the good stuff. I believe the best stories ask us to be brave. Not dragon-slaying brave, necessarily, though there’s certainly room for that, but the quieter sort of bravery. The kind that lets us inhabit a character fully. The kind that lets us care. The kind that risks sincerity, vulnerability, or glorious, ridiculous failure. But none of that can happen unless people feel safe first. So let me be very clear: my table is a haven. It is a place for weirdos, wanderers, goblins, goths, queers, daydreamers, theatre kids, rules lawyers, recovering gifted children, and anyone who has ever felt just a little too much or a little too loudly for the room they were in. I am a neurospicy trans woman and an educator, and I care deeply about creating spaces where people can show up as themselves and know they’ll be treated with kindness and respect. Bigotry, hatred, and intolerance are not welcome at my table. We do not negotiate with that nonsense. We are here to tell beautiful stories and maybe cry about fake people. Like all good stories, mine begins long before I knew what it was becoming. I was raised on Tolkien, on old magic and older roads, on the ache of leaving home and the promise of becoming someone new before you return. I was already in love with fantasy and science fiction before tabletop ever entered my life, Heinlein, Asimov, Le Guin, and all the rest were rattling around in my skull like benevolent ghosts. Then my father and I picked up the old red box D&D for my older sister on a whim. She never really took to it, but a few years later her boyfriend ran a couple of games for me, and that was that. My feet went out from under me, just as Bilbo promised they might. I wandered quickly from Basic D&D into AD&D, and if I’m being honest, AD&D 2nd Edition will always have a little shrine in my heart. I have roamed the realms in many forms over the years, and I’ve dallied with no shortage of other systems along the way: GURPS, Champions, World of Darkness, Shadowrun, Middle Earth (Rolemaster), Robotech, Rifts, and many more. I found 3.x and 4e a bit too crunchy for my tastes, yes, I know, this from someone who played Palladium games with a straight face, but 5e managed the impossible and made me fall in love with D&D all over again. Somewhere in there, in the dark and lawless age of AOL chatrooms and IRC, I also spent a great many hours in freeform online roleplay, which only deepened my love of collaborative storytelling. I enjoy being a player, but I have always, always been a Game Master at heart. There is a particular kind of alchemy in running a good game. A table full of people breathing in sync, hanging on the same moment, building something ephemeral and impossible together, it feels very much like magic, and I am greedy for magic. For many years, I also performed in Castleton at the Oklahoma Renaissance Festival, where I learned what armor actually feels like when you’ve been wearing it too long, what it means to move through the world in character, and how to make a little wonder out of dust and sweat and commitment. That experience never really left me. It follows me into every game I run. I try not to inflict too much realism on my players, but I do like a world that feels textured, lived-in, and just a little dangerous. Then came COVID, as it did for all of us, and I found myself aching for D&D. I joined an online pickup game on Roll20, met some delightful nerds I still game with to this day, and almost immediately caught the Storyteller bug again. I started running games. Then I heard about professional GMs and, like many people, scoffed. Surely not. Surely that was nonsense. Reader, it was not nonsense. Bartending was slow, money was tight, and I thought, “Well, perhaps I’ll post a game or two.” Before long I had two campaigns in full swing, both of which ran for over three years. What began as a side hustle became a calling, and in April of 2021, I quit bartending and stepped fully onto the road. And here I am still, wandering, conjuring, plotting, cackling softly behind the screen. If you’re looking for a table where the story matters, where your choices matter, where your character is more than a stat block in fancy boots… if you want a game with heart, atmosphere, sharp teeth, and the occasional devastating emotional payoff… if you want a GM who loves drama, danger, humor, horror, tenderness, and the glorious chaos of players ruining all her plans… Then come along. There are strange roads yet to travel, and I would be delighted to see where yours leads. “All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost.” — J.R.R. Tolkien