Random Encounters Metadimensional Travel Guide

he/him

Timezone

America/los Angeles

Language

English

Identity

Podcaster

Queer

Published Writer

Artist

Voice Actor

Game Designer

About Random Encounters Metadimensional Travel Guide

Looking to play Dungeons & Dragons but don't know how? Need a hallucinatory escape from the horrors of reality, but without the hangover? Trying to book a vacation to exotic destinations, but also don't really want to leave the house? Look no further! Random Encounters Metadimensional Travel Guide will take you and a small group of friends on a magical voyage to fantastical realms - without ever leaving your living room! Fantasy, horror, sci-fi, we craft custom-made storytelling adventures for the discerning traveler. Your deepest wish, your secret terrors, face them all together with your closest comrades and gain valuable experience in tabletop role playing action. Now booking group voyages for 2025. Single "movie" adventures or multi-episode "serial" campaigns available by arrangement. In-person games available in Reno NV and select parts of Northern California. Have dice, will travel. Hi, I'm Dan. I am a real life bard, storyteller, and incurable adventurer (more about that later). I was first introduced to roleplaying games in 1997, and by the third game I knew wanted to be a dungeon master. I have been an itinerant dungeon master-for-hire as a side gig for several years, mostly for friends, under the name Random Encounters Metadimensional Travel Guide. I like the idea of treating it like a travel agency, creating a custom adventure to suit my players' tastes, where the player characters are the stars of the movie (or TV series). I'd been developing an Actual Play podcast by this name last year. but some other projects jumped ahead of it in line. With some of my more mundane work drying up recently, I was thinking about firing up Random Encounters again. I got to play again recently for the first time in a while, and it got my wheels turning. I have so many stories to tell! And then I saw the ad for StartPlaying and thought I'd give it a shot. MORE ABOUT ME: I'm a jack-of-all-trades storyteller and performer. I live in Reno, spend my weekends feeding hungry people in the park, and I have a dog named Gozer. I've been a touring guitarist/singer, a journalist, a high school science teacher, and a festival producer. I've traveled with a carnival freak show, made documentaries and music videos and plays, hosted live comedy shows, written two rock operas about zombies and two books, and led sledgehammer crews in the desert. I've written over 400 songs, and recorded maybe 150 of them, with my bands Thee Hobo Gobbelins, Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits, and Tumbleweed Timemachine. And all through the years I've been writing and playing original material for my own homebrew roleplaying game setting, a fantasy world with a 10,000 year timeline. In other words, I am a lifelong weirdo. I hold a degree in cultural anthropology, and my storytelling draws from a wide range of historical, archaeological and literary influences, from H.P. Lovecraft and Marshall McLuhan to Herodotus, from R.A. Salvatore to Octavia Butler, from Margaret Killjoy to Kurt Vonnegut. I've also been influenced by anarchist thinkers like David Graeber, Peter Kropotkin and many others, not to mention a long life involved in radical culture and activism. I'm interested in the ways and reasons people accumulate - and resist - power, and how different societies are organized. So all of that has helped shape my worldbuilding. In my homebrew setting of Galinea, 150 years after a devastating Elf Pox caused the collapse of an empire and changed everything, explore political intrigue and skullduggery, tyrant plots and rebel conspiracies, outlaw wizards and orc kingdoms. Dig into ancient ruins for legendary artifacts and expose shocking hidden truths from the distant past, and horrors from other worlds. Just gonna put it out there, if you are racist, sexist or homophobic/transphobic, or are a follower of authoritarian political ideologies, you should probably look elsewhere for a GM/DM. I'm not looking to beat my politics over anyone's head, or have anyone return the favor. But why waste each other's time? However, if you like what you've read so far and you'd like to visit one of my many worlds, get in touch!

At a glance

Less than a year on StartPlaying

Featured Prompts

I became a GM because

As a teenager, after playing D&D even a couple of times, I had ideas about stories I wanted to tell. I ended up being my friend group's default DM for years. I've never run an official adventure module; it's all been homebrew, with influences from ancient history, film, comics, pulp fiction & more!

My favorite system of all Time is

I really liked All Flesh Must Be Eaten, a zombie survival horror using the Unisystem. I thought the character creation for that game was super cool, & created super fleshed out & nuanced characters. I would love to hear (or maybe make!) an AMFBE Actual Play podcast.

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

Summoning an entire city out of the dust, or feeding the hungry, or walking my dog Gozer, or making records and music videos, or whatever other adventure lies before me.

How Random Encounters Metadimensional Travel Guide runs games

Some DMs see themselves as competing with the players. I do not see it this way. I am playing cooperatively with my players to create a fun and compelling story, one that has you unable to sit down at times, gripping your table with anticipation, and throwing popcorn in the air when you and your companions triumph. I usually like to write the adventure after the characters are made, so I can make the PCs central to the story. They are the ones destiny has brought to be the heroes of this pivotal moment. I prefer that to just dropping you in to an adventure hook I've already written. But I'm good either way. I like to spend a bit of time setting the scene in detail and let the players take things from there, choosing which way the camera points, so to speak. I create lifelike non-player characters with understandable motivations, and really love when players dig into their own character for the story. People at my table tend to spend a lot of time laughing, but I am always willing to hold a mood for dramatic effect. Expect intrigue, lore galore, bone-crunching visceral combat action, and vivid worldbuilding that draws as much from Stephen King and Time Bandits as it does Tolkien. Cosmic horror, gruesome monsters and bleak apocalyptic visions, plot twists that can quickly go from very small to multiversal, and from grim to absurd and back again without missing a beat.

Featured Prompts

I deal with rules issues by...

The main concern is keeping the flow of the story going in a way that is satisfactory for all players. I think about sequence of events & what makes physical or thematic sense, & generally side with the player whenever possible. They are, after all, the heroes chosen by fate for this adventure.

Random Encounters Metadimensional Travel Guide's ideal table

I would describe my alignment as generally Neutral Good; Empathy for the suffering and powerless, and a healthy distrust of any person or institution with enough power to ruin your day. I like to laugh at my table; even when the actual story takes us to dark places, a well-timed bit of bleak humor can keep the mood light. Influences: Herodotus, Stephen King, HP Lovecraft, the MCU, Margaret Killjoy, cyberpunk novels, the writings of Julius Caesar, old comics, David Graeber, anthropology case studies, David Cronenberg films, 80s science fiction films, Lewis Mumford and more! So I like horrible goopy eldritch monsters and fairly visceral combat description. Things get gross, even splatstick at times. When you strike the killing blow on a foe, you may be called upon to describe the impact of that killing blow. My background is in journalism and anthropology, and I've been telling stories through songs, books, films and more with my musical projects for 30 years now. Which tells you something about how lucrative journalism and anthropology are. I drop a lot of lore in game. My homebrew world has a long detailed history. It's not always important but it could be. Farts are always funny. I will occasionally come at you with terrible puns, and I make no apologies for it. All colors, ages and gender expressions are welcome at my table, so long as you are kind and respectful of each other.