Tabletop RPG
A visualization of my personal RPG history. D&D was created in 1974. I started playing in 1990
Currently Running / Playing
- (Playing) Rime of the Frost Maiden - Dungeons and Dragons 5e - Foundry VTT
- I am a Tortle, Circle of the Moon Druid named ‘Snap’*
- 🔒 Cyberpunk RED
Play Queue / Wish List
- High level D&D 5e
- Star Trek Adventures Tabletop RPG
- Shadowdark RPG
One shots I’d revisit
- 🔒 Dungeon Crawl Classics - Current running as occasional one shots and convention material
- 🔒 ALIEN The Roleplaying Game - Chariots of the Gods
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Crawl Classics
Games of Years Past
The following are the major Role Playing campaigns that I have run for friends and a few where I’ve been the player. Good times, good memories.
Spelljammer - Light of Xaryxis
12-shot boxed set return to the 2nd edition campaign
A fast-paced, Buck Rogers serial adventure with a new fail-forward linear narrative. It wasn’t my favorite published adventure from pre-OGL crisis WOTC, but it was a fun return to in-person D&D.
Dungeons and Dragons 5e
Inner Sea
The players didn't reach Atlantis, but we might get back to this campaign some day. Never say never.
Long ago, the world was flooded. The Surface is an uncivilized archipelago amid stormy seas. Below the waves is the Inner Sea, home to both water and air-breathing civilizations. Deeper still is the Dark Abyss, where no surface light may penetrate and few surface dwellers venture. Brave captains pilot submersible craft between settlements and cities in search of trade, adventure, and the mysteries of a world surrounded by water.
- Campaign Diary
- Chapter 1 - read here
- Chapter 2 - read here
- Chapter 3 - read here
- Chapter 4 - read here
- Chapter 5 - read here
Homebrew + Dungeons and Dragons 5e + FoundryVTT
Tomb of Annihilation
He's on the cover of the 5e DMG, time to face him.
The death curse ravages the whole world and all signs point to the source being hidden in the jungles of Dinosaur Island, or Chult as the locals call it. Brave the Gygaxian horrors and emerge heroes.
-
Tomb of Annihilation Review Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 - 🔒 Campaign wiki
Tomb of Annihilation + Dungeons and Dragons 5e + Roll20
(Player) Curse of Strahd
Barovia broke me
I’d had a few short 5e experiences, including trying to run the first chapter of Curse of Strahd through Roll20, but none stuck. I was invited to play in a friend’s game and, while I normally GM, getting a chance to play an Evoker in a multi-year full run of this adventure was great. I got to see the different styles and strengths of a friend DM and meet some new friends. My character, Cal Thunderstone, was fully broken by this world. It was great. Strahd must die!
Curse of Strahd + Dungeons and Dragons 5e + Roll20
Spelljammer 4e
A map from my conversion of Keep on the Shadowfell
After a hiatus from D&D I returned to give 4e a shot with Spelljammer adaptation of H1 Keep on the Shadowfell. It was my first experience with true gridded tactical D&D and I liked it. The game also had my first TPK against an encounter with Sahuagin.
Spelljammer + Dungeons and Dragons 4e
Delta Green
I started playing after it came back into print in 2004
Choose lying to your superiors. Choose to ruin your career. Choose no friends. Choose divorce. Choose life through the bottom of a bottle.
Choose destroying evidence and executing innocent people because they know too fucking much. Choose black fatigues and matching gas masks. Choose the Golden Dawn and waking up wondering who you are. Choose a 9mm retirement plan. Choose sending your last encrypted message down a securely laid cable as a wetworks squad busts through your door.
Choose one last Night at the Opera because …
"That which is not dead can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons death may die."
Call of Cthulhu + Delta Green + WOD 2.0 + Conspiracy X
Freedom City 2040
An attempt to return to a superhero game
In 1999 over one hundred super-powered heroes died defending Freedom City from an alien invasion. The year is 2040, and the vigilante days of the 20th century are over. You have been recruited for your special talents into the Freedom League, but not the one your grandparents knew.
Without revealing your powers you must fight the old fights outside of the public eye, for society does not need to know that giants walk the earth.
Driving back to my college campus the year after graduating to run games with friends. This game would not last long and started another series of unsuccessful campaigns.
This one was highly inspired by the comic “Planetary” by Warren Ellis. It didn’t last long
Mutants and Masterminds 1.0
The Masks of Nyarlathotep
My introduction to horror rpgs
Your friend, Jackson Elias, has been brutally murdered in his Manhattan hotel room after hurriedly returning from overseas. Who killed him and for what reason? What are they hiding? What was the fate of that archeology expedition? … Are you ready to find out?
Travel across the globe on an investigative adventure to save the world. With any luck you may avoid death and insanity … but don’t bet on it.
Not all of it aged well, and I’ve since had to come to terms with that as a storyteller I’ve inherited and must consciously make an effort to stop doing some of the hurtful things and prejudices this game’s 1920 story brings out of me.
That said, this epic Call of Cthulhu campaign was my introduction to Lovecraft. I co-ran it with a close friend for a very large group during senior year of College and it is among my favorite social memories.
We finished this game during graduation week.
Masks of Nyarlathotep + Call of Cthulhu
Darksun
Brom is an inspiration
The burnt world of Athas is a Darwinian cauldron of pain and cruelty where the strongest live one day at a time. Tyr is among the most oppressive of the seven city-states scratching a living from the desert under the rule of Kalak, one of the seven sorcerer-kings.
However, the best gladiator in the city just threw an enchanted spear made by a cannibal halfling through Kalak’s heart and his co-conspirators have just started a bloody revolution. Congratulations new citizen, you are stuck in the Athas’ first and last attempt at democracy.
A sprawling 10-player D&D campaign run in the basement of my college house occupying most Friday evenings. Darksun was a return to form for me after a few halting experiences with 3rd edition. A player from our school’s more narrative-focused LARP and gaming club noted that the game didn’t fit the negative stereotype building around 3rd edition games. She meant it as high praise.
Darksun + Athas.org DS3e + Dungeons and Dragons 3e
Numenor - Second Age
Lord of the rings concept art from John Howe before the Jackson trilogy is inspiring.
It is the second age of Man. Morgoth, the errant of the Valar has been defeated and your people have been granted a land of plenty between the immortal land of Valinor and the mortal coasts of Middle Earth. However, your people have grown restless in their strength and grace and now choose to expand their influence to the long-departed shores of their birth. You must pave the way for the coming of the Numenoreans as an advance team.
The rings have not been forged. The Wizards have not yet arrived. Elven Kingdoms still rule and Numenor has traitors. Only the very wise know the history of these times, but you will found an empire that will either meet its challenges or succumb to despair.
It is the time of Isuldur, the last of the Numenorian Kings.
A short-lived Play By Post campaign that died quickly. I have fond memories of the prep for this game which involved diving deep into Tolkien reading on the web. Fun fact, I wrote a rough story outline that wasn’t that far from 2022’s “The Rings of Power” which is set in the same timeline.
Homebrew + The Lord of the Rings + Dungeons and Dragons 3e
The Dark on Death
maybe a setting that gets revisited soon
You should be dead. Death was nice. You rose each day from your injuries and raided the frost giants alongside your god, Thor, in the heavenly realm of Valhalla. Then one day recently, you realized that was all a lie.
Your memories have been wiped. You are alive. You must travel between the outer planes of existence to find the truth about your past, life and death, and a conspiracy among gods.
A successful summer mini-campaign combining stolen plot elements from “Memento” and playing on the expectations of the characters.
Planescape + Dungeons and Dragons 3e
The Horde
I could probably still draw the rough layout of the map for this campaign
This is the land of the Endless Waste, the center of the Faerun continent. This is the middle lands where the cultures of north, east, south, and west meet, and where adventure is measured in more than just gold.
After playing various 2nd edition campaign settings with my brother and school friends through junior high school, I had not played D&D in a while. After being accepted to college, when senioritis kicked in, my now 18-year-old nerdy friends and I had to admit we weren’t having as much fun hanging out as when we were younger (a mere 5 years before, but time passes differently for an 18-year-old and those who are 40+).
“Why were we never bored?” I asked my buddy.
“Because we played D&D” he wisely replied.
I dragged out my favorite fantasy setting off the shelf of TSR game products my brother and I had collected earlier that decade and started a Play-by-post game which quickly transformed into a full-blown summer-before-college 2e campaign going from 1st to 8th level.
I learned HTML for this game. While I was a reasonable Pascal and C programmer by this point, combining computers D&D sparked something that continues in me to this day.
Forgotten Realms + Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2e
The Black Box
It begins
We all have our first game. My older sister played D&D in a summer camp class for older kids. An older classmate ran a game without pencil, paper, or dice on a school bus and I played a wizard with 4 hp and one spell. I asked my parents for “D&D” for my birthday, barely understanding what that was. They were rightly concerned I’d fall into a new obsession so they only let my Abuelo buy it for me after I finished a time-consuming class project. Everyone has their first D&D. For me it was the Black Box and I ran it on the schoolyard during recess … long before that was cool.
Escape from Zanzer's Dungeon + Basic Dungeons and Dragons