I'm curious. How did you get your start in table top role playing games and what are you doing currently with Table RPGs?
How I got involved with table top role playing pen and paper games is an interesting story. I was 13 years old sitting in a hallway at my church writing in the 1st draft of my 1st book book, while a loud, noisy, and boring dance was going in the gym. A 15 year young man came up to me and said, “What are you doing?”
“Writing a book.” I said.
“What's it about?”
“I can't tell you what's it about because you might steal it.”
“What genre is it?”
“Sci Fi Fantasy”
“So there will be magic?”
“Yes.”
“Ever hear of a game called Dungeons and Dragons?”
“Nope.”
He pulled out a paper wrote his name number and address. Then he said, “Come on Saturday at 3:00 pm, if you want to know more.”
I decided to go. It took 4 hours to make my first character. My first Dungeon Master taught me about the sandbox method of running a campaign. That the DM creates the world and the players drive it. If the player wants to destroy a town then they can and it will have consequences. This was Advance Dungeons and Dragons at the time. This DM stayed my DM till I went off to college.
My 2nd DM was ok but he ran the modules so there wasn't as much freedom as I would have like.
I decided to run a D20 modern campaign. I ran it for one year. I started working on the 1st edition of my own pen and paper rpg at this time.
My 3rd DM was awesome. By this time 3.5 was established. He also used the Sandbox method. He also taught about the chandler effect.
Example of chandler effect:
DM: You're in the dinning hall. A goblin is moving towards you.
Player: I cut the rope to the chandler.
DM: You succeed. The chandler crashes down on the goblin killing it.
That's the chandler effect. Player can use their surrounds within reason and the DM goes with it. This 3rd DM asked me if I had ever run a D and D campaign before. I said no. He said for me to give it a try. I ran three campaign's for this DM. Each campaign took 6 months. We took turns. He run 6 months and then I'd run one. Then I moved.
I've retired from certain types of role playing campaign's, if they are all about kill everything and no story, I want no part. If it's focused on the role playing, and the story then I'd most likely play it. I've been a DM for 10 years. I've actually converted d20 modern to 3.5 rules. I ran a western campaign with those rules. I ran two sessions both in the same city with two different groups. What one group does the other group sees the impact. I'm working on the 5th edition of my pen and paper rpg.
Currently I'm a Dungeonmaster for Dungeons and Dragons 5.5 edition (I combined the best of 5th with 3.5, hence 5.5 edition). I created a world for all my future campaigns. The following are the maps that I have drawn for this world so far.
The World Map:
Major Kingdoms:
Cities, Villages, and Forts:
City of Rain:
Lorse:
I created over 700 NPCs, named all of them, named all the cities. Created the history of the world. The campaign is the sandbox method, meaning I shape the campaign around the players and everyone of them gets a moment to shine. I run a session ever Saturday from 7:00 to 10:00 pm EST The campaign has been going for 8 months now. 4 of my players are females and one is male. The group is pretty awesome and they've done a lot: Overthrew an Evil Drow Empress, Started Peace talks between the Drow and The Elves, visited 3 planes, and they saved magic. I'm very pleased with how well they roleplay. They stay in character and don't use any meta knowledge. Everything that has happened in the campaign is because they chose to act on the world one way or another.
How did you get your start in table top role playing games?
What are you doing currently with Table RPGs?