GM Name: Rowana or Whisper
Forum Name: Rowana
Location: Middle of the U.S.
Time Zone: Central Time (US)
Real Name: Rowana.... (okay, well it's a real nickname anyway)
Age: bit to close to thirty for my tastes
Occupation: Mother and career student
I've decided this old thing needs an update. It's been a couple.... almost four(!) years and some things have changed over that time!
I've been an active gamemaster here at Layonara since around October of 06. I've been a gamemaster since long before that. I am the daughter of gamemasters. I'm married to one as well (who bums here too!). Perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise then that we have a budding gamemaster in our ever-growing brood who is working on writing his first campaign at the time of this post.
Those exciting details aside I'd like to cover some things you should know about me as a gamemaster and player both. Firstly, before all things, hobby or anything else, family and friends come first. I have seen this hobby break bonds with both and I think it's very, very important that we all take time to spend time with family and friends no matter how much fun we are having (here or elsewhere!). Anytime you are dealing with me don't worry about AFKs or having to jump out of game or anything like that. I understand and support those decisions.
That said, I am a very passionate player and gamemaster alike. My favorite aspect to gamemastering is eliciting that same passion in players over any other part. I delight in watching characters develop in to near-fleshy creations with hearts and dreams and hates. This is regardless of medium, pen and paper or video version. Any aspect of my quests is open to follow up, so long as the follow up is lore compatible.
At the time of this writing I am apart of several teams. As such I am technically an inactive quest GM. That doesn't stop me from popping in and running an impromptu, or running a quest here and there and my
CDQ/WLDQ/GCDQ is open with the understanding that those requesting acknowledge the potential for extreme wait times. One of my accepted responsibilities involves contribution to the MMO team so please understand that I may simply just be unavailable or slow to respond sometimes.
My particular gaming style is story based roLEplay (as opposed to roLLplay). I'm personally more interested in the development of a character's hearts and mind over what kind of stats they have. I like the concept of the character be first and the statblocks/class/skillpoints to come secondary. This is mentioned only so that players on my quests or requesting me as a GM will know what angle I approach things from. You can expect me to reach all sorts of directions and to do research on your character on the fly to customize my quests to those present. CDT/PCDTs are especially helpful to me if you are interested in providing me with fodder to inspire or torture your characters with! However, don't mistake it for being any less dangerous then pure combat gaming. There are worse things then death! In addition to supporting the Calem Rule, “Act stupid and face the consequences”, I have a few rules that apply to all my quests.
1) Do NOT run unless I am giving a reason to. Travel through Layonara is already expedited by virtue of development tool limitations and hardware. In a PnP world we could RP a travel session where I might throw random encounters at you during that time as well as place clues to the goal at hand. I duplicate that to the best of my ability in the virtual setting so running from area to area may get you killed heinously or cause you to miss an important clue to the ongoing game.
2) Do NOT use OOC during quest hours. If you have some OOC need/emergency tell me directly or over the GM channel. I will take care of your avatar or reimburse you losses directly if something happens! Do not break immersion to the RP by speaking OOCly to the rest of the group. Additionally, if there are more then one quest running at the same time other GMs have to contend with the OOC chatter and it is really just very distracting to us when we already have a server full of chat to parse through to find our group's dialog. If you have an emergency, state so in the GM channel and log to take care of it. I will make sure to take care of your character's avatar as necessary, including but not limited to port service, return to group service if you are able to return later, after quest hours rescues. Keep in touch with me as you can (remember family and friends first!) and I will do my best to take care of you.
3) Do NOT rest with out asking. As I said in #1, I work from a pen and paper stand point and just because you are able to mechanically rest does not mean it makes IC sense or that it is actually ICly possible. Even in sleep I have designs on your character. They may dream, they may suffer some other effect during their sleep hours.
4) Do NOT make a skill with out some kind of explanation. If I don't see an emote or something from you over the GM channel/tell, I will ignore it. I have too much to juggle to stop the game and ask what that was about most of the time. Additionally, it breaks my immersion and I'm gamemastering to have fun too! Above all things we are here to have fun!
NOTES: If something I am doing is making you uncomfortable, do not hesitate to tell me! If you feel you have been forgotten IG, please poke me in the GM channel. If you have any questions, no matter how silly they feel to you, ask me, ask me!
NEW ROLEPLAYERS: I delight in welcoming new players to the art and hobby of roleplay and I never ever find a question that is 'silly' or 'stupid.' Do not feel like you have to be a experienced gamer to participate in my quests. Jump in there. Do your best. If you want guidance or assistance, please just ask. Do not fear that I will become angry with you and discipline you (I say this because, as crazy as it sounds, people have described this as a potential fear). If there's a problem, I'm happy to work it out so long as all parties are respectful and honest.
Finally, I am available via PM, email or IRC. I am not always at the computer as I have plenty of RL responsibilities but please do leave a message if you need something and I will try to get back to you as soon as I can. It perhaps goes without saying that if I am in game as a player I'd rather not be contacted about gamemaster things unless it's an emergency. Some gamemasters don't mind but I'm really in the game so rarely and I like to enjoy fully immersed RP on those rare moments I can afford to. (Emergencies are clearly fine however!)
Thanks for your interest and hope to see you in game! Have fun!
~row
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