Dungeons & Dragons

I am a dungeon master and enjoy running and playing Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop role playing games (TTRPGs). I missed the D&D wave of the 80s and 90s. My circle of friends just never became interested in it or we had no older siblings who were interested in it. It just wasn't on our radar. The closest I got to playing D&D in the 90s was through a board game called Dragon Strike published by TSR in 1993

This was the first time my friends and I were introduced to the concept of a 'dungeon master' running the game for a group of players. Since I was the owner of the game, the task of being the dungeon master always fell on my shoulders. I really enjoyed introducing people to this game. It came with a cheesy, live action VHS video that my friends and I always got a kick out of it.

Fast forwarding many years later, after college I became interested in tabletop role playing games once again. At that time, Pathfinder was a hot RPG that was supposed to fix a lot of issues with D&D 3.5. I picked up Pathfinder and ran a few adventures of it for my friends. This eventually led me to D&D 5th Edition and I ran a multiyear campaign about a poisonous, disease filled forest spreading across the lands called the Plaguewoods.

They made a lot of good, sensible changes with D&D 5th Edition and it is arguably the most popular version of D&D ever. However, I had some issues with the system after we started getting above level 5. Combat encounters seemed to drag on forever and the heroes became extremely powerful, so much so that they became impossible to kill with tons of HP and death saving throws. After my campaign, I decided that 5th edition is not really for me and that I wanted to run something grittier where the player characters go from zero to hero and earn their fame and fortune. This is how I discovered OSR or the Old School Renaissance.

My current favorite TTRPG systems and games I want to run

HYPERBOREA by Northwind Adventures A weird, sword and sorcery fantasy rpg based on the works of Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith. It plays like a cleaned up, improved version of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

Dolmenwood by Necrotic Gnome

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons by TSR First or Second Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons with house rules as needed.

Dungeon Crawl Classics by Goodman Games

Call of Cthulhu 7th edition by Chaosium

Delta Green by Arc Dream Publishing

Weird Frontiers by Stiff Whiskers Press Cthluhu mythos inspired, wild west frontier setting using Dungeon Crawl Classic rules! Sign me up!