My Character Sheet
My name is Christian Hendriks and I’m a regular GM. I’ve run a three-player 5th edition Dungeon & Dragons campaign with a homebrew setting since January 2019, and have run one-shots and short campaigns (two to ten sessions) in 5e D&D, Chronicles of Darkness, Fate Core, and All-Out. I have also been a player in a number of games, many but not all run by my brother, who you can find blogging over at Nick’s RPG Thoughts. These games included 4th edition and 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons, 7th edition Gamma World, Fragnarok, Mutants of Ix, Fate Condensed, Mothership, an OSR hack, Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall, and No Thank You, Evil!
I no longer think of myself as a new GM, but I still very much appreciate that many people have more practice, and have experience with a greater variety of games, than I do. One of the convictions motivating this blog, though, is that what we bring to the gaming table also has a lot to do with our experiences away from it. In my case, that includes work and volunteering with local history museums and other culture non-profit organizations in Canada. It also includes post-secondary education in English literature, religious studies, and library & information studies. I have been surprised by how often I can put my Master’s degrees to work at the games table, and I hope to offer you some of the benefit here.
As time goes on, I've written a smattering of what I think of as Ethos Posts, which each convey some portion of what I value in TTRPGs and TTRPG blogs. Though they aren't representative of what I usually write about here, they should help you get to understand my style as a GM and my ethos as a blogger:
- "The Minimum Necessary Changes"
- "Two More Questions For Character Creation"
- "The Mysterious Appeal of Emergent Narrative"
- "Preparation, Interpretation, Improvisation"
- "RPGs, LLMs, Citational Ethics, and Lineage"
- "Both Grounded and Fantastic: A Central Tension"
My favourite posts to date, however, are likely the following:
- "Theatre in the Kingdom of Ewistar"
- "Local Magic"
- "Why Isn't Every Bride A Paladin?"
- "The Best And Only Magic Item Market"
- "The Flickers and the Bandits: Analyzing A Successful Encounter"
If you want to see what I’m thinking about besides table-top roleplaying games, you can follow my other blog, Accidental Shelf-Browsing. As of writing, however, it is defunct.
(I recently started this blog at WordPress before deciding I disliked enough about that platform that I wanted to move on. I am trying Bear Blog for now, but will include original publication dates in all of the posts I've carried over from the previous location.)
Last updated September 2025.