TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES & OTHER STRANGENESS: What Survived

I've been rolling dice, building worlds, and discovering just how badly plans can go wrong since 1987. My first RPG was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness. The friend who introduced me handed me a mutant rhino to play. I got him killed about twenty minutes later. Somehow, that didn't discourage either of us. About a year later, that same friend handed his Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition campaign over to me to run. I was 12 years old, sitting behind the screen and running a game for adults—and I've been playing and GMing ever since. More than three decades later, I still believe the best thing about this hobby is that there should be a place at the table for anyone who wants to be there. My table welcomes you. LGBTQ+ players are welcome. Neurodivergent players are welcome. First-time roleplayers are welcome. Lifelong gamers are welcome. You can arrive knowing the rulebook better than I do, or you can arrive having never picked up a set of funny-shaped dice before. I'll meet you where you are. You don't have to perform, know all the rules, do a voice, or be the loudest person at the table. You just need to be willing to share the table with everyone else. As a GM, I build living worlds where player choices matter. NPCs remember what you do. Factions pursue their own goals. Decisions have consequences. A person you helped six sessions ago may remember it when you desperately need a friend—and someone you crossed may remember that, too. I prepare deeply, but I don't prepare your decisions. I want to know the people, places, conflicts, and forces moving through the world well enough that when you do something I never expected, I don't need to force you back toward the story. We find out what happens instead. I love character-driven campaigns, difficult choices, mysteries, exploration, memorable NPCs, slow-burning storylines, and those wonderful moments when something seemingly insignificant from months ago suddenly matters. Combat can be dangerous and exciting, but some of the best sessions I've ever run have happened because the players found someone interesting and decided to talk. Your character's background isn't just decoration, either. Give me people they care about, things they regret, ambitions they haven't achieved, enemies they've made, or questions they haven't answered, and don't be surprised when some of those things become part of the world around them. But underneath everything I do as a GM is one principle: The game is bigger than any one person at the table—including me. The experience we're creating together is what matters. Every ruling I make, every storyline I introduce, every NPC I create, and every hour of preparation I put in is ultimately in service to that shared experience. The GM isn't above the game because they sit behind the screen. The most experienced player isn't above it because they've been playing for decades. The loudest personality isn't more important than the quietest. No character, storyline, clever idea, or individual moment matters more than the experience we're building together. The game belongs to all of us, and everyone at the table has a responsibility to make it better for everyone else. That's the social contract I bring to the table, and it's the standard I hold myself to first. I may create the world and set it in motion, but once we sit down together, what happens belongs to everyone. My job isn't to tell you my story while you roll dice inside it. My job is to give you a world worth entering, people and problems worth caring about, and the freedom to decide what your character does about them. I've been doing this since a mutant rhino met an unfortunate end in 1987. I'd like to think I've gotten a little better at it since then.