Do I need books, subscriptions, or accounts before we start?
No, not really.
If you already own books or like having D&D Beyond open in another tab, that’s perfectly fine. But I do not expect someone to show up to session zero having already bought a stack of rulebooks or made accounts on five different services just to participate.
If you are new, I would much rather you arrive curious than overprepared. I can provide the core rules context you actually need to make decisions, and I would rather explain the parts that matter than ask you to do homework before you know whether you even enjoy the campaign.
I am brand new to D&D. Is that a problem?
Not at all.
I enjoy introducing new people to the game, and I try to do it in a way that does not make the hobby feel like a test you forgot to study for. Expect a guided session zero, help with character creation, and a table where asking basic questions is normal.
In practice, most new players pick things up very quickly once they are actually playing. The hardest part is usually just getting over the feeling that everyone else already knows some secret language. They don’t. They just have reps. If you can describe what your character wants to do, we can handle the rest from there.
What if I miss a session?
That is one of the main reasons the session notes exist.
Each campaign page keeps a running set of summaries so players can catch up on what happened without needing somebody to reconstruct four hours of play from memory in a group chat. They are meant to be useful enough to get you oriented again, but not so exhaustive that reading them feels like doing assigned reading for school.
Obviously, missing often is harder on a campaign than missing once in a while. But life happens, and I would rather have a structure for handling that gracefully than pretend every group can meet with machine-like reliability forever.
How are characters created?
Usually with point buy or standard array, unless a specific published adventure has a stronger opinion about it.
In general, I prefer character creation that produces competent adventurers without turning the entire process into a lottery or a min-max arms race before the first session has even started. I want people to be able to build something flavorful, effective, and cooperative.
I also tend to prefer lighter backstory requirements. I do not need five pages about your tragic childhood before I can run a good game for you. A few useful hooks, a sense of personality, and some reasons to work with the group are usually far more valuable than an elaborate document nobody will ever read again.
How much combat should I expect?
Less than in some tables, more than in a pure improv-theater campaign, and ideally always for a reason.
I tend to run games that lean toward roleplay, exploration, investigation, and problem-solving. Combat matters, and I enjoy tactical combat quite a lot, but I do not think every session needs to be built around initiative order to feel substantial.
When fights do happen, I prefer them to feel sharp and consequential. I like encounters with pressure, movement, secondary objectives, and situations where the smartest answer is not always “stand here until one side runs out of hit points.”
Are your games beginner-friendly but still interesting for experienced players?
Yes, that is very much the goal.
I do not think “beginner-friendly” should mean shallow, and I do not think “advanced” should mean hostile to newcomers. The ideal table, to me, is one where a new player feels welcome to learn out loud and a veteran still feels like their choices, system knowledge, and creativity matter.
That usually means I try to explain things clearly, make rulings consistently, and keep the campaign moving at a pace where everyone has something to engage with.
5e or 5.5e?
I generally prefer 5.5e.
I think it improves several things that used to annoy me in 5e. In particular, I think it handles Surprise and Exhaustion much better, and I prefer its approach to Counterspell. Overall, it feels a little cleaner in some places where 5e often felt clunky or needlessly arguable.
That said, I am not religious about it. If a group strongly prefers 5e, I am perfectly willing to run 5e. My real priority is running a game the table enjoys, not winning an edition war nobody asked for.
How strict are you about the rules?
I care a lot about the rules, but mostly because I think structure helps the game stay legible and fair.
I do not run on pure vibes, and I do not enjoy tables where every outcome is just whatever sounds coolest in the moment with no consistency from one session to the next. At the same time, I also do not want to spend twenty minutes derailing a scene because two people have opened different tabs and found conflicting forum posts.
So the general approach is: know your character, describe what you are trying to do, ask questions if you need to, and once a ruling is made during session, we keep moving. If something truly needs to be revisited, we can revisit it between sessions like adults.
Do you allow PvP, party theft, or “it’s what my character would do” nonsense?
No, not as a core mode of play.
Characters can disagree. They can argue. They can have friction, secrets, and conflicting priorities. That can all be good drama. What I do not want is a table where one player’s entertainment depends on making the game worse for everyone else.
So no, I am not interested in player-versus-player combat, sabotage, or one person making a deliberately antisocial character and expecting the rest of the campaign to orbit around their chaos. D&D is a team game first. If your character concept cannot function on a team, the concept is not finished yet.
How do you feel about optimization, powerful builds, and rules exploits?
I have no problem with strong characters.
I do have a problem with builds whose entire identity is “I found a way to make the game less interesting for everyone else.” There is a difference between building an effective character and building something that flattens encounter design, trivializes other players’ niches, or depends on a chain of strained readings that only works if the DM agrees to be held hostage by them.
If you make something potent and flavorful, great. If you show up with an internet meme monstrosity that turns every scene into a negotiation about why your combo should never be challenged, expect that to get adjusted.
What is your policy on AI usage?
I generally feel that Dungeons & Dragons is a creative endeavor, and the more creative and expressive people want to be, the less enjoyable it is when relying on AI to do the heavy lifting.
That said, I am not dogmatically opposed to leveraging AI sporadically. If someone wants to generate a profile picture for their character, I have no problem with that. Similarly, if I need a large number of crowd tokens or a quick visual for an NPC who is not shown in a sourcebook, I may generate something to help paint the setting a bit more vividly.
Where I become much less enthusiastic is when AI starts replacing the fun part. If the point of the hobby is collaborative creativity, I do not think it is an improvement to outsource your imagination and then present the output as though that were the same thing. If I need a custom map, for example, I would rather hire and pay a map designer or make it myself.
Battlemaps or theater of the mind?
It depends very heavily on whether I am running in person or online.
If I am DMing in person, I find the physical logistics of exact positioning, a perfect grid, and a giant library of minis to be cumbersome enough that they often hurt more than they help. In person, I am likely to use mostly theater of the mind, perhaps with a map printout or rough visual anchor on the table, while distances and movement stay somewhat loose.
If I am running online, you should expect almost the exact opposite. Online, I prefer to have a battlemap for basically every meaningful location, because I think the medium supports that style well and because it helps scenes feel concrete. In that environment, distances and movement are tracked much more meticulously, and theater of the mind becomes the exception rather than the norm.