Driftless Journeys

he/him

5.0

(8)

Timezone

America/chicago

Language

English

Identity

Neurodivergent

About Driftless Journeys

Hey there! My name is Paul and I've been Game Mastering for more than 30 years and I've played most editions of D&D from red book basic through to 5.5e. I'm fond of White Wolf/Onyx path games such as Vampire, Mage, and Exalted; indie games like Sorcerer, Dogs in the Vineyard, Apocalypse World, and Monster Hearts; and I've been known to do a home brew game system or two. I love games that range in tone from serious to silly and back again. I take a lot of inspiration from from the landscape of where I live and grew up in the upper Midwest: wide open fields, windy rolling hills, sun dappled oak forests, dark bogs and fens, muddy rolling rivers, big cities, small towns, and history and mysteries abound in all of them. From my education in anthropology I love stories about human nature: where we come from, what came before, what makes people and societies tick, to rise, to fall, and to persevere.

At a glance

Less than a year on StartPlaying

Highly rated for: Inclusive, Storytelling, Creativity

$20 per session

Featured Prompts

I became a GM because

I initially thought I had stories to tell other people but as I ran more games I realized that what I really loved about game mastering was helping to facilitate those wide-eyed moments of excitement, delight, horror, and wonder.

My favorite books are

Fiction: The Emberverse Series (Dies the Fire), A Wizard of Earthsea, The Witcher Series, Legends and Lattes, Neuromancer, Neverwhere, Ishmael, The Wizard of Oz series Non-Fiction: Spell of the Sensuous, Mystery Teachings of the Living Earth, The Cosmic Doctrine, A Sand County Almanac

My favorite system of all Time is

The first edition of Apocalypse World was ground breaking for me. I had been following D. Vincent Baker and the folks who came out of The Forge for a while, but his game mastering advice gave me words to describe concepts that had been brewing in me for a decade or more.

How Driftless Journeys runs games

My GMing is focused on how characters respond to situations; I believe that following the characters interests is what is fun for most players. I've also seen that not all players have a clear sense of what they want their characters to do, so I aim to craft strong situations for players and characters to respond to. I want to work with players in session zero to figure out what sort of situations players are most interested in. In games I work to incorporate both 'The Rule of Cool' and 'The Dice Tell a Story'. I've found that The Rule of Cool encourages players and characters to bring good description to our sessions and get rewarded for it, adding small embellishments that make worlds richer. On the other hand, the dice tend to be the source of the best twists in the story, both good and bad, which can keep action fresh and everybody on their toes. When running games I tend to prefer theater of the mind for casual exploration and role-player, but since the start of the Covid19 Pandemic I've learned to love battle maps more and more because so much of games with abilities that have number benefit from that tactical treatment. My games tend to focus on role-play, mystery, and problem solving, over combat and exploration. You can expect to find a diverse cast of characters with a wide range of motivations. As my kids tell me: 'my villains aren't cringey'.