Andy

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How Andy runs games

I love telling stories with your characters at the center of them. I want to see them struggle, succeed, make terrible decisions, surprise me, and occasionally completely derail whatever I thought was going to happen. Most importantly, I want my players to enjoy the story and feel like their characters genuinely matter to the world around them. I have been fortunate enough to become one of the top GMs on StartPlaying, but I have tried very hard not to let that change what I offer or what I charge. I want my games to remain accessible, consistent, and worth looking forward to every week. I would much rather build a table that stays together for a year than constantly chase the next new campaign. Many of my players have been gaming with me for a long time, sometimes across multiple campaigns, settings, and characters, and that sense of community has become one of my favorite parts of running games here. These days, most of my campaigns are multiplayer, multi-table shared universe games. Different groups may be adventuring in different places, following different stories, or sometimes playing in entirely different corners of the same setting, but they inhabit a living world together. What happens at one table can become news at another. NPCs remember events. Places change. Organizations rise and fall. Characters can develop reputations far beyond their own group. Occasionally, separate stories even collide. I love creating the feeling that the campaign world continues to exist when your particular table is not looking at it. I run games in a wide variety of settings and systems. I do not mind crunchy games, but I tend to gravitate toward systems that give characters and storytelling room to breathe. I am also much more interested in creating something specifically for my players than simply moving a group through a published adventure. Your character sheet tells me what you can do. Your backstory tells me what kind of trouble I should start creating. Presentation is a huge part of my games. I go all out with visual aids, custom character and NPC artwork, tokens, maps, handouts, newspaper articles, documents, in-world websites, props, music, and other tools that make the setting feel tangible. I frequently create thematic videos and trailers featuring current characters and plot developments, sometimes using them to recap previous sessions or tease what is coming next. I even have voice modification software when a scene calls for it. Character voices may never be my greatest talent, but getting into character certainly is. My goal is to give the game a tangible presence. For a few hours each week, I want you to lose yourself in our world. I want you to become invested in your character, the other characters at the table, the NPCs you meet, and the places you are fighting to protect, escape, conquer, or occasionally accidentally destroy. That experience does not necessarily stop when the session ends. I enjoy keeping my worlds alive between games through text-based roleplay when scheduling permits. Sometimes that means a short conversation with an NPC. Sometimes players end up spending an evening pursuing a personal subplot, researching something they discovered, or simply letting their characters have a moment that would have slowed down the main session. These scenes are never intended to become homework. They are simply another opportunity to inhabit the world if you want it. I structure most of my campaigns like television series, with individual sessions treated as episodes and larger story arcs organized into seasons. A typical season runs approximately 18 to 24 episodes. If everyone is still enjoying themselves when we reach the finale, there is usually an opportunity for another season. Between seasons I normally take about two weeks to update NPCs and artwork, incorporate everything the characters have changed, prepare new material, and build the next arc around who those characters have become. I am not someone who wants to rush toward the ending. Some of my campaigns and shared worlds can run for years. Characters grow, relationships change, old decisions return at inconvenient times, minor NPCs unexpectedly become important, and stories that began months earlier can suddenly collide. Long-form storytelling is the part of tabletop gaming that I love most. I also try to make sure every character gets time in the spotlight. I do not expect players to arrive with twenty pages of backstory, but if you give me something to work with, I will use it. Families, rivals, old friends, enemies, ambitions, mistakes, fears, strange possessions, unanswered questions, and even seemingly insignificant details can all become part of the campaign. I want your character to feel like they belong in the story rather than feeling like they were dropped into someone else's. I no longer run solo games. My focus is on multiplayer campaigns and the shared universe experiences that have grown around them. Most tables are built around groups of players who can develop relationships, rivalries, friendships, and stories together while contributing to a larger world. I also make a conscious effort to keep my prices reasonable. I would rather have consistent tables filled with players who are excited to be there every week than price people out of long-term play. When you join one of my campaigns, my goal is to provide the same level of preparation, visual presentation, storytelling, and investment week after week. If you are interested in a system or setting that I am not currently running, feel free to ask. I am always interested in new worlds. I simply ask for enough time to properly learn or refresh myself on the system and create the assets necessary to run it at the same standard as my existing games. Finally, please keep in mind that some games take time to fill. I would much rather wait for the right group than rush a campaign to the table. Before joining, please make sure the scheduled time and price work comfortably for you. Long-term campaigns are at their best when everyone can consistently be there. If you have questions about one of my games, a shared universe, a character idea, or whether you would be a good fit for a particular table, please send me a message here or on Discord. I will respond. At the end of the day, I am here because I love storytelling. Give me a character you care about, and I will do everything I can to give them a world worth getting lost in.

Featured Prompts

Andy's ideal table

My tables tend to be very invested in their characters, just as I am. There is a lot of activity on the Discord servers between sessions in most cases. I love hearing your ideas, and most of my tables are always very excited to share their thoughts.

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