March Update: Call Me a Pro now, a Pro GM
This month I got to explore what it is like being a Pro GM
Hey y’all folk! 😈
Good to have you here again! March was a weird month. I can’t say BIG things happened, but it has been a month in which I panicked a bit trying to see if I could survive until the end of the month. Shall we get into the fun stuff?
Goth Borg
So as I indicated on my last update, Goth Borg did not do as well as I expected. Still, it serves to pay for the art, and a bit for all the work on my part. Seeing art appearing from the Art Debriefs I send will never not feel incredible.
Right now I’ve started doing game design streams on Twitch, creating some of these monsters for Mork Borg, and adapting them to 5e, and PF2. If you would like to learn my monster design process, be sure to follow me there!
Professional Game Mastering
I needed some money. Had some small jobs I have been doing, but decided to give this professional GMing a chance again. I tried doing so last year, but it did not work for me. Never got a full party to start, nor managed to make Stripe work in my country to start using StartPlaying.
So I contacted the people at StartPlaying and their support was extremely helpful, giving me ways to make the money enter my bank account. I used DaggerHeart’s release to my advantage to set up some games, and now I am running short campaigns over there . I must say it is not very easy starting out, but I feel this site could help me pay a bit of the bills and that’s all I need.
If you are considering starting Professional GMing make sure to take the Onboarding class from StartPlaying, as they teach you all you need to catch players’ attention. You can easily become frustrated if you don’t. Still, the primary skill needed is persistence, and trying out new things if what you are doing does not work.
Rush & Punch!
The thing I’ve been the most proud of in this recent time is the game I have been working on for the past year with my friend and co-designer Scott Bullock.
Rush & Punch is a narrative storytelling action-packed and frenetic tabletop roleplaying game with explosions, blood, demons, weapons, and more! In it, players take the roles of Heroes fighting against giant entities. One player will act as the mediator and storyweaver, making sure everyone at the table has fun, and has the same scene in their heads to create a cohesive and challenging story. That person is defined as the EM (Entity Master) and will be the one running the Entities/Monsters the Heroes will be facing, along with all other characters they encounter in their way (NPCs). However, it is not only the EM’s task to tell the tale. All players will take part in creating an engaging and exciting story full of cinematic action, and battle against challenging odds.
This game has just entered its first big playtesting phase. This means I’m running multiple sessions of this game for free, and have left all the needed rules for you to run it on your own for free. How can I get all this? Well, by entering my new Discord community that is! This is the portal for playing all the games I’ve done, and am game mastering. Come by and chat about your favorite games! We would love to have you!
My Next Project
I’ve already mentioned I am working on my next project Magnolia: City of Marvels Campaign Setting for D&D One and PF2 (name not final). At this exact moment I am recruiting people to join me in writing it, meaning you will start to see some more things about this very soon. As a subscriber to the newsletter, you will get all the information firsthand! The idea is to have this product be very artistic, meaning it will need a good amount of money for art. If everything goes according to plan, I should be revealing most about this project by the next update.
What I Watched
I haven’t watched as much stuff as I normally do this month, but there were a few standouts I was not expecting:
The Iron Claw. Whether you enjoy WWE or not, this is still an incredible movie. It is from A24, so we are starting with the right foot. It is also a movie about family, and surpassing bad moments in life. It is quite tragic, a drama, and based on a true story as well, so it might not be for everybody.
Dune, Part 2. I read the Dune book, and I watched Blade Runner 2049 from Denis Villanueve. This meant I trusted him to direct a Dune movie, even though it seemed like an impossible task. Yet, he did impress me with Part 1. Part 2, now that the whole explanation of how the universe works has been laid out, is EVEN BETTER. I can see this becoming a new Star Wars, as it has that same stuff that Game of Thrones has, but in sci-fi.
The Super Mario Bros Movie. I got to rewatch the Mario movie. It seems the first time I was distracted watching it with friends, because this time I caught thousands of easter eggs. Truly a movie made for Mario fans (and families). Had a lot of fun with it again shouting all the references I caught.
Hamilton. Every now and then I like rewatching or keeping Hamilton in the background. It just keeps being a masterpiece of the musical genre. The way it is filmed, and the songs themselves are just excellent!
Videos and Articles
📝 [2 mins] Fun Facts About Medieval Stairways: A small but very interesting article about why the stars in castles were constructed the way they were. It’s one of those trivias that is cool to know to surprise friends. LINK
📝 [12 mins] Knots (A Procedure For Elegant Jaquaysing): Jaquaysing your dungeon might take a bit longer than just creating your classical default dungeon, but it just makes it so much better. Getting more tips on how to do it is always useful. It also got me thinking about an article idea: LINK
📝 [7 mins] Running Investigations and Mysteries: I am running a PF2 campaign about solving a mystery and found this article to offer some great tips, apart from indicating how to apply Sly Flourish’s Lazy Tips for this sort of campaign. You might find some great use for it as well: LINK
📝 [5 mins] The Journey to Ironsworn: To this day, Ironsworn (and the games that came from it) is still one of the most innovative games I have ever seen. It was it that opened my mind on the idea of running a TTRPG without a GM, and the idea of Oracles is just a masterpiece. If you like the game, you might enjoy learning about its origins: LINK
📝 [15 mins] How to Set Up and Use Faction Turns: Faction Turns are something I’ve been seeing in some games lately, and I love the idea behind it. Yeah, it can get a bit out of control and stress out the players, but it creates a sense that the world is spinning and not frozen in place until the Heroes defeat the BBEG: LINK
Kaos’ Lair
I traveled to a wedding this month. I was this close to bring him with me 🤏
