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. You can find what games I'm currently running in "What My Games Look Like." 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, All-Out, 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. (That's not at all to say that people who don't have Master's degrees don't have anything extra to bring; all of us have experiences away from the table that means we have something unique to contribute, if we're willing to draw from outside the hobby.)
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 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"
- "TTRPG Rules as Accommodations for Autistic Players"
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"
- "How I Find Pictures For My Posts"
If you want to see what I’m thinking about besides table-top roleplaying games, you can follow my other blog, Accidental Shelf-Browsing. At time of writing, however, it is defunct.
(I 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 June 2026.