Very few folks know that most of my life, I’ve been a hardcore tabletop gamer… I’ve mastered thousands (that’s plural) of hours worth of RPG sessions in home games over my lifetime.
* I bought my first D&D set when I was 9. Actually I bought 2 of them pink boxes.
I have vivid memories of girls in elementary school taking my D&D books off my desk and me lashing out at them in a strange voice, “Give me back my precious!!!” #truestory. I was ultra-super-anal about my gaming books and comics back then.
* About 20 years ago, I hired a FLASH developer to develop a “dynamic lighting” virtual table top for gaming. This was WAY before any virtual table tops existed. Sadly, I didn’t have the money and resources to bring that project to market–but it’s crazy to see all the virtual table tops now (NOT in Flash, lol) that do exactly what I was trying to accomplish all those years ago.
* When I launched my fantasy comic series in the early 90’s, I was honored to get Gary Gygax himself to edit. Sadly, I never got the chance to table with him…
* I owned the domains SciFiWargaming and FantasyWargaming for years. (I lost them when Godaddy expired them out from under me without warning after the auto pay failed. They were nice enough to offer them back to me for like $10,000 each. Pffft, such a scam.)
These are just a few examples of how gaming has been a part of my life since, well, just about forever…
This year, I’ve decided to dust off the books, upgrade my computer camera and Mic and run a few pay-to-play virtual D&D tables.
I’m running tables at $40/month, $60/month, $80/month, $100/month.
(Actually, I probably won’t have time to run all 4 tables with my current writing schedule.)
So it might be more accurate to say, I’m prepping 4 tables and will run the first 2 or 3 that fill up with players. I’m leaving it up to the fates which tables actually go live. Despite my hectic writing schedule, rest assured, whatever tables I do run, will have my full commitment moving forward, at least through the end of 2024.
While you won’t likely be playing in more than one campaign, my goal is to develop four vastly different settings. It’s way easier for a DM to work in one campaign setting and rehash adventures for different groups. That’s not me. I want everyone to have a custom, unique experience. In my opinion, it’s critical to have the DM engaged just as much as the players and rehashing stuff is a bit like going on autopilot.
Here are some poorly articulated descriptions of each campaign. No, I genuinely mean that. These really are shite descriptions. They definitely won’t inspire you to want to play, but, hopefully, they’ll give you some idea as to the direction they’re moving in. (As soon as I have them written proper, I’ll come back and update. I’ll likely do breakout pages with full backgrounds to the campaign details.)
The Beasts of Möna-Dü
Weekly – 3 hour sessions – $40/month – game time not set yet (no break)
Brief Synopsis: A once prosperous land, two large sea-side mountains stood as a natural gate to a large river feeding the rich forests beyond. Some 150,000 humans populated Gate City, a thriving city of commerce, with a well-trained standing army. In the forests, an Elven empire of equally impressive size. Relations between the two races were tight and all was well… for many generations… until… the unspeakable horror arrived. It blew through Gate City laying waste to everything in its path. In the end, only darkness and lands drained of their life remained. Eventually the darkness vanished and the lands have slowly been trying to recover. Gate City, mostly in ruins, is once again home to humans… but life is no longer flourishing and thriving. People just get by, usually at the expense of someone else. The elves are no more and the land is mostly desolate and lifeless.
Game Insight: I’m offering this as an introductory campaign at a reduced rate. I wanted to pull something from the past and update it for 5e. I have quite a few to choose from, finally settling on Mona-Du from 2001. The flavor of the campaign centers around a ruined human city, Gate City, carrying an overall gritty and rough feel. Reminds me something of Mad Max with Dark Sun vibes.
Terra Incognita
Bi-Weekly – 4 hour sessions – $60/month – game time not set yet (break as needed)
Brief Synopsis: This is a new setting/campaign I’m creating from scratch. Terra Incognita, meaning Unknown or Unexplored Territory, revolves around a ship at sea, getting knocked off course and finding itself wrecked on the beaches of an unknown island… well very large island, maybe more like a small continental mass… Pretty standard Hollow/Lost World territory.
Game Insight: I’m excited to work on this one, ironically, this setting is not something I’ve visited often over the years. Really looking forward to developing some unexpected arcs and story material in a complete wild setting. Lots of creative freedom here. As I’ve been working on the story discovery on this one, it’s really interesting, because with no realistic way to leave the island, when you really start to consider the long term implications of being permanently stranded, the typical campaign goals sort of go out the window. This setting also presents an opportunity to really focus on character development and character driven storyline, both from a PC and NPC perspective. Fun times.
Faywind
Weekly – 3 hour sessions – $80/month – Fridays 8pm-11pm Eastern (no break)
Brief Synopsis: Welcome to Feywind, a picturesque rural land governed by a benevolent king and his noble soldiers. The land, divided by inner Feywind where the castle and wealthy city resides and outer Feywind made up of numerous farming and agricultural towns and villages. Named after the FEYWIND, a legendary wind that would blow forth transporting those caught within its draft to the ever twilight world of the Fey. Though the Feywind has long since appeared, the legend persists throughout the land of a secret world within the world. A world of unsurpassed beauty, fantastic treasures, immeasurable mischief, and wonderous danger.
Game Insight: I wanted to setting that was hyper-magical and wonderous. Inspired heavily by Studio Ghibli anime, this campaign is one of the few campaigns I’ve worked on that focuses on a thriving, happy, resource rich center. Usually, as you can see with the other settings, there’s some sort of core conflict or trouble to a campaign setting that the party has to deal with. Of course the adventure won’t lack conflict or danger, but the core concept of a thriving, good place as the center, a place that remains as such for quite a stretch, is a really nice and fun change of pace. I’m also psyched to do some really fantastical adventures, pushing the dimensional boundaries of the surreal and abstract.
Gothic Horror (still brainstorming the real title)
(Even if you found this game over on Roll20, I’m running this table through startplaying.games please connect over there.)
Bi-weekly – 5.5 hour sessions – $100/month – Saturdays 1:30-7pm Eastern (includes 30 min break)
Brief Synopsis: Wars, pestilence, economic collapse, a cloud of despair hangs in the air. Imagine your typical gothic horror setting village under the oppression of such hard times. Well things are about to get a lot worse.
Game Insight: I consider this the main table, a Ravenloft/Curse of Strahd style game. I have big expectations for this one. As some of you might know, Horror is my jam… For the first time in my life, pretty crazy to say that, I feel like I’ve learned enough as a writer and story teller to really weave a horrific playable horror story… something that will leave an impression and hopefully make some hearts race as we play. Survival Horror. Dread. Real fear. Cold sweaty palms… and then that feeling of euphoria when you make it through to the other side. Shooting to deliver all that in spades.
- Newcomers or veterans welcome.
- Please, 18 or older only.
If you game, you must certainly have an old adventure lying around…
But do you have an old adventure from the 90’s printed out on a dot matrix printer?
Hey I’ve got even older, lots of hand written ones… but none of those guys have actual dates on em. This one was kind of fun to pull out and take a look through. The papers are old and yellowed enough to be one of the scrolls in the adventure!
If anyone has any questions or is interested in playing, shoot me an email mac@nickmacari.com or head over to Roll20.net and look for my games, Joshua and Dr. Falken.
If VTTRPG (Virtual Table Top Role Playing Games) manages to demand a chunk of significant time… I may even break out the custom RPG system I started developing a million years ago. A super ambitious system that I never found time to complete. Hey, you never know.