Photograph of the
author by a friend

Dear Wizards – 
‍
My name is Drew Belz. In other lives, I’ve played a firbolg druid tracking my enslaved family, a half-orc barbarian fighting the boomerang of revenge, and the founder of Fancy Rhino, a creative production studio built as a sanctuary for creators. 

For fifteen years at Fancy Rhino, I produced music videos and Super Bowl commercials, full-service campaigns and narrative films we sold to Netflix. I ran our strategy and creative, design and production for clients like Disney, Participant Media, and Air Jordan. 

I managed 20 full-time employees at our largest, dozens of collaborators in our studio, and production crews of 50+. Alongside them, I played executive, producer, writer, director, editor, and latté boy. But I was most in my element growing the team.

Beneath the work, I was searching for something: the harmony and hum of a team hitting its stride. Resonance. Collaboration. When these conditions are present, surprising and beautiful things begin to happen. 

That spirit of collaboration and play is what brings me to you.

As our workplaces and schools shuttered in 2020, I found myself gathering with a group of old friends. We had lived together in school, neckdeep in creative mayhem, but were scattered by careers across the globe. We came together again at the Spine of the World, playing through Rime of the Frostmaiden. We were having babies and surviving plague, but at night we took on a different threat: mounting axe beaks, navigating rowdy taverns and pitching glowing tents out on the tundra. We were killing Loneliness. Exorcising Isolation. Our pretend party became a real force, capable of reckoning with real darkness. A fellowship reforged - in our thirties. 

It would never have happened without a world-class DM. Ours lived by the Three Keys of Collaboration, principles I bring to the role of Narrative Manager: 

‍1. Everyone comes to the game for a different reason. The best DM-Manager spots his teammate’s motivation and plays to their strengths. A barbarian may need to cathartically smash things, and a greedy gnome is only in it for the loot. Players stay in the game because it meets their hunger for connection or creativity or catharsis. When a collaborator knows what drives them – freedom or stability or achievement – the manager engages those instincts.

‍2. Resources matter. Creativity matters more. Each player needs to know their role, what they're up against, and the available resources. Timelines, budgets, and communications should be trim and sharp. But once the team sees the same game, a new idea can show up from anyone: creating time, money and alignment out of thin air! The clever manager knows the assignment's chemistry, but rearranges molecules to make ideas happen. 

‍3. Everyone needs to know their choices matter. For all the blind chance insanity that life and the game throw at us, we have to know that our response matters. Autonomy is critical in the creative workspace. As soon as a collaborator is trusted, delegation must be real. When a team member has agency, their work has teeth. New worlds rise. 

My closest friendships were reignited because of your games. I believe in your mission. And my experience has me ready to run the board for you. Allow me to unfurl Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion for your creative warriors. I'm ready to serve.

Yours truly,
Drew