Paul Camper

Paul Camper is a host of the Death Saving Bros podcast and serves as the primary Dungeon Master. He is the lead editor of the show.

Roleplaying Origins
Camper's first experience with roleplaying games was in 2013 with Rogue Trader, a game that uses the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay system. In 2016 Camper was gifted a copy of the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set and quickly began to enjoy leading sessions of D&D for his college friends. After a professional career change required him to move to the Cleveland area he reconnected with hometown friends to start a local Dungeons & Dragons game. Brad Renfro, Brad Richards, Ben Renfro, and Matt Smith were among the original members of that group.

Early Days: PHB Podcast
Renfro and Camper shared an interest in creative pursuits, having worked on both engineering and film projects in the past. In Winter 2016 they discussed their shared interest in the Game Grumps web series and began developing ways to transform their current D&D campaign into consumable content. After discovering the Drunks & Dragons (now Greetings, Adventurers!) podcast, Camper realized that there was an entire subgenre of podcasts devoted to RPG actual play. In the spring of 2017 Camper, along with Ben Renfro, Brad Richards, and Matt Smith, recorded the final sessions of their current campaign, publishing them under the name PHB Podcast beginning August 1, 2017. This campaign had run continuously for two years, beginning with the Lost Mines of Phandelver module before Camper began to homebrew the campaign while drawing inspiration from sources such as HarmonQuest and Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn. While the PHB Podcast moniker did not stick, the casual playstyle, irreverent humor, and inspired homebrew became the signature of Camper's actual play podcasting.

Death Saving Bros
Through Fall 2017 and Spring 2018, Camper restructured his actual play podcast format and began recording with Ben Renfro, Brad Richards, Matt Smith, and newcomer Eric Nemeth. He launched the first episode of the new show, Death Saving Bros, on June 17, 2018.

Gameplay Style
Camper's style as dungeon master is "guided sandbox," trying to stay hands-off as much as possible to allow his improvisation from his players. The early episodes of the Death Saving Bros podcast (Saltmine Valley Arc) have a heavier focus on sandbox play, with multiple threads offered at each juncture, while later episodes (Trugalla Arc) feature Camper more actively leading his players to each plot point, at which point he encourages players to freely interact and create within the scene's premise.

NPC voicework lends heavily to Camper's worldbuilding, while his characters often have minimal description to allow players and listeners to fill in the blanks with their imagination. His lore is often deeper than explored in-game, with bits and pieces of the lore being dropped only when pertinent to the story or scene. He has expressed a distaste for heavy exposition, resorting to it only at critical game moments such as during the festival scene in [https://deathsavingbros.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-46-of-gods-and-men-and-elves-and-half-orcs Ep. 46 - Of Gods And Men And Elves And Half-Orcs].