About me

"Platinum"-minted best-selling author of D&D adventures on DMsGuild and current DM for two concurrent Icewind Dale campaigns, I've been playing all sorts of TTRPGs for over two decades. While I adhere to the letter of the law for particular systems (e.g., DnD 5e), there's a lot of value in bringing in the narrative options, homebrewed content, and even some mechanics from the indie RPG-scene. My personal preference is setting the stage for players to have agency -- i.e., "sandboxing" -- but I view my job as first-and-foremost to provide a robust, dynamic, an engagement world, one with plenty of hooks for the players (and player characters) to choose from. And then my job is the improv and adjustments on the fly to honor those character choices, allowing the world to respond in ways that challenge the players and give the characters plenty of opportunities to shine.

GM style

While I'm happy and more than capable of adhering to the letter of the law for particular systems (e.g., DnD 5e), I have a breadth of experience with other system mechanics and styles of play. There can be a lot of value in bringing in the narrative options, homebrewed content, and even some mechanics from the indie RPG-scene. In general, I prefer a healthy mix of all three pillars of TTRPGs (exploration, social, and combat). In exploration, my personal preference is setting the stage for players to have agency -- i.e., "sandboxing" -- but I view my job as first-and-foremost to provide a robust, dynamic, an engagement world, one with plenty of hooks for the players (and player characters) to choose from. And then my job is the improv and adjustments on the fly to honor those character choices, allowing the world to respond in ways that challenge the players and give the characters plenty of opportunities to shine. For social encounters, I'm capable of and enjoy doing a variety of voices, though I will adjust my technique to be more descriptive if players prefer to not do voices, themselves. I also provide clear petitioner/granter framing to ensure that social encounters have purpose and provide fulfilling engagement for the players. And in combat, the monsters know what they're doing (to borrow the phrase), and they are almost always tactically interesting, either using the monster's own tactics or by seeding the terrain and field of battle with interesting aspects that players can choose to interact with. Encounters will be appropriately scaled, but they will be challenging, at least for experienced players who enjoy the challenge. Mortal peril for our characters is one of the driving forces for our enjoyments of these games, and the risk of that fate will be an undercurrent to any major combat.

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