AF-Wabash

I've been playing Tabletop Games for nearly two decades. When I was about 10 the D&D 3.5 Starter Set came out and I asked my uncle to buy it. He reluctantly agreed, under the conditions that I learn and run the game as he wasn't interested in DMing. So I did, and with no notion of encounter balancing, I ran it just for him alone and made no adjustments to the adventure that expected a party of four. He had chosen the Wizard Mialee who had 4 hp. That adventure ended immediately when he died to the very first rat in the very first room on the very first turn of combat. Not dissuaded by that first bad run, I played D&D at every chance I got. vBulletin websites with IRC functions became popular in the early 2000's. I'd come home from school and jump in or run any games I could. 3.5, 2e, BECMI, didn't matter. Eventually Pathfinder 1e and 4e came along as well and we were playing those in spades. All Flesh Must Be Eaten and the first edition of Mongoose Traveller were probably the first non-D&D games I played. After that the floodgates were pretty open on anything and everything. I've played a handful of games, and read a ton. I love the more tactical and thought-out experiences rather than "narrative first" or "mechanics-lite" type of games. That being said, GURPS is a bit much, so I do have my limits. But give me a grid or "combat zones" over single-dice roll combat resolutions any day. Across the twenty-three years since that starter box I've been playing inconsistently, but always keeping up with the new names and trends. VTTs and Discord have obviously made things a bit easier to manage. The community around TTRPGs has grown a lot, and the creative energy poured into it is fantastic, and I've never lost a passion for it. This medium is the only one I feel can truly facilitate a collaborative narrative. I enjoy these stories better than any movie or book, and that's never changed.

I am proficient enough to adjust the game to the players wants. For paid games in particular, I believe my role is to deliver a service as an entertainer. To that end, the kind of game you want to play takes precedence over the kind of game I prefer, and the talent you hire me for is curating the game for your enjoyment. I do prefer the more tactical and mechanical elements of a TTRPG. I like to compare encounters to a game of Chess for example. I like my encounters to be optimized and the enemies in my control to feel lethal. But as I said above, if this isn't the type of game for you, it doesn't have to be what we play! My skillset is in adaptability, and I'm happy to exercise it.

A lot.