Dazzle

About Dazzle

Well, hello there. I'm Daz. I've been playing tabletop games for 25 years, and I've been GMing regularly for about 20 of them. At this point, I've come to realize that I didn't really choose to GM. I have to. I _must_ It's much the same with writing: the ideas get into my head, and eventually they simply have to get out. My first games were a few rinky-dink affairs in high school, followed by my first *real* campaign in college with a few dear friends. Before long, I found myself imagining worlds of my own, strange characters with interesting backstories, settings, narrative arcs, and wild ideas that didn't quite fit into any existing box. So I decided to test my mettle and run a game for those same friends. We played a game that was a mix of Animal Crossing and Silent Hill. It was horrifying. But lots of fun! Twenty years later, I'm still at it. For most of those two decades I've been concocting plots behind my screen, running games across a wide variety of systems and settings. Along the way, I've become something of a student of the hobby itself: I love digging into the history of settings, understanding how mechanics have evolved, and figuring out what the intention was behind which dice are rolled. More importantly, I've learned that a good GM isn't simply the person who knows the rules or tells the story. A good GM makes it easy for everyone else to participate in creating the experience. That's something I've worked hard to develop over the years. I enjoy teaching systems by playing them rather than burying new players beneath a rulebook. I like games where the players and GM can actually talk to one another, reach a communal decision about what will make the game more fun, and then get on with absolutely annihilating the plot points I had planned for. I've developed guidelines and approaches that let players engage as deeply as they want to, whether that's bringing a character that is a challenge for the player to the table, or trying a bit of high RP when its a bit outside the players comfort zone. And while I certainly love a good fantasy campaign, I've spent much of my time GMing branching out. Cyberpunk. Low Magic. High Lethality. Grimdark. Heartwarming (Princess: The Hopeful anyone?). Some of the most fun games I've run recently have been one-shot campaigns inspired by movies, television, video games, and books. Both from things I discovered recently to things I loved when I was younger. How I would character myself being is GM is: An experimenter empath who tries to help the players tell the story they want to weave. I like discovering what happens when you take an idea seriously. I like finding the weird corner of a setting that nobody thought to explore. I like watching players take something I prepared, turn it sideways, and come up with something I never expected. (::sound of me dumping my session notes in the trash::) After 25 years, I'm still fascinated by this hobby. I still have worlds I want to build, stories I want to tell, systems I want to try, but also potentially develop. Probably with your help. So if this sounds like your kind of table, I'd love to have you along for the ride.