GAMES MASTER
For years the art of finding new and innovative ways to tell a story and take people on an adventure has captivated me. It started with the “Choose Your own Adventure“ books that I used to sit and read in my school library, and quickly spiralled from there once I found friends that were interested in that kind of thing as well! Like countless others, my roleplaying journey started with D&D, joining in several different sessions, and having a great time travelling through a fantasy land, which led on to me wanting to take those same friends on my own journey that I had created in my own imaginary lands, to see how they would interact with and shape them as the stories unfolded.
Dungeons & Dragons
D&D was, like so many others, my first foray into tabletop RPGs. I played a few one shots and thought, ‘Oh yeah, this is good, but I wanna be in the driver’s seat.’ So, naturally, I got a few friends together and started writing. My first homebrew centered around an Alice in Wonderland-themed landscape, with the party falling through the floor of a deserted meeting hall and landing on a massive chess board, ready to fend off the Queen of Hearts’ minions. I quickly fell in love with writing my own stories, bringing the world to life for my players, and learned to love the improv of it all. The ‘yes and’ nature of being a GM really kept me hooked, and as time went on, I got better and better. My second big deep dive into D&D lead me to a birthday party where I set up a campaign for eight of my friends. This was the biggest party I had ever led, yet with fielding such an in-depth combat system for many unseasoned first-timers, I couldn’t help but wonder if there were other games out there suited to a larger party, or ones with more simplistic rules and a different take on its world building to bring more newbies into the fold.
Kids on Brooms
Kids on Brooms first came across my TV screen via the wonderful Dimension 20 on Dropout, with the excellent GM Aabria Iyengar at the helm, and I thought, ‘Hey, I can get behind this.’ I quickly got to work crafting my fantasy school, I spent weeks worldbuilding, writing lore and backstories and learning the best way to introduce people into this world. And I sat down to begin the first game! And I soon realised the story I had created wasn’t going to work for the curious cast of players before, so I decided to improvise the entire frist session. And suffice it to say, it was one of the best RPG sessions I ever ran. Kids on Brooms was a huge success for my gaming group, and I even decided to tweakthe fights a bit more by adapting to a new style of rolling using the homebrew “Never Stop Blowing Up” rules of dice, whereupon hitting the highest number on the rolled die meant you graduated from one size of die to the next larger size. Leading these different types of games gave me and my friends dozens of hours of entertainment, and made me want to experiment even more by finding even more games to run.
Blood on the Clocktower
And in came Blood on the Clocktower; a GM’s best friend. All you need to do is add some flavour text and watch the whole village descend into chaos before your eyes. With intricate plots weaved through the use of Werewolf-style hidden roles, you will have everyone questioning everything they think they know is right, while the Demon secretly rubs their hooves together in glee. The incredible game mechanics for the GM keeping a secret grimoire full of mischevious information, and the countless roles and scripts available for endless possibilities of gameplay make this one of the best games I have ever had the pleasure of running. As previously mentioned in my top 10 board game lists, the real fun comes from watching my social circle slowly start to break down - while the Poisoner makes the Empath believe that there are multiple evil people in their close vicinity, the Imp can slowly start to pick them off one by one, all while the Drunk Washerwoman swears blind that they know that one of two players is an Undertaker, so why are they all lying?! For me and my friends, it is one of the best social deception games on the market, and provides countless hours of fun, offering up perfect mechanics for any given party size or situation.