Game Summary
The way that I DM is almost entirely player driven. To describe briefly I find that plots and conflicts contrived by me are boring to DM. It never goes exactly the way I planned and I might as well write a book instead. Instead I help my players make fully fleshed out characters with internal desires and potential conflicts, then the way my party interacts with each other and the world drives them, instead of some random bbeg I've designed and forced them towards. Your decisions, your past, your enemies, your friends, and most importantly the consequences of your own actions will direct you.
My world is in the setting of classic D&D Forgotten Realms (extensively homebrewed) with cities, dungeons, adventure, and conflict available, so long as you look for it. It is high fantasy, with fleshed out history, lore, and secrets hidden within. As a DM of ongoing ~10 years now, I’ve had quite some time to develop past what's offered in the original world.
The homebrew I run is both system, monsters, and for the pc’s characters (if requested and vetted). While extensive, once understood is relatively simple as it is all an attempt to more fully develop existing systems rather than making random hardships to antagonize players. However if you are not comfortable with long homebrew documents, and learning new systems, you should reconsider applying.
Additionally it is important to note the extent of what I expect in character creation. Personal lore, family, friends, locations you've traveled to, anything that you put in your backstory will be developed and you will effectively be playing a real person. This is the most difficult hurdle for many, and I’ve had many a player quit because of this as well. Expect this process to take 3-5 one on one vcs, across about a month of time. This will speed up as you continue to make characters with me, but I like to give new players plenty of time to think.
The second most important quality in a player for me is creativity, whether that's not making cliche stories, bouncing back and forth ideas fluidly, or just making simple stories real.
The most important quality however is commitment, even if you aren’t the most skilled writer in the world, if you keep trying, it’ll come together eventually. If this daunts you I will be helping you at every step of the way, but if this bores you, or if you think that you won’t be able to keep up then please stop here. This also applies to session commitments. I try my absolute best to schedule personal events around the established time, and my existing players do as well. While we understand things happen, and that much of life is outside of our control, we still expect you to try your best to make as many sessions as you can. Should you have a scheduling overlap that causes us to pause that week, you will be expected to reach out to players and make a rain-check day happen. It doesn’t have to be that week, but eventually. This does not include sickness or other obvious things that you shouldn’t be at all punished for, unless you would still like to schedule said rain-check.
As a group outside of games, I also think its important to mesh well outside of session hours. I'd like for us to be able to play party games/video games during character creation leading up to the game, or when we can't session because of a missing player. Even better if we become friends that hang out outside of scheduled hours as well. A good friendship is a core foundation to good roleplay in my opinion, and I would hope all applicants share in this view. While there's nothing wrong with only seeing each other strictly within session hours, personally I find it a little cold to be a part of, and builds much less natural investment in each others' as well as the party's continued story/ies.
shut lava
pure shale
glossy tangle
sick sundial
mild sierra