Hamster Emperor

he/they

5.0

(11)

Timezone

America/new York

Language

English

About Hamster Emperor

Hi! I'm an aspiring Game Master looking to branch out from my 5E roots. I love mechanical crunch, discourse about the game/hobby and love to improve. I have about 5 years experience running games, but frankly I would love to get that number even higher with more campaigns, with more systems! My Priorities: Run an engaging, fun and challenging game where players are expected to overcome hardship with creative and ingenious solutions! Foster a narrative where heroes are tested, their dynamics are at the forefront and their choices always matter! Facilitate a space where mistakes are made and being human is understood, while always striving for a better hobby space for all! Run an inclusive and celebratory space for BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ members of the community, including talkbacks, safety tools and honest communication! Finally and most importantly, always be learning! If it is a system or mechanic or rule or just how to be a better person/storyteller, I want to hear about it and discuss it! I love nothing more than learning and improving. I hope you do too.

At a glance

1 year on StartPlaying

171 games hosted

Highly rated for: Creativity, Storytelling, Inclusive

Average response time: 4 hours

Response rate: 100%

Featured Prompts

I became a GM because

I played one game of D&D in college and knew that was it - I was hooked. What's not to love? The playful language, the evocative fantasies, the joy of learning: all these things combined into one beautiful, strange hobby.

My favorite books are

It's not an easy thing to rank, so I'll go with broad trends instead of a concrete list. I love the Discworld, absurdist texts, golden age sci-fi like Arthur C. Clarke, Skulduggery Pleasant, Lovecraft, horror novels across the spectrum - and, of course, my prep journals.

When I'm not running games I'm...

Doing prep for games! (Or at my day job lol). Most of my cognitive power goes towards furthering plots, planning encounters, and thinking on world stuff. It's a joy to get to flex the creative muscles this much!

How Hamster Emperor runs games

Here's the rub: I like jokes. I like dungeons. I like high-stakes, crunchy desperate moments, which we both as characters and players laugh about later. I strive to cultivate an atmosphere of round-table gaming. The best time we can have while playing these roleplaying games is when we can equally distance ourselves from the narrative and have fun around it, and also be deeply compelled by the action therein. We, as players, should be able to joke about the characters and the world, and be friendly with each other about our lives - while still caring deeply for the plight of the world, feeling the drama and the stakes & hoping desperately for our success. In my games, you can expect: - Custom, handmade dungeons, populated by monsters of my own sick imagining - Engaging and dramatic NPCs to aid and oppose you - Moral quandaries and situations that challenge your PC to grow and change - A flair for the dramatic, always setting the stage with stakes and consequence - A world that changes and evolves as you make choices - ones that will return to haunt or delight you! - Strategic combat where very rarely are you left without choices - Lots of homebrew and custom items/feats/subclasses/classes/spells... you get the idea! - Discourse and discussion, and overall a prioritization of fun! I love tactical combat and emotional challenges. The priority is engaging, interesting story telling and character agency. Your decisions will have consequence; I run a game where choices matter, where each event and encounter return to influence the world and characters later. I run a game where discussion is paramount, where the players have as much agency in how and where the world unfolds both in the game and above the table. Fun is first and foremost in my mind, and if it isn't fun, why bother?

Hamster Emperor's ideal table

Not an easy question to answer! I love placing characters (my own and the player's) in conundrums and quandaries, and allowing their internal struggle manifest into the story we tell together. I love when players commit to bold character choices, and use their rich inner worlds to drive the action - in short, I love an environment where players approach the ethical dilemmas of the world from flawed, and misguided lenses. Characters who can be wrong, who grow and change (although maybe not in the best ways!) and gain increased texture beyond what their character sheet represents. I love to laugh, to entertain and to tell stories: I love a table in which the players are all focused on each other's fun, while still prepared for the fiction and mechanics the game demands. Where the story emerges from the table, where the fun lies in the mess we make together.

Featured Prompts

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

laughs (I hope!). I like to find out what makes others laugh and play into it, and mostly I just like to make myself laugh - a task which is, admittedly, pretty easy.

I love it when a player

Takes the bait! Often I will toss out fun ideas or hooks and wait to see how the player reacts. The fun for me is in the give and take, having a thumb on the pulse of player enticement - how can I convince your character to do this thing, and do they need convincing?

My table is not the place for...

bigotry! Kind of a cop-out answer, but we are only given the space we occupy, and I don't want to allow my space or any of the space that I share with fellow queer and minoritized people to be taken up by more of the hate that pervades our world.