About the GM

[Papa Bear]

So you get to know a little bit about me before you commit to the long process of creating not just a well developed character, but a Champions character with its incredible amount of crunch and waste an awful lot of hard work;

I am a middle 50s long time gamer. I started playing RPGs (specifically D&D) in the late 70s and have been hooked. throughout the 80s, middle school and high school, I played a lot of systems and games, GMing most of them for my buddies, of which a few I am still in contact with AND actually game weekly with them on Roll20. Around the turn of the century, I met a whole new group of buddies to game and we've enjoyed our weekly (well, mostly weekly) Face to Face gaming until the pandemic shut us down. We can't seem to get back to our weekly game sessions, sadly (though we usually do Roll20... and yes, I've combined both groups into the Roll20 game). I split time GMing with two other primary GMs these days.

I got into Play by Post by first getting into a Wrestling eFed. I had a great time and had two great characters. But Feds often have a lot of politicking with certain players who are 'in' having special favor. It was still a bunch of fun, but as my first fed fell apart and I tried my hand at new feds, I really didn't want to be earning my stripes, so to speak, as I often found my (and others) work to be superior, yet still having bottom rung characters who lost a lot of matches. I always enjoyed Wrestling, but it wasn't my passion.

Yes, dear readers, as mentioned earlier, my passion is Role-Playing Games (and comic books... which is why I love Supers RPGs so much). I started on the old En World PbP site, before the magazine. I met a few friends there who were moving off of En World onto a new site someone that someone knew was starting up because En World was SO FREAKING OVER POPULATED. Pages took forever to load. Anyway, I played at the sight for many years until the site owner sold it and started a new site. I moved to the new site with a lot of other (both were small communities around 100). When the guy sold that one off a few years later, several of my friends were angry and now, seeing a pattern. One of the other gamers started a new site and 'we' all moved there. I was on these three sites with a 'core' batch of 30ish gamers for nearly 20 years. After a few years, the new owner had a few kids, switched jobs, and just found life to be too much for running the site and it got frustrating to play there as you could not start a new game without him creating a board for you. People slowly started abandoning the site... That brings me to Mythweavers!

I first joined MW back in like 2008 when one of my sites started closing down and I was looking for a new home. As mentioned above, someone started up a new one from the site I was playing and I decided to commit to it and posted like... maybe 3 times on MW, completely forgetting about it. When the Pandemic hit and we were all in lockdown, the site I was playing on was just way too slow with very few people left because of the site owner disappearing for months at a time. He was a good guy but I wanted to play. I found MW again and registered (oopse, I had two accounts... but when I figured that out, I contacted Admin, scared I would be banned. But thankfully they just merged my two accounts). I've very much enjoyed my time at MW. It has a good 'small community' vibe while still being a very large and robust gaming community.

I GMed a lot of games, most of which lasted 3 to 7 years. When I commit to GMing a game, I can be pretty dogged about it. Which is why I don't often run many games but the couple I run at a time. Not to brag, but I think my track record is about 60% to 40% successful games (I consider games that make it to that 3 year mark OR ended when it was "scheduled to" (such as the completion of a module/adventure path) a successful game).

PbP games will often end from attrition as players fall away for various reasons, including life stuff. That's generally how my games have come to a close. I've only just 'ended' two games I've GMed while I still had Active Players in the 25 ish years I've been doing PbP.

Currently, I am GMing a Supers game in MSH (Marvel Super Heroes) called Rise of the Rooks, which is a game based on a world that didn't have superheroes then suddenly (modern times) a meteorite struck and suddenly supers started appearing... why? Well, that's part of the adventure :) Only one member of the original cast has dropped out of this game, which I started in... August 2020, just a few months after joining MW. I will admit there have been some lulls, but when I figure out what I've done wrong and what I need to do, the cast comes roaring back and its very fun and exciting.

I am also GMing a D&D5e 'hack -n- slash' adventure called Battle Lands. There are only two players at present but they are great players with fun, creative, and solid Role-play and characters. They are also very active and despite there only being two, I'm very excited to be GMing that game. That game started in June of '22.

I tried two other games on MW that played for a while, but I think dropped off before making the year mark. Both games slowed to a virtual halt; one where the players just seemed to lose interest (my fault, I'm sure) and the other where players slowly dropped away until there were only a couple players who just didn't post and sort of seemed to have also lost interest. That was sad because I had a huge cast that stared the first 5 or 6 months very active. I had split it up successfully into multiple groups but some players started bickering that chased off some other players, then of course, they left too and it was a slow domino decline. One of the guys who was still playing when I closed up shop told me that he considered it a successful game because it lasted ... I think 10 or so months.

So, that's my PbP and RPing history (shortened, if you can believe it)

Me, who the heck is Papa Bear?

Well, as you can tell, I can be very long winded and a bit ramble-y. On the plus side (maybe, depends on who you are) my RP posts are rarely ever this long. I love telling stories. I much prefer to GM original stories over adventure paths/modules (though this is an adventure path). I am probably not as smart as you are, dear reader. I make a lot of mistakes, mostly of the "oh, I forgot about that" variety. So hopefully you made it this far and can be OK with that because if you point things out that I screwed up, I'll try to make it 'right' and hopefully we can work it out. I'm pretty easy going in life and as a GM. I'm not a hardcore stickler for the rules as written, though I do believe that they are there to provide the skeletal structure that contributes in the support of the game. The other support is the Muscle... without the muscles, the skeleton collapses and the Muscle is Role-playing. I generally favor good RP over rules. Something about me; you give me a good enough RP on something, I will often just say whatever you were wanting to roll on is successful. Usually, I'll at least swing the odds in your favor with bonuses.

Please, feel free to ask me questions to get to know me and determine if you think we'll be a good fit for each other.