William (they/them)
4.9
(12)
1 year on StartPlaying
86 games hosted
Highly rated for: Creativity, Storytelling, Inclusive
About me
Hello! I'm William, a queer horror author and creator of the fiction podcast Hello From The Hallowoods. I've been an avid RPG player and DM for over ten years, and I love the feeling that comes with sitting down with a group of friends to tell a story together. My games are inclusive, beginner-friendly, and focused on creating a fun and engaging story for each member of the party rather than following the nitty-gritty of the rules. Whether this is your first time playing an RPG and you don't know where to begin, or you've been playing games for decades, you're welcome at the table. I'm excited to meet new players, tell new stories, and engage with the internet audience in a new way. Let's play!
GM Style
My style as a Dungeon Master is always focused around the story the players are telling. Expect us to focus in on your characters and the unique direction they bring to the narrative, and to encounter dynamic challenges that can be solved in more ways than just fighting your way through. I enjoy putting my voice acting skills to work voicing NPC's, and engaging in active dialogue with the players. Similarly, I love to create new settings, characters, and staples of the world to interact with - I have no issue overwriting the established canon of the textbook to tell a story that is unique to the party! We'll use Owlbear Rodeo to share world and location maps as well as battle maps when combat requires it!
Games played
Game platforms used
Game Master Reviews (12)
Proficiencies
Players say this GM is great at:
Creativity
Storytelling
Inclusive
William is *excellent* at getting all the players involved- I can be pretty shy about meeting new people, but they put me at ease immediately and engaged with me and my character like I'd been there the whole time. And when they talk about their voice acting skills- they mean it. It's always such a treat to come across a new NPC and see what new voice comes with them. Really helps with immersion and keeping track of all the characters (and it's just dang fun!)
William is a very skilled gm, I was already a fan of their work before playing and knew they were a wonderful storyteller and voice actor, but actually having them as a gm was still somehow more fun than expected! They are very talented at creating a story that is very fun and engaging, with loveable memorable characters and a fun inclusive atmosphere. All my choices in the game feel like they do something and like the party is contributing to the story with the story still feeling like it has a clear and purposeful direction. William is also clearly talented at improv. With story moments that are clever, funny and engaging to create a seamless story and fun environment. As a player the characters, world, storytelling and voices all came together perfectly to create an experience I cannot recommend enough. If you are considering if William is the right dm for you, I can't think of a reason why they wouldn't be.
I’ve had a very fun time playing with Mx Wellman as my GM! They’ve been great both supporting newer players through their choices and handling curveballs thrown by more experienced ones, and I feel like I can rely on their games for engaging challenges and NPCs that feel deep and lived-in.
Overall great GM! I like playing this game with this group/dm! I’m going to apologize ahead of time for the essay. The good! - is good at running a narrative focused sandbox! Lots of freedom to go and do what you like very adaptable DM to changing situations great improv skills! - engaging characters and good voices. Characters frequently fit and match the voice given to them. - good at making sure everyone gets their turn in the spotlight - rule of cool friendly DM (so far has not made too many rulings that throw off balance or invalidate class features) - can design good encounters with dynamic and interactive environments - quite inclusive both in game and out of game. In game inclusive topics are well handled without feeling awkward or token. Out of game I am someone with anxiety especially around people and I was able to grow to be comfortable at this table and feel welcome! The YMMV: - if you are a lore junkie and a canon setting is used you are going to find a lot of deviations from canon. With mixed results on whether or not they make sense. -Theatre of the mind heavy game and handles it well. But if you describe to 5 people what a room looks like and you ask them to draw it you will get 5 very different pictures. This causes issues for me as 95% of encounters in this campaign are theatre of the mind with no grid this is okay in smaller scale encounters but when you get into situations when area of effect, distances and cover matter you can very easily be plopped into the middle of something with no agency over your positioning or environment it can leave you a little lost or in and unintended position. Example PC’s chasing an enemy, enemy turns around and uses a 90 foot line attack, all of the PCs just so happen to be in a direct line instead of spreading out naturally during the encounter because the PCs have an incredibly rough inclination of where they are relative each other - (CAVEAT at the end) VERY narrative and RP heavy we are now level 10 and have probably had less than 10-15 encounters depending on your definition over the course of (I think) over a year of weekly sessions. This in turns leads to a very low amount off loot and money for the players to work with. if you are big on combat encounters and dungeon crawling might not be the best table for you. CAVEAT: Our party is quite risk adverse and tends resolve most problems by avoiding the issue or chatting through it. - Encounters heavily favour narrative, and cinematic storytelling over the actual game mechanics and rules. There are situations initiative where enemies can get movement/actions out of initiative order. This is great in narrative systems like PBtA and Blades in the dark where is it is building the fiction but not so good in a rules heavy tactical system. For example a winged enemy gets pelted with a fireball but is still up but and almost dead the narrative ruling is the wing gets singed and the flying enemy crashed to the ground getting free movement (I can think of 2-3 occasions of this) way out of any characters line of sight. This created a great and awesome moment for our sorcerer but it’s just a bit of a feels bad to lose a turn and a chance to act.it would have been better - Balancing sometimes feels a little funky. I feel like this is because of the high narrative elements of the campaign. In that we have not had many combats that are good measures of party/strength or capability since about level 2 or 3. Sometimes we deal with enemies so far above our pay grade and talk our way out (which is fine as it gives life to the world that it is dangerous) but this leads to almost every encounter being dodged (sometimes by necessity) with the rest being melted away by high level spell slots because we don’t have any resource attrition due to being avoiding everything while operating on a such long time scale between encounters -Fairly low magic overall. I would say positive experience but sometimes magic items that we have been found can be anywhere between underwhelming and incredibly strong for our level. I’d maybe keep an eye out for homebrew items/deviations from the rules that break game balance.
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