James

he/him

5.0

(3)

Timezone

Europe/london

Language

English

Identity

LGBTQ+

Neurodivergent

Game Designer

About James

Dedicated indie storygamer based in the UK, been playing and running TTRPGs since Black Box Traveler and Red Box D&D (yes, it's a long time.) I like short, character focused campaigns with emerging stories, paying attention to narrative arcs for all players. Favourite games are Monsterhearts, Dead of Night, My Life with Master, Best Friends and others, and I also enjoy play-out-of-the-box games like For The Queen, Women Are Werewolves, Rest in Pieces and many more. I've run multiple campaigns for friends and TTRPG groups since college, both face-to-face and online, along with multiple attendances at UK conventions and have recently been recruited into the Games on Demand stream at UK Games Expo, running games for a new group of players every 2 hours, all day.

At a glance

Less than a year on StartPlaying

Highly rated for: Inclusive, Storytelling, Creativity

Featured Prompts

I became a GM because

I like being a storyteller and weaving plot threads around characters; also, there are never enough GMs for the number of people who want to play. Mostly though, I enjoy exploring settings of my own choice and love to hack together disparate bits to make something new!

I got started GMing...

when I was 12 and bought the Maelstrom RPG from the local convenience store's book rack. Prior to that, I'd played D&D and Traveler with fasmily, but this was the first RPG I owned and I wove my own campaign world that ran for years from that one volume.

My favorite books are

Terry Pratchetts Discworld series; the blend of humour and humanism is compelling, with complex protagonists who are all capable of being on the same side but fundamentally disagreeing on how to do things. That's an aspect of characterisation that I like to see in the games I run.

How James runs games

I love to place the player characters at the centre of the story, staring from a broad setting and focusing in on player choices during character creation, so the PCs are always at the centre of events. You can expect the PCs to be on the same side, but not always pulling in the same direction, with their own personal agendas sometimes trumping the main plot. The stakes and the scale of the story depend on the pitch and the PCs, ranging from only their own personal lives being in doubt, all the way up to the fate of the entire world being on the table. There are no big set-piece battles or random encounters, only tense face-offs and unexpected plot developments; when it comes to combat, I prefer a 'one and done' model, where the outcome is decided in the same way as any other conflict check. Metagaming is encouraged: be open about what your PC wants and why, so that everyone at the table understands your character's arc & theme, better equipping them to contribute to your story just as you contribute to theirs.

Featured Prompts

I once ran a session...

that was a musical epsiode! With plenty of forewarning, the players and I all created playlists that we could cue in to coincide with appropriate story beats, e.g. a PC confessing their feelings to another, or a villain boasting about their plans to rule the world!

My games focus on...

the lead characters; PCs in my games are rarely interchangeable and 90% of the story comes about as a result of their backgrounds and their current situation. They can't easily be replaced in the fiction.

Rules are...

there to support the story, not to restrict it; no rule book can cover everything and sometimes you have to reach beyond them to tell the kind of story the players are enjoying. The Rule of Cool applies: if it makes for a better story, then say yes or roll the dice.

James's ideal table

I like a merry table, with everybody feeling comnfortable enough to share what's going on with their life; the game is the social activity we're all there for and it will be played, but we're also all human and sometimes need to blow off some steam of have a laugh with some friends. Players who enjoy guided improv will have a chance to blossom at my table, as will those who like to unravel complex plots; much of what occurs in the game will be a result of that back & forth between the players and the GM. I'm always open to suggestions that I prefer over my own ideas, and I'm always ready with something to add to keep the story moving forward. Gaming is collaborative and the game is a conversation we're having, not a story I'm reading from.

Featured Prompts

If you're into ___, you're going to love my table

impovised narratives; most of my pitches have a setting and/or situation to begin with, but no other agenda than to explore the lives of the PCs as they respond to what's going on. I love strong player-created backstories, with lots of hooks I can use to pull them into the fiction.

I think metagaming...

is essential to good stories; being able to see what PCs are thinking, have their hidden agendas out in the open for players to know and allowing PCs to be wherever the action takes place, all make a story flow more smoothly and provide better drama.

My table is not the place for...

strategies and tactics; there are no big set piece battles, or even random encounters. Planning in my games is more likely to be applied to a heist or con the PCs decide they need to pull off, with lots of forethought followed by on-the-spot improv when things go wrong.