About me

I've been running games since 1996 including D&D 3.0, 3.5 and now 5.0; other games I've run are Pathfinder, Deadlands (Weird West and Wasted West), Heroes, Rifts, and all of the White Wolf System. D&D is still by far my favorite and I tend to spend hours collecting all of the details on a setting or game that I can, then putting my own creativity into the mix before presenting it in an energetic and fun way. I enjoy voice acting and singing as well. I focus on plot and character development and will attempt to weave into the story facets that are part of your character's backstory. I tend to create my own magical items and throw them in for additional flavor. One example of this is a dagger called "The Squishy" that chirps and grasps with it's tentacle-hilt. It was crafted to combat Aberrations and has taken on their traits after years of doing so. I also enjoy creating my own complex adversaries and other NPC's to hinder or help my PC's. If you'd like to email me first, please reach out to jakevonruhr@gmail.com. Blessings

GM style

I love roleplaying and creativity in backstory, tactics, or encounters. Character voices is something that I greatly enjoy and while the rules are important because they keep everyone on the same page and keep everything organized, I occasionally eschew a rule here and there to make game play more fun and engaging. An example of a backstory that I wrote for one of my players: Born of a large family in a small hamlet, Barnabus was the youngest in a family of tanners. He was responsible for carrying the small animals and the skins of larger animals from forest to tannery to home for safekeeping. Loved by his family and harassed by his brothers, he did his best to please others with a gentle heart. Shortly after his eleventh birthday, his grandfather died of old age. Barnabus had spent many hours on the old man's knee hearing stories of courage and magic. Barnabus didn't understand why his Grampy's skin turned white or why his eyes turned black and began to weep. "Why is he crying?" was his only thought; compassion his only motivation. Soon the plague swept through his family, killing his mother, father, two brothers, sister, and his uncle; sparing only himself and his female cousin Charlie who lived with his family. Together they tried to help the sick and pitch in where the young pair could. One day on their way back from checking traps a few months after his family's death, the two were set upon by a lone desperate and sick brigand brandishing a club. Desiring to protect his cousin as he was taught he should, he sank his skinning knife deep into the would-be thieves belly, slicing upward as his father had shown him. The sick man's life blood gushed over the pair and Charlie ran from the scene, never to be seen again. The dying peasant fell forward and nearly crushed Barnabus as he stared in amazement at what had happened. The sadness and misplaced guilt for his family's death fell away in that moment, as the rush of survival and triumph coursed through the young boy's veins. Slowly the adrenaline was replaced by fascination at seeing the largest beast he had ever killed slowly growing pale and cold. When the man's eyes turned vacant, Barnabus was reminded of his Grampy and decided that he had to know what happened to his family. He cut the man open and hung him from a tree as his father had done with deer, but he gained nothing in the evisceration. Deciding to take some of the meat of his fresh kill with him, he left to join his family in the town's cemetery with nothing of his home on his back; only the hope to see them soon. Finding a small hole in the ground just big enough for safety, the boy crawled into a long forgotten tomb in the soft earth of the graveyard. He saw light ahead and was suddenly addressed in a harsh voice by a bright red bat flying directly at his face. Despondency giving way to morbid fascination and curiosity, Barnabus started talking with the living, breathing embodiment of his grandfather's stories. ... The imp Kurligain saw a horror and violence in the boy that seemed worth spending a little more time on, so he spared his life in that first interchange. They became as close to friends as the evil creature could manage. He brought food and magical components to Barnabus and quickly taught him how to tap into his natural aptitude for necromantic magics. Barnabus would spend his days alone, usually sifting through human and animal remains that his new friend brought him the night before, trying to understand how bodies worked and why they were so fragile. Each night, Kurligain would return with new spells to practice, finally even bringing writing supplies and teaching the excited boy to read and write. Shortly before his thirteenth birthday, "Kurg" decided that the boy could finally make a serviceable apprentice to his own master, Davior the Mad. However, the Imp's eventual goal was to kill and replace Davior with a "Master" more willing to travel and whom could be easily controlled. Davior's madness gave him a certain clarity of purpose which allowed him to easily shrug off the imp's attempts at manipulation and magical control. Together the Imp and the budding Necromancer travelled deep into the forested domain of Ungthar, finding fewer animals and more twisted and diseased trees along with other signs of blight as they moved on. Upon arrival, Davior attempted to capture the boy with his magic, but Kurligain poisoned his master with his tail barb instead, for which he was tortured later in the evening by the grim madman. Kurg saved Barnabus's life again that day, and together Davior and he taught the eager and heartless boy much more about the depths of magic and the nature of living things. Barnabus was an apt pupil, having nothing else in his life aside from his burning thirst for revenge against Death itself for taking his family from him and his absolute terror of disease and the forces of entropy. Every time he dipped into the dark arts, he felt safe; using the Darkness for his own desires instead of only responding to the impact of death and decay. Having little to no hope for the future and living entirely in the past, Barnabus was very malleable in his morality and so seemed to be willing to learn, accept and practice the darkest of magic at the behest of Kurg. In his mind, Barnabus wanted only to travel back in time and kill the sickness that ravaged his family and stole his life. This hatred drove him to the most vile of magics and to learn a great deal about the biology and metaphysics of Death. It continued this way for several years while Barnabus began accumulating "friends" which he stitched together or gathered from the forest floor around his new home or sometimes robbing graves from towns a few days away as a means of exploring and understanding the animating force of flesh and bone. Eventually Davior became suspicious of something frightening away the local wildlife and warning away travellers because his subjects for experimentation and mutation were becoming more and more scarce. Eventually, The Mad Mage began sending his familiar out to paralyze and retrieve halflings and elves for his fleshwarping magics. Barnabus had dug shallow graves all around their tower and nearby hut for all of his toys to rest and await his call as tools or confidants. Kurligain began preying on what remained of Barnabus's human sensibilities and together they laid a trap for the evil wizard. The 20 year old Necromancer became enraged at the idea that Davior was hurting innocent people and agreed readily to the Imp's plans. The two would then continue together on their own, the imp desiring to be free in order to bind himself to the newly up and coming mage. Kurg would trick Davior with his next "gifting" of commoners which would be enspelled to appear as if alive. Then, as soon as Davior began to study the first one, the imp would paralyze his master and use a scroll of silence to render the wizard useless. Then, the pair would extort the old man's secrets, which had always remained obfuscated behind his madness, confusion and warding. Kurg was virtually frothing at the mouth at the idea of stealing all of Davior's secrets and selling them to his foul masters. He hoped he would gain enough souls to evolve into a Barbazu or perhaps even a Kyton. The idea made him spontaneously cackle on the days leading up to The Betrayal, which was occasionally off-putting to his young apprentice. The pair would then kill The Mad Mage, but not before using his skill to inscribe eldritch magics upon the young man's skin, which Barnabus seemed completely unable to master. At Kurg's behest, the young man accepted that this may be the only way to ever learn the studies that were beyond the ken of his limiting obsession with death, and could help him assist others in need whenever able. Their plan worked marvelously, but with one exception; Kurg, the lad's one and only friend and confidant, betrayed him. After Davior showed his secret laboratory room to the pair, amidst all the screaming humanoids, warped animals and suffering angels, were the remains of the magical disease-causing potion which had killed Barnabus's family. Barnabus became so enraged that he began to cast his most lethal life-draining spell upon the silenced mage but was cut short by the prepared Imp and a poisoned dagger. The mage fell asleep and when he awoke, he heard chanting in the quavering voice of Davior and the steady tinny voice of his friend, Kurg. Encircled by zombies, the young man's skin was already etched in virtually every patch of skin with arcane runes, blood dripping down his bound and pierced body. He felt a hard wooden surface under his naked back and against his ravaged arms and suddenly realized the terrible truth... he was about to be crucified in a Necromantic ritual to the imp's foul masters. He began screaming in rage at the treacherous imp and his once-master for their betrayal in working together. It took hours for the mage to die, one excruciating moment at a time. It took so long that he was able to devise a dozen different ways to punish the imp and wizard if he were to somehow survive, then near the hour of his death when his breathing became ragged and his thoughts began to slip, he realized that this long violent ritual full of chanting zombies with negative energy saturating him was the infamous Ritual of Crucumigration. He was about to become undead. The thought froze him to the bone, crystallizing his fury into the promise of revenge for his family; for the innocent people that Davior had mangled, and even for himself for being too foolish to recognize that he had been betrayed by the one person he dared to trust. His last thoughts were of guilt for failing to avenge his beloved family and he swore to himself that he would avenge everyone if he were allowed to remember his life as a mortal. With a prayer to all the dark gods on his lips, he passed... a full day after his death began. Upon rising from his own grave, he found that Kurg had already flayed alive and slaughtered Davior before killing or stealing every living thing and scrap of magic from the tower while the young man's apotheosis occurred. Rummaging through the old mage's belongings, he found a few things overlooked by the traitorous imp, and even discovered a wheezing half-dead squirrel lying in a broken cage that the creature was too weak to leave. Unaware of his new attunement to the negative energy plane, he gingerly picked up the purple squirrel and accidentally flooded it with necromantic power. The negative energy healed the twisted shadow-squirrel that Davior had created and then forsaken, and he immediately bonded to the young man in gratitude. The tiny creature looked up at the zombified man with desperate eyes and carefully crawled up his dessicated arm, finding a home under the hair at the nape of his neck.  Gathering his belongings and the items from the house, Barnabus cloaked himself in an illusion with barely a thought and began travelling toward the nearest town on a reanimated draft horse. Tucking his new friend under his scholarly robes to hide his otherworldly appearance, he set out to learn what he could about a world that he was now sure he didn't belong in at all. Being victim to the deceit of his closest friend had unveiled his eyes to see a new world that he had not even begun to explore. And so they travel together, looking for new ways to stop death, control disease, and turn violence upon those inflicting it... and for Kurligain.

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