About Us

Like many good tales, the saga of 5eMagic involves love, conflict, and collaboration.

Act 1: Introducing our Hero

Our tale's protagonist is a man named Chris. He's your typical ruggedly handsome fellow with a keen intellect, a passion for storytelling, a love for people, and an assignment to write an "About Us" page for a merch store.

Imagine the character of a certain patriotic superhero from the marvelous side of comic store's shelves mixed with the mind of that gothic hero from the other shelves. You know the guy: the one with an affinity for flying mammals. Oh, and this Chris guy? Despite being a near-perfect human being, he was the most humble person on the planet. Truly one of the great heroes of our age.

Anyway, during his adolescence, this Chris fellow falls in love with this beautiful woman named Sarah.

She's alright, too, I guess. I mean, she's brilliant, gorgeous, level-headed, way out of his league, and easily the best thing that ever happened to Chris, but we already have a protagonist in this story. If we start adding a bunch of other characters, we'll have to set up a wiki just to keep up with all the names, and no one wants that. Let's just focus on our hero.

Around the same time, Chris fell in love with the narratives and mechanics of a popular tabletop role playing game. He plays regularly, with a few groups, and finds a true passion when running a table.

Act 2: a Season Away

Chris enters a new season of life and regretfully has to set aside the tabletop RPG hobbies for over a decade. However, his love for fantasy settings never left his heart, and his fascination for game mechanics never left his mind.

For narrative purposes, I suppose it's also worth mentioning that other character -- her name was Sarah, if I recall correctly -- had made a cameo here and there in our hero's story. She often made appearances at his gaming table before his hiatus, for example.

Then, there was her guest appearance in his wedding episode. She was clearly a crowd favorite; the whole audience paid attention when she showed up. Gave her a standing ovation, even. Chris, our noble hero, later admitted to shedding a tear or two on the set that day. After that reception, I guess the producers decided she should become more of a recurring character.

Back to our story, though.

After this too-long sabbatical, I-- err, Chris -- returned to the RPG and delighted in how it had streamlined and simplified through the versions in his absence. He would now be able to run games more efficiently, embracing the collaborative storytelling he loved without being bogged down in all the rules and minutiae that often consumed game time before.

Act 3: Heroic Return

Our protagonist finds some shortcomings in this fifth edition of his beloved game, but he's gained some skills in his time away. So, we have a computer montage where he's building a toolset to help him, and other gamers like him, run their game. It was really quite the scene.

And so, the 5eMagic.shop website was born.

Oh, remember that Sarah character? She was there for a lot of it, offering her feedback, suggestions, and insights on the website he built. Plus, she might've been at the table each time he ran his games, contributing her own characters and influences toward the narratives he weaved with the other players. So, I guess she was technically more of a supporting character in our story.

Over time, this 5eMagic project Chris built became fairly successful. The first of uncounted ideas and prototypes he'd come up with that actually made money instead of costing money. He'd never been too good at appreciating expenses and revenue, blowing money on hobbies and whatever pursuits his ADHD had him focused on at the time.

Sarah, on the other hand, who patiently endured all the pre-5eMagic flops, appreciates that he finally has a hobby that's at least paying for itself. She's extremely clever, though, and recognizes an opportunity missed by failing to expand on 5eMagic beyond the code itself. She offers ideas which he loves but doesn't make time for. She uses phrases like "offer great products" and "diversify our revenue stream" and "engage the community". Nodding his absolute agreement, our protagonist keeps working on the things he's already doing.

Ever patient but having known this man for over two decades, she recognized the antagonist of the 5eMagic story. So, she decided to take matters into her own hands.

The 5eMagic Merch Shop is part of that effort, the result of Sarah's negotiations with manufacturers, collaborations with some talented artists, and recruitment of a small army horde team of kobolds to help with the logistics. And generally keeping Chris close enough to feel like he's in the loop but far enough to keep him from interfering.

So, after years of helping people have the best imaginary stores in their roleplaying game, 5eMagic finally has a real store of its own.