Celticdenefew
she/her
4.9
(56)
Timezone
Identity
About Celticdenefew
Picture it - 1986. 5 children sit around a table while an adult teaches them to play D&D. One small, blonde girl rolls an oddly shaped die and the number facing up is a 20. The children cheer! That little girl wasn't me, it was my little sister. But even though that moment wasn't about my character it has stuck with me all these years. That is the power of role playing games. I played AD&D 2e until my early 20's when life just got too busy and friends drifted apart. I came back to the hobby like many others, after watching many hours of Actual Plays during the pandemic and deciding I just HAD to play again. Since finding a DM is hard and all those hours of watching others play made me feel like I knew the rules, I felt that the only way I could play again was to be the DM. I scoured the internet for one shots and other DMs to hone my craft with. I discovered Foundry and Adventurer's League and have been learning and growing with every game. I am really happy learning new systems and styles and always grab the opportunity to learn, play in or run new RPGs!
At a glance
3 years on StartPlaying
360 games hosted
Highly rated for: Creativity, Inclusive, Teacher
Featured Prompts
My favorite books are
The first Mistborn trilogy, The Dresden Files, The Hunger Games.
People are always surprised when I tell them
I worked at the South Pole for 2 Austral Summers and 1 Austral Winter.
The three words my players would use to describe me are...
When I asked my players the first response was "Always be Scheming." :D Other responses included Inclusive, Helpful, Patient, Flexible.
How Celticdenefew runs games
I straddle the line of Rules and Cool, the greatest creativity comes from having to work within limitations. I love roleplay, I enjoy when PCs have personalities and dreams and make sure the NPCs have their own goals and quirks. I encourage players to think and play as their characters, make "bad" in character decisions. I encourage roleplay over rollplay and give space for PC decisions to change the world around them. I love cinematic games which integrate backstory and PC experiences into adventures. I like to use prewritten adventures as frameworks, not blueprints. Choices the PCs make will affect the adventure later, whether for good or ill. I enjoy tactics as much as roleplay, and do my best to make the combats that do happen interesting and engaging. Remember not everything needs to end in violence, think outside the sword! A lot of my modern D&D experience is in Adventurer's League, West Marches/Living World games and one shots. I am used to drop in games and merging player actions with plot lines to make a cohesive whole... except in the Feywild... only the Fae can make sense of the Feywild! I have been playing more and more outside of D&D. I love narrative games and am quickly falling in love with Powered by the Apocalypse in particular. It is my GM goal to learn to run Fate and to finally run the Dresden Files RPG.
Featured Prompts
My games focus on...
the emotional hearts of the characters. How do they feel about what's going on in the world around them and the things they are doing within it? In games like TSL it's about flirtation, getting smitten, but also Fighting the Man™. In D&D it might be about fighting evil and saving/losing loved ones.
Rules are...
important for understanding how a game wants to be played. I try not to change rules or mechanics of games until I have an understanding of why they are there and what they are meant to accomplish. I don't generally ignore rules in Narrative games, but I do fiddle with D&D mechanics.
Celticdenefew's ideal table
I like proactive role-players. Folks who are willing to take big risks and make big swings to collaboratively drive the story forward. Most of my players are neurodiverse, which makes for fun and wacky moments - but also occasionally "bad brain days" where attention wanes. We all work together to pull folks back in respectfully, or just accept that sometimes these days happen and we will do better next week. Most of my players are queer, we respect pronouns and understand love is love. Many enjoy romance in games, whether it involves their PC or not.
Featured Prompts
I love it when a player
cares about telling a collaborative story. Uses game mechanics as a structure for their roleplay, not their whole playstyle. Communicates openly with other players about what they want from the game and then works together with everyone to make sure we create a safe space to tell meaningful stories.
I think metagaming...
is a spectrum. There's good metagaming like understanding that we're playing a game, balancing what your character would do and what is best for the other players. There's also bad metagaming, like reading an adventure, looking at stat blocks, and trying to "win."
Celticdenefew's Preferences
Systems
Game Mechanics