The Scoop on Sharang
As our dedicated GM’s continue to run all your Magpie Games favorites such as Masks, Urban Shadows, Bluebeard’s Bride, and many others, we like to check in to see how they are doing. And today, we’ve decided to shine the spotlight on Sharang! We thought it would be nice to get his perspective on the Curated Play Program and learn more about his life outside of the Magpie Games walls!
Tell us a little bit about yourself! Who are you outside of gaming?
I’m Sharang Biswas, game designer, writer, artist, and sometimes professor. Outside of my creative work, I’m an avid cook, have a weird interest in Linguistics and languages, and have always been into scifi/fantasy literature. My guilty pleasure is watching YouTube videos of the gay plotlines of soaps excised out of the full epsiodes.
What’s your background in GMing? What was the first game you ever GM’d? What’s your favorite?
I’ve been GMing since my undergraduate years, and I think I started with D&D 4th edition? And lol, picking favourites is not gonna work: as a game designer, I make it a point to play and run a tonne of different games; each has it’s own cool stuff to offer!
How would you characterize your GMing style? Do you have any inspirations?
I like to think that I adapt? Like, the way I GM Bluebeard’s Bride is super theatrical, and completely different from how I GM Lady Blackbird…
That said, I like adding (queer) romance elements to my games, and tend to go for body horror?
What’s been your favorite thing that you’ve seen in a session of the Curated Play Program?
I love when players get really attached to a random detail or tiny plotline that I add just for flavour. For my first Masks game, for example, I had these Indian tourist “Aunties” appear everywhere, and my players just couldn’t get enough of them. Similarly, in my most recent Masks campaign, I decided that the three “Twinks” that hung around the Prince the players had to rescue were actually his bodyguards… and as the players got invested in them, they became a much larger part of the plot.
If you could play a TTRPG with anyone in the world, who would it be and why?
Easy answer is Chris Hemsworth, because...errr...have you looked at the man?Though I have a feeling Tom Holland would be a riot to play with.
More thoughtful answer...Mary Roach, one of my favourite non-fiction authors, specializes in finding weird and wacky true stories about our scientific world…It would be cool to play with her and see her bring her trademark “stranger than fiction” style to a game!
And finally, what’s a game that you would love to GM but haven’t had the chance to so far?
Lol, when I wanna GM something, I tend to make it happen, but there’s SO MUCH on my list right now… I wanna do a full campaign of Agon, of Shadow of the Demon Lord for example, even though I’ve run one-offs before. I definitely am looking forward to when I can run Heart or Good Society.
Thank you for Sharang for bringing all your creativity to the table when you run our games! You have made our curated play program a fun and entertaining experience!
If you want to check out one of Sharang’s sessions or any other one of our Curated Play games (with our other awesome GMs) head over to https://www.magpiegames.com/cp-session and check out our latest schedule releases!
-Magpie Games HQ