About me

I've been playing but mainly GMing RPGs since at least the year 2000, when I was 14 years old. I've been playing but mainly DMing D&D regularly since 2004, and 5th Edition regularly since 2018. From 2011-2016 I co-ran a tiny indie game publishing house, End Transmission Games LLC, publishing mainly games I designed and wrote myself. We had some fairly successful Kickstarters of our releases were nominated for ENNie awards. Since the company folded in late 2016 I've continued to develop, playtest, publish, and distribute my original RPGs while playing (but mainly running) tons of others. In addition to D&D and my many original games, I'm more than proficient with Shadowrun (which I wrote a great deal for during the late 4th Edition/early 5th Edition era), Delta Green/Call of Cthulhu, Champions/HERO System, Classic Traveller, OWoD and many more that don't spring immediately to mind. I have a little Patreon where I release hot fresh D&D 5E homebrew and my own indie TTRPG content on the daily. https://www.patreon.com/user?u=87578176 So as you can see, I'm a "forever DM" and as much as I enjoy the heck out of the rare opportunities I get to just chill and PC, I think ultimately I wouldn't have it any other way. I've read all of the classics of science fantasy and sword and sorcery fiction that inspired D&D as well as the game's formative texts and oldest modules and adventures, and I have a very good grasp of the tropes that interact to make it work. As a professional game designer with over a decade's experience, I've got a far better understanding of game balance and how and where it matters than most. I will happily run or play the 'rarer' games like Delta Green, Traveller, or my own games, whether my published games including my in-development and in-playtesting "cyberpunk fantasy heartbreaker"/Shadowrun "clone", Karmapunks, but the "always popular" status of D&D 5E right now in conjunction to the various disabilities which keep me unemployed but aren't actually, apparently, enough for the government to pay me disability means it really makes the most sense for me to try to turn running D&D into a vocation. It may be my only marketable skill in the present day gig economy. I've lost count of the times I've been told I'm a great DM, and I count with pride the number of people over the years who've told me I'm the best DM they've ever had, but by my own (pretty exacting) standards of evaluation, I'm just "pretty good" and I very much want to get even better. Even though I don't think I'm as great as I've been assured by my players, I consider myself superior too many "pro DMs" in the streaming sphere. I'm not a complete master of accents, or improv comedy, but I'm fully focused on entertaining my players, not some streaming audience, hypothetical or otherwise. I'm not very technologically savvy. I don't have particularly good mastery of Roll 20 and D&D Beyond. Since COVID sadly made in-person gaming kind of "not a thing" in my life and the life of many others, most of my games have been conducted on Discord through voice chat only, using Owlbear Rodeo as my primary VTT and using D&D Beyond only sparingly. If I can actually make some money doing this, I might consider investing some of it in a decent webcam set up. I'm still learning and improving my "production values" though. Anyway, I've rambled on more than long enough, gotta cut this off somehwere. Give me a shot! Let's throw some dice and have a blast! Thanks!

GM Style

I have a distinct style blending old school and modern sensibilities. My games favor heavy combat, intense roleplaying, real challenge with a real risk of character death, consequences for your actions and awesome rewards for your exploits (I've been known to kill off a PC that was both unwise and unlucky, but I also tend to award rather a lot of valuable treasure and powerful magical items) and, sometimes against my best intentions, players dying laughing around the table at least once a session. If you don't want your character to have both a chance to die an ignoble death due to poor choices and bad rolls AND a chance to become wildly overpowered, slay gods and decide the fate of the realms through a history of good decisions and good rolls, I'm probably not the DM for you. I've often said, unironically, that the "Traits" section is the "important part" of the D&D 5E Character sheet. I care about (encouraging good) character virtues, bonds, and flaws a lot and making them matter during gameplay. Like anyone I won't have PCs bickering about loot or attacking each other for dumb reasons, but when PCs come to dramatic conflict, come to blows, "PvP" over what they believe is right and two or more mutually exclusive solutions to a problem? That's absolutely my jam and I love it. I tend to bring a "heavy metal AF" aesthetic to whatever I run, filled with over-the-top combat and epic fantasy violence ("punk rock" would be more the vibe for my cyberpunk and scifi stuff'). I like music a lot, I missed my calling as a DJ probably, and all of my campaigns have "theme songs" and "title drops" where I pick out music to play under invisible credits. What else? Oh, yeah. My Dungeons & Dragons games never lack for dragons. D&D has been blending scifi elements into its gameplay since at least 1974's Expedition to the Barrier Peaks Module (my favorite) and this is a tradition I proudly support. I have made or run at least half a dozen games where you can fire (for instance) a laser-guided rocket launcher at a dragon.

Games played

Game platforms used

Social