Starting Out

I’ve been running my Etsy store for almost three years at this point, been painting minis for about four years, running games in person for 6, and playing in total for most of my life, 30 years?

I feel like there are things I want to share with the gaming community, especially with regards to helping newer DMs run games. Mostly, I remember how intimidated I felt when I started to run again, in person, 6 years ago, and the realization that things weren’t as hard as I imagined them being. In fact, running a game ended up being a lot of fun, and while I do savor my downtime (like right now, when everyone’s summer plans has thrown our gaming plans into chaos), I miss it when I’m not running a game.

Maybe I’m somewhat unusual. My two favorite hobbies are triathlons and tabletop roleplaying games, and I find they actually go together suprisingly well. Especially when I’m running a game, I always have things to think about between sessions. I try to run my intelligent bad guys as actually intelligent, which means I need time to plan what they’re doing, and how they react to the latest strategems of the players. And no time for that is better than when I’m exercising. Especially running. I used to listen to a lot of podcasts, especially things like Critical Role, but the more I run my own games, the less I want to be influenced by what others have done, and the more I want to create my own unique content. And thinking what a hyper-intelligent monster would do in response to some off-the-wall thinking from my players is not simply something I could come up with on the spur of the moment. Having an hour or two with no kids, no other distractions except the passing scenery is the perfect opportunity to run through these scenarios in my head and plot out what might happen in my next session. Because honestly, until I get to the table, I don’t know what’s actually going to happen.