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Why Would You Want to Hire Me as a Dungeon Master?

Hello! My name is Toren and I live in East Vancouver! I’ve been running and playing D&D since 1985! I’ve played every edition. My preferred edition is “old school” which comes in many forms, from Basic to Old School Essentials to Shadowdark (kind of sort of). I’ve also run 5th edition with dozens of groups.

MY BONA FIDES:

I’ve designed an award winning TTRPG called Spaceship Zero
I’ve worked for Wizards of the Coast as an illustrator
I’m a professional actor and voice actor
I’ve run games and tournaments at conventions, including GenCon, and at two animation studios in town.

HOW IT WORKS

I prefer in person around a physical table – but you provide the venue
I have some miniatures, terrain and battle maps if that is the kind of game you like (I do) – I even make my own terrain!
I have a car so I can drive and potentially give other players rides if need be
I welcome and can provide consent checklists to avoid any uncomfortable awkwardness
I write adventure summaries and track noteworthy items after each session
I charge $85 (CAD) for a 4 hour session with up to 4 players. Over four players is another $15 per additional player up to 6*.

An encounter with horizontal AND vertical dimensions! From my post-apocalyptic campaign

MY DM STYLE

I’ve been Dungeon Mastering since the 80s, but I play it fairly loose with the rules.
I like to start with mini-adventures that can be completed in a single session, but if the group vibes well, longer multi-session quests are a natural next step.
You can expect memorable non-player characters with distinct quirks and vocal stylings.
I welcome any help/advice/correction with regards to rules and rulings. 
Typically, I don’t worry about alignment, but advise that reputation is important with regards to interacting with civilized society (which is the source of most quests in the realm). Criminals are treated harshly in the medieval-type world! 

The Great Gingerbread Dungeon of 2015

CAVEAT
My schedule can be a challenge. I have a full time job, a wife, a dog, a rock band that’s working on a new album, freelance illustration gigs, and another ongoing professional DM gig. So I won’t be able to meet weekly, but once or twice per month is feasable.

Interested? Reach out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F_JzutLhl0

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Overdue Who Review: Shada – the Recently Completed Episode!

Season 17 (1979) – Fourth Doctor (TV movie)

The Doctor, Romana and K-9 are summoned to the lair of a dottering old Time Lord friend Professor Chronotis (get it? Chrono means time!) at a contemporary (1979) British university. He’s lost an important book that is the key to accessing the titular Gallifreyan prison asteroid. The evil Skagra, with inimitable fashion sense, is trying to access Shada to complete his ultimate plan of putting the entire universe into one mind – his – with the help of a cryogenically frozen inmate named Salyavin.

Skagra’s path towards this goal involves stealing the minds of important people with the aid of a floating grey sphere. His muscle is the monstrous, lumbering, silicon-based Krarg. Along for the ride with The Doctor is a student of physics who accidentally borrowed the Gallifreyan tome.

Shada was intended as the final serial of the season but filming never completed, owing to a strike. The completed version of Shada was finally released in 2017, with missing dialogue newly recorded by the original cast, using the same audio equipment employed in the initial shoot, and animated by the team that undertook the reconstruction of the 1966 serial The Power of the Daleks. 

Although this 2h18m movie could have been cut down by at least 18 minutes (just with the animated characters looking left and right alone), this is a well-written story, as Doctor Who stories go, by our good friend Douglas Adams. There are lots of his trademark witticisms delivered perfectly by Tom Baker. The Doctor manipulates the bad guy’s spaceship AI with “logic” a la Captain Kirk. There’s a chase scene where he’s riding a bicycle without a helmet. He has his memories stolen by the floating sphere when it touches his head (could this have been prevented with a bike helmet?) He has a mind control battle with the bad guy.

Sadly, Romana does precious little except to remind The Doctor of various plot points. I also had a problem with the mysterious Salyavin revealing himself for absolutely no reason at the end, to the benefit of no one but the bad guy. Animated jelly babies appear. The TARDIS goes exactly where everyone wants it to go for a change.

Oh, and the music is quite good for a change!

As a student of animation this reconstruction interests me. The animation of the human characters is stilted with fairly flat light and color, but the 2D stills of ships and backgrounds exceeds the live action sets and models. K-9 has never moved so fluidly in his CG form and even the alien Krarg are rendered in 3D to excellent effect. There’s a blog

There’s an online Doctor Who magazine called Nothing At The End of the Lane that takes a hefty, serious, thorough look at this reconstruction. I find this extremely interesting and if you watch Shada (which I recommend) you might look into it https://www.endofthelane.co.uk/Shada-Blog-1.html

Next: The Leisure Hive