Brandon Lee Brown
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About Brandon Lee Brown
I've been making up fun stuff to do with friends for as long as I can remember, but I didn't start with TTRPGs until I squeezed into my friend's D&D 3.5 campaign in 2014. Once I got a taste, I had to start running the game as quickly as I could. Before I understood what a cantrip was, or a single concept about party composition, or what "edition" even meant in the context of D&D, I started running the game. I ran the game with a chess board for a battle map and dice or guitar picks as miniatures. I "did my own research" and put together a campaign that took place in a cleric's college called Pantheon, completely—blissfully—ignorant of the monstrosity of rules and lore cobbled together from disparate aspects of various editions of D&D, Pathfinder, or anything else that looked like it might work. We had a blast. To create a game experience from scratch? It was liberating on every level. Eventually, I started figuring out how the game was "supposed" to work. I bought the core books and read them cover to cover. Yes, I actually did that, it was a hyper-fixation like no other. I wanted to master every tool a dungeon master could. After multiple campaigns—and with Matt Mercer as my guiding star—I felt like I could do anything. In 2016 I was confident enough to take what homebrew I cooked up for my campaigns and put it out into the world. I put my design for Automaton NPCs on DMsGuild.com (where it's still the #1 search result for automatons) and when it did well, it fed my desire to make games just as much as running them for my friends in person. There were quality-of-life needs and gaps in the core rules that WoTC had left for players to figure out, so that's what I did. Since then, I've released 8 products on DM's Guild, 6 of which have best-seller awards. To this day, Level Zero has sold well over 5,000 copies of various D&D supplements with zero marketing effort. Over those few years, I became the D&D guy in all my social circles. I was running three games a week, I printed out massive battlemaps at the sign shop where I worked, I even became a DM for hire on Craigslist and made a lifelong friend doing it! Now, a decade later, I've expanded my horizons past the landscape of D&D and into other games, even designing a TTRPG of my own, Arcana. https://bento.me/arcana-ttrpg ⚔️💥💣
At a glance
Less than a year on StartPlaying
Featured Prompts
The three words my players would use to describe me are...
Flexible, detailed, and realistic.
How Brandon Lee Brown runs games
My GM Style is entirely player-focused. I rarely run modules, I typically run sandbox-style games with quests and stories written specifically for the player characters. We start with a Session Zero (free of charge) where we develop characters with strong backstories, goals, and deep ties to each other in the party. The following week, we'll play our first session starting at either 3rd, 5th, or 8th level for D&D or an equivalent in other systems. When running the game, I play according to the rules so that everyone is on the same page. I do have a few house rules that make the game more fun or forgiving. I'm patient with new players and I've brought over a dozen into the hobby. I'm also experienced enough to challenge veteran groups (come at me WoW Radiers!). I'm not an elite actor, but I'm not afraid to get deep into character and I'm always aiming for immersion. Above all else, I have a good sense for how each individual session is running, and I'm able to make a change of plans on the fly when the game or players call for it.
Brandon Lee Brown's Preferences
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