Professional Game Master

DMFaenorhe/they

About me

The air is cold, stale, and dry. Ahead of you and the cleric the darkness billows like a gauzy curtain. Rock dust grits beneath your shoes as the party creeps into a chamber so large that the ceiling is lost above them. You can feel the weight of stone above threatening to fall and crush you. The fighter carries a torch which gutters in a sudden wind. Noises echo in the dark, the dry rasp of scales on stone. The sorcerer watches from above through the eyes if it's familiar. The sound of the rogue's footsteps fade as they slip away from the torch's light, knowing that an attack is imminent. Inhuman throats hiss all around the party, whispering coughs punctuating the roiling darkness. At the edges of the torch light the gloom takes shape. Scaled creatures in filthy robes hiss as they charge into the circle of the party's light...What do *you* do?! Play campaigns that are a combination of player-generated and GM-inspired. Be immersed in rich description, action, problem-solving, and meaningful choice! Enjoy tense combat in a combination of grid tactics and narrative description. Dive into sandbox-style play, build your character’s name, resources, and power while unraveling mysteries and secrets. Then use those secrets to alter the direction of the world story, impacting hundreds or thousands with your decisions. Interact with new game mechanics, magic items, and creatures. Personalize your character and tie their abilities to the history of the world. Enjoy tailored gameplay based on character background, abilities, and player playstyle. Delve into grounded and human settings, with events happening beyond your character's actions, and NPCs who have agendas of their own. Experience detailed, evocative worlds, and explore them with a fun table of players and flexible GM who has something to offer every playstyle!

GM style

I tend toward the epic, the classic, the pulp, the mystical/mythological, the dark, and/or the heist...often some combination. I am a rules *medium* gamemaster; I love tactical combat as well as a sense of dynamics and action. I primarily use D&D 5e as it has the widest player base, but with original rules and mechanics. I encourage homebrewing and taking ideas from other games, and especially supporting the growth of 3rd party communities. I have no loyalty to WotC, but instead to the overall community which keeps the game alive and fresh. My philosophy is that the rules, the dice, character abilities, and player expectations are all tools to serve the experience of the players as well as the GM. Rules and limitations are often what makes the game fun, and I will sacrifice them in the name of drama, tension, cool, fun, story, or challenge level. I keep the game flowing, but I do not railroad players or tell them what they are doing. I don't ask players to cripple themselves, but I encourage players to make *people*, however they want to build it mechanically. I like to focus on the player to learn what interests them...so I can add more of that to the game.. As a GM I can go all sorts of directions depending on the game and the players. I have run grim dungeon crawls, intrigue-based social games, strategic war-based games. Players can often take their pick of what to dig into. Developing contacts, hide-outs and forts, rising in the ranks of an organization, following epic quests, or surviving their own mistakes! I love doing voices and playing different characters. I love creating an epic world with history and mystery and letting players explore it however they want, though each decision may carry hidden consequences! Exploration, combat, NPC interaction, and world story are often central at my table. Players in my games enjoy impacting the world, events, and the lives of NPCs. I always root for the players, am playful but grounded in my rules approach, but I also play my antagonists to the hilt! I have been playing games and running them for decades, and I have found something...profound. TTRPGs are fun, but they can more than that! They are an opportunity for us to try on different livess, and to work through stories and problem-solve in scenarios we could never enter IRL. TTRPGs allow us to try on new behaviors and vocabulary, and can even help us see ourselves entirely differently, perhaps even helping us develop part of ourselves. TTRPS can be fun, but they can also be relaxing, informative, inspirational, and empowering. *What I offer as a GM:* -Evocative descriptions -Immersive settings -Grounded fantasy -Voices and accents -Co-creative and collaborative -Love of mythology, storytelling, and cosmology -Welcoming and helpful to new players -Rules-medium gameplay -Original creatures, settings, and items -30 years experience (running, playing, home-brewing) -30 years of experience sword-fighting, martial arts, combat sports, larping, and reenactment -A Safe, inclusive space -High Player agency Open Seats: The Secret of Bone Hill (LF2M for Tuesdays at 6pm CST) Explore Lands Worn Down by Darkness, Brave Haunted Ruins and Hidden Dungeons, and Root Out Gathering Evils in this OSR Sandbox Module The kingdom of Haven has recently been freed from its magical slumber, thwarting the ambitions of a power-hungry arch-fey in the process. As trusted agents of the throne you are charged to escape the agents of her rivals, assess what has come of Haven's lands while it slept, and restore contact with haven's allies to the southeast. You must journey through dangerous lands, survive marauding bands and hostile soldiers, seek allies, and aid those allies in clearing the lands of orcs, undead, corrupt priests, and hidden dangers. Enjoy hardcore-style play with tactical combat, unbalanced encounters, and clever monsters! Make choices that affect the world! Create a character that will become a hero, make a name for themselves, and work to fight the growing darkness! Play in the spirit of OSR in the D&D Basic module updated for 5e! It is very much a sandbox, with NPCs, locations, and secrets to unlock Original Module Text “Danger lurks in the Lendore Isles. Bands of evil creatures prowl the hills overlooking the town of Restenford, seeking unwary victims. Now you have come to the sleepy little village looking for adventure and excitement. You seek to fathom the unexplored reaches of Bone Hill and unlock the mysteries of Restenford.” "Dungeon Module L1: The Secret of Bone Hill" by Lenard Lakofka Progress Details This game has started, and we are absolutely welcoming new players! The characters are level 6 and are just delving into the mysteries of this land! To make sure new players feel welcome, and to alleviate any concerns of inclusion or immersion common to joining an existing campaign we can chat on discord to make a character, get familiar with the table, and get situated into the game story. Game Link: https://startplaying.games/adventure/61b91316ae467e00089ed764 The Dome and the Delvers Enter a world of exploration, dungeon-crawling, intrigue, high magic, where a great city stretches over the trapped land, and beneath it the measureless paths of the Under. Research and explore ruins, caverns, and lost lands beneath the earth. Develop resources, contacts, and put together the secrets of a vast complex of dungeons beneath the crumbling, magic-drenched city streets. Engage in tactical combat with the strange denizens of the Under, and even other city-dwellers who try to rob your or stand in your way. Bring riches back to the surface to help build your fortune, name, and your next delving! The Endless City and the Under Nangolath is vast urban landscape trapped within the Dome, a nearly unbroken sprawl of cities, towns, and villages, each with different laws and customs. The races, trade houses, and guilds divide the surface lands between them, leaving only the desperate slums of the Edge and those areas cursed by dark entities or ruined by magical destruction for the free-folk. Magic fuels nearly every aspect of life in the resource-depleted lands, from faerie-fired shop signs to flying carriages which the rich might use to escape the noise and danger of the city streets. For ages forgotten the great Dome has trapped the land. Within, beneath the endless, magic-wrought city of Nangolath, lies the Under. Below the deepest foundations of the the sprawling castles, far beneath the buried noble crypts buried long ago, the endless tunnels and chambers of stone become *strange*. The ways change, and strange beings climb from below, from *somewhere*. Some hunt, some plot, and others craft war. Soldiers and Magi protect the city from the Under, and Delvers go beneath the city to press back the infestation and return with what the city needs to sustain its magics; otherworldly materials, rare metals, precious gems, and enchanted goods. Gameplay The party will play Delvers, professional adventurers trained by the Delving Guild. The guild gives the characters discounts on services and special knowledge about the Under, discounts of goods and service, access to information and new potential delves. You are trained by the best, equipped with the same, and await with excitement your first delving into the endless, shifting Under. Glory awaits you, Delver, if you can cheat death! Game Flavor Game style is primarily theater of the mind. Imaginative, fast-paced, rules-medium, and "rule of cool" oriented. Flavors of tech-noir, steampunk, Baroque fantasy, Shadowrun, and cyberpunk. Players who enjoy the Ravnica and Eberron settings will love this world! https://startplaying.games/adventure/614cfbd26dedec00081f99e9 *New Players Interested Games Already Started* To make sure new players feel welcome, and to alleviate any concerns of inclusion or immersion common to joining an existing campaign, I offer the following services: Interaction through text, and 30-60 minutes on voice one-on-one to give backstory, setting info, and info on the game so far so that the new player can determine what their character has been doing so far. I will then message the party and catch them up on this. Once the session starts the players will recap the last session (as we do each session, for memory and continuity). Then I will introduce the new character and restate what they have been doing, and take a few minutes for the players to describe their characters, RP a bit, and familiarize themselves with each other. In terms of the game I begin working the new player's interests into the game, and add challenges specific for their character as soon as possible. Check out my videos on youtube and twitch to get a feel for my table style! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1709869096

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