I have made solid attempts at running longer games in the past and am, currently, running two long sessions, one that started as D&D 5e and has since moved to Thirsty Sword Lesbians and another in the Here, There, Be Monsters system. All of my previous long campaigns have, admittedly, been run in D&D 5e so my point of view is a bit biased. Let's get started on some history here.
I started playing with D&D 3.5e when I was 15 years old at a friend's house with his family. I played a halfing rogue and had no idea what I was doing. I was the only one who sat at the table long enough to just actually work out the puzzle instead of rolling and failing for it. The DM was so excited that I stayed at the table to do the puzzle that he stopped making me roll about 2 turns in. I only ever played the one session before I tried to run my own session. I hadn't read the DMG and didn't fully understand the rules, so my game was a mess. My friends had fun so I guess it doesn't super matter anymore that it was a nightmare from the get.
I briefly touched the rules to Werewolf the Apocalypse in this time and read half the Vampire the Masquerade book. I did not play those systems for many years at that time.
In 2016, I was invited to a D&D 5e session with a friend of the my then-partner. It was their first time running and my first time playing, and I picked a land (forest) druid that I named Lorilla (lore-ee-ya). That game lasted 8 years, and many other D&D 5e sessions were started, finished, or abandoned during that time, but we went level 1 to level 20 in a game I will simply refer to as EEC. I switched characters a few times during that game in the interest of trying different characters and classes, and finished the game with a order cleric/battle master fighter named Amma. There was no session 0 for that game, because we did not know what we were doing, but overall it was an amazing game that I'm glad I played in.
I was one of the main perpetrators of starting and abandoning games in this time, though one game I did finish was referred to as "The Evil Campaign" and is exactly what it says on the tin. I pitched a lot of ideas that never went anywhere, or started servers that never got scheduling to work out and ended up abandoning before they ever fully launched, much to the sadness of my players.
I realized a few sessions in to the most recent game I'm running - called Whispers and Wanderings - that the real issue is I simply dislike running D&D 5e games for a variety of reasons. One of the main reasons is there are a lot of moving parts that you manage as a DM and I simply do not care to do that. It's not that GM-ing in other systems doesn't require a lot of upkeep and work - don't get me wrong - it's just that making maps and plot hooks and following through on those plot hooks and the call to action of high fantasy is simply not my vibe as the storyteller.
I much prefer to fly by the seat of my pants and come up with things on the fly that will pay off rather quickly and then moving on. I found a love for this type of storytelling with Monster of the Week, a Powered By the Apocalypse (PBtA) system that follows in the same storytelling style as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, and Scooby-Doo, where things are typically wrapped up within an "episode" or two. Hence the switch over to Thirsty Sword Lesbians, another PBtA system produced by the same company, Evil Hat.
In the interim I was invited to a Vampire the Masquerade game with the people I was living with, after playing in a conglomerate World of Darkness game that I will simply describe as ambitious. The VTM game was fun! I love the system dearly even if I disagree with a lot of its flavor text and general handling of a lot of sensitive topics. A friend of mine wants to run a Werewolf the Apocalypse game soon and I'm excited to try that system as well, though I think the World of Darkness games are one of those that I will never run myself because, again, there's a lot of moving parts that you - the GM - have to figure out.
More recently, the same friend that ran EEC introduced us to Here, There, Be Monsters, a system that promotes community building amongst "monsters" of various types against establishments and large organizations. It's the inverse of a lot of YA Urban Fantasy (the Shadowhunters series comes to mind), and is much more loose in its rule set than other games. I fell in love with the magic system for that game. While I still have my complaints with the system (mostly with the formatting of their book), I think it's a deeply interesting system that closely aligns with my real world values and thus makes it really easy to play without having to spend a lot of time "getting into character".
I'm currently setting up running one-shots in systems that I'm more familiar with, but I do want to branch out and play or run in more systems, as I do enjoy the act of organized play with my friends, hence the one-shot server. The games I've got underway are in the following systems: D&D 5e; Here, There, Be Monsters; Monster of the Week; What's So Cool About Lucha Libre?; Thirsty Sword Lesbians and Sentai & Sensibility. Blogs will be coming out per game, not necessarily per system, and the player size will vary from 4-6 players per game, as that's about the size of players I find it easiest to manage. Some systems lend themselves to bigger parties - Sentai and Sensibiliy and D&D 5e notably - while others are better with smaller groups - the PBtA games, primarily, though I am running Lucha Libre as smaller groups as well.
There isn't some grand conclusion here, I mostly just wanted to get my timeline of game playing for an understanding of how I'm coming into running these games and my background for analysis. I've gotten into some social media discourse when it comes to TTRPGs, but I would not call myself versed in said discourse. I mostly stand on the sidelines and cheer occasionally. I am excited to undertake this project and reflect fully on how I play and run games, and may even include one-shots that I am a player in as a subject of blog posts.
In the interim of games running I will be posting brief analyses and some deep dives into systems. I hope you all enjoy!
If you want a more "liveblog" experience, you can follow me over on Bluesky where I will be posting more often about my TTRPG experiences while on hiatus from actually streaming.
Thank you for reading!
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