Greetings! My name is Nelson. I'm based out of Maryland and originally from Miami. As you can see from my avatar image (at least as of when I'm typing this) I like ren faires. I first started playing D&D as a player during 3.5 back in 2010. That group fell apart, and then I had another chance to play in mid-late 2012. The DM at the time would later become my wife years later. In 2013 I moved to Maryland. In 2014 I started to DM for the first time for local friends. We played 4e. We did Keep on the Shadowfel. To date, that's the only campaign I've "finished". After that, the group changed DMs and at some point they kept playing without my wife and I...not sure why, but it was never something I asked about. We're still all friends, and the DM that took over the group is a player of mine and also a DM for me in another game. We're doing doing some cross campaign collab work between our characters as well (soul clone copies).
Starting around 2017 I started playing again in another group. Fast forward a couple years later to the end of 2019 and I started to DM regularly again (I had a short stint with Roll 20 a couple years back for some remote friends). I started with the module Descent Into Avernus. Anyone familiar with the module knows *a lot* of work has to be done for it to make any sense, so I got a good amount of practice that way. I always want to make sure my PCs' characters have personal ties to the overall plot anyway so I've home brewed a lot of connecting scenes to make the whole story make sense.
Then the pandemic happened and we were all forced online. I already had some experience with Roll20 so I started with that. After a while though, my ambition to make awesome experiences for my players started to outgrow what Roll20 could do for me. So I took the plunge and got into Foundryvtt (I had a spare lab computer I used for IT training that I repurposed). There was definitely a learning curve, but it was worth it for me. I won't lie though, troubleshooting that system somedays can take a lot out of me. So anytime I can shave on the GM prep that I can use to wrangle my Foundry server is much appreciated.
Currently I'm actively running 2 campaigns that meet on average every 2-3 weeks. I mostly do them in person while leveraging FoundryVTT as my game board. I'll do online sessions every now and then if people are sick but still want to play. Campaign 1 is the Descent Into Avernus module…heavily modified. Campaign 2 I've named "They Could Be Giants" and it is based on the Candlekeep Mysteries. I originally went with that adventure with the design idea that I'd treat the smaller adventures like episodes, with a meta plot weaved through that gets touched on each episode with a season finale (kinda like Supernatural) to pull it all together. That metaplot, btw, touches upon the first campaign I ran back in 2014.
I also have 2 homebrew campaigns that I run occasionally. One is a west marches setup that I had hoped to run more often with less prep and a greater variety of players. At least that is the goal.
My other one that I've had to put on the backburner for now but I'd really like to run is my sci-fi world that is meant to be part battle-tech with fantasy-esque ground combat (where magic is just technology…"Nanomachines son!"). Customizing rules for that has been a real bear though in addition to all the standard adventure prep.
That's my story. I write a lot sometimes.