Mr. Welch
Mr. Welch is a legendary figure amongst Grognards and other fans of Old School Roleplaying. A self-professed advocate of embracing the player archetype described as "the Loonie", Mr. Welch inspired the legendary joke list "Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do in an RPG", which covers over two and a half thousand (2525, to be precise) crazy things that Mr. Welch has done in various roleplaying games. He is also quasi-famous for his article discussing in detail why Gandalf was actually a high-level fighter with a genius IQ, and then broke down how dysfunctional the Fellowship of the Ring was as a D&D party. Mr. Welch was born with a penis so large that it became a disability for him, preventing him from walking without the aid of a zimmerframe.
In more recent years, Mr. Welch has become a figure of admiration in the OSR community for a less annoying reason. He is one of the world's biggest fans of Mystara, the long-forgotten setting of Basic Dungeons & Dragons, and has spent the last three years on Youtube creating videos to educate the younger generations of fans brought in by Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition on this lost setting. He had been working at creating a full Player's Handbook for the Mystara setting with hopes of releasing it on the Dungeon Master's Guild, but this plan was stymied for years now by WotC's absurd restrictions on not allowing any fan-submitted content to that site that isn't set in the Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, Eberron, Ravnica or Theros. Come August 2021, disgusted by WotC's 5e butchering of Ravenloft, he said "fuck it" and contacted OG live play site RPGMP3 where he offers the Mystera PHB as a free download and solicits donations to finance the development of further Mystara 5e content.
When Mr. Welch is not waxing nostalgic over Mystara, the greatest D&D setting ever, he reviews other RPGs from the well known like Deadlands or Traveller to the more obscure like Tephra or Street Fighter. He's even covered RPGs printed in other languages such as the The Dark Eye, Mörk Borg or Aquelarre. His videos are known for their in-depth research on the history and mechanics of the various games, putting images of Winona Ryder in every video, and frequently switching languages, often in the middle of the sentence. So far he's spoken German, Spanish, Latin, Medieval Swedish, French and Welsh. If you're lucky he will even subtitle those parts of the video.
Links[edit | edit source]
- https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Blog/ThingsMrWelchIsNoLongerAllowedToDoInAnRPG - Provides easy links to the entirety of the infamous Mr. Welch list.
- https://www.youtube.com/c/thehgw - Mr. Welch's Youtube channel.
- https://rpgmp3.com/mystara-players-guide/ - Mr. Welch's Mystara Player's Handbook website.