About me

I'm Tim, a game master with about 20 or so years of table top gaming experience, and I've spent the majority of those years as the DM. I have played a wide variety of systems, including Shadowrun 4th Edition, Vampire: The Masquerade, Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 and 5e, Pathfinder 1e, and GURPS 4th edition. I've been playing story driven games of all types for about 30 years. My games have run the gambit from totally homebrewed settings with creative world building and development to running published adventures and campaigns. I have experience in, and enjoy, a wide array of genres, settings, forms, and styles. I've built and run games in varying granularity, but always with an eye to the characters achieving thrilling heroics and fun shenanigans. I find self-defined originality to be as cliche as a knight storming a castle and recognize the unpretentious fun present in both. I'm drawn to all elements of the medium, with a strong emphasis on characters, story, and the narrative experience. Having said that, I prefer my tables and my tales to have a destination or story in mind, with characters having arcs and moving through a storied world, rather than simply trying to live in one world for too long. I have run groups as small as two and as large as 12, but I tend to prefer 4 or 5 as the max these days. Additionally, I find that I don't mesh well with extreme optimizers and min-maxers. I'm not interested in solving the math of the game, I'm not one to indulge a power fantasy purely as power fantasy, rather I'm interested in telling stories, compelling, comical, heroic, and, frankly, fun. Finally, outside of gaming and game mastering, I'm always looking to learn something new. I've two degrees, a Bachelor's and a Master's, and am a devout Christian. I'm interested in re-enchanting the world, and telling stories as part of my larger personal mission.

GM Style

I love character voices and roleplay, and work hard to bring that energy to all of the characters I play (whether as a GM or not). Additionally, I'm interested in telling stories, not necessarily in just kicking down the door and killing and looting. However, that doesn't mean those elements aren't there, it's just not the sole focus of my games. Generally, I think it is safe to say that I try to split my games into a 60/40 roleplay/combat ratio, but that's not always stable. That having been said, my style is often narrative and cinematic and isn't dependent solely on the rules to tell the tale. Players can expect an engaging, collaborative story, consistency in game mastering calls, and a focus on story beats rather than on getting to the next fight or loot zone. Furthermore, players should expect subtle and not so subtle characterization, narrative, and occasional exposition. If it helps, imagine my approach more along the lines of Star Wars: A New Hope rather than Star Trek: The Next Generation. That's not a knock on Star Trek, it's meant to provide an illustrative contrast to my style.

Games played

Game platforms used