Marcus

he/him

Timezone

America/denver

Language

English

About Marcus

Hey how's it goin', I'm Marcus and I'm cautiously exploring ways to ditch my corporate job. I don't necessarily expect this to replace it, but am maybe seeing if this can help the transition away from it. My experience with tabletop roleplaying games stretches back to 1992 or 1993 when my brother introduced me and my friends to "Red Box", B/X (as it may be more commonly known these days), D&D. We quickly started buying AD&D2E books, and eventually went into 3E, as well as other popular systems of that time like WEG Star Wars, Shadowrun 2E, and RIFTs. This ignited a life long passion in me for ttrpgs which continues to this day, with only a ~6 year "break" during and after college in the early-mid 00s. I've been GMing for as long as I've been playing. But would say I have maybe 10 years of aggregate experience where I've been either exclusively, or predominantly, the GM at the table (having kids took me out of GMing for awhile, and I had a group for ~12 years that rotated GMing duties between all 5-6 of us). And my gaming experience stretches across... I don't know exactly, but certainly dozens of systems. Some of my favorites nowadays are the Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars RPG (as well as it's sister system - Genesys), Vampire the Masquerade (and other World of Darkness lines), and Cortex Prime. That said, I'm running D&D5E (actually Lord of the Rings 5E, but...) currently in my personal life.

At a glance

Less than a year on StartPlaying

How Marcus runs games

It depends on the system. For more traditional RPG systems (D&D, Shadowrun, etc), I tend toward more linear campaigns with "Situation-based" quests. I usually prefer Milestone-based leveling, as I tend to downplay combat (no "6 encounters per game day" for me), instead leaning into exploration and investigation and discovery/roleplay and puzzles. Though I could certainly run a more combat oriented campaign if that's what players wanted. In other more narrative oriented systems, I tend toward more emergent stories. There may be a background, overarching "quest" or problem or goal, and I will always give the players a clear option for "this is what you COULD do" but the way in which the players address that can emerge more from their choices and the story will be more about their characters specifically.