Welcome again to Nice Job, DM! where we interview cool DMs with cool day jobs. Getting paid to DM would be great, but there are other jobs out there that need doing, and this segment interviews the DMs who do them!
Today, we're talking to the owner of a Civil Design company who is a world-builder at and away from the table.
Can you please introduce yourself?
My name is Jason "The Psychological DM" Mehlhop that suffers from workaholism... Also occasionally known as D&D Jesus.
What is your day job?
I have two "day jobs".
One is running a Civil Design company designing the world in which we live, for which I do occasionally apologize. I work with a number of land developers to layout and design residential and commercial subdivisions.
The second is an almost started wine company, licenses are pending.
How did you get into that line of work, both Civil Design and wine?
Civil Design was something that I kind of tripped into after going to school for architecture... Like so many people I went to school for the career I wanted only to realize that this particular career wasn't hiring when I needed to actually have the job. At the time, but architecture and civil work were done in the same program and the computer geek in me allowed me to shift to civil fairly easily.
The wine was a hobby that I realized recently could become a profitable hobby. Having developed a few recipes that friends have enjoyed, I decided to look into the process of making wine for commercial sales. As the saying goes: When times are good, people will drink to celebrate. When times are bad, people will drink to forget... Considering liquor stores were considered "vital businesses" during COVID lockdown, I figure the government agrees with the that saying.
For legal reasons I should ask that people drink responsibly!
What’s your favorite part of your jobs - or your favorite part of being an entrepreneur?
My favorite part of Civil Design is the puzzle of putting the site together. It's a balancing act between what the land offers (like hills and water) with the different requirements of the city and/or county. The naturalist (some would say "hippy") in me tries to work the different requirements with the land to make subdivisions that feel integrated rather than the "slash/burn/level" approach.
At the risk of sounding lewd, making wine is a lot like making children... the most fun is in the trying. Then when you finally create something there is the pride of the success. But in all honesty, I enjoy trying different ideas in small batches to see how they turn out. Once I make something I like I bring in my test group (also known as my players). So far I have two solid recipes that I will produce as soon as I get the legalities worked out.
What advice would you give to people who are interested in getting into either line of work?
Unless you are a functioning workaholic, I do not recommend entrepreneurship. So many people say being an entrepreneur is great because you are your own boss and can work whenever you want. This is both true and misleading... in a sense you are your own boss, but you still have to make your customers happy; so in a way, you have so many more bosses. In most cases, the work whenever you want depends on if you want to be profitable or not. That being said, what is great about owning your own company is the ability to have more control over how the work gets done and/or what you actually produce but here too it comes with a price... just because you think something will sell doesn't mean it will (remember Betamax or LaserDiscs?)
Most schools/universities do not teach the computer skills for Civil Design... The teach the calculations. If you really want to get into civil work spend some time with Civil 3D.
When and why did you start DMing, and for what systems?
My first time DMing was nearly a decade in the making. I had been a player in a few sporadic campaigns and found DMs on the opposite extremes of their style: the "you have to do what my plotline requires" type and the "I have no plan" type. It was in 2001, maybe 2002, that I finally got into a game with a DM that had a plotline setup in such a way that you could go "off script" and still have the game move forward. Three years later I had a 18th level Druid with 3 levels of Elemental Savant as we were coming to the end of the campaign... One night after the session ended, I had an idea for a campaign centered in part around my character having progressed through the epic/legendary character levels in 3.5e.
How often do you DM?
When the stars align, I try to maintain a every other week campaign. I typically run it as a basic D&D homebrew which has developed into a combination 3.5/5e campaign.
What is your favorite part of DMing?
For me, the most fun part of DMing is the player reactions, especially when a lot of what I do as a DM is screw with ideas. There's a reason that I've earn the title "The Psychological DM". I will setup situations just to see what they do. For example, in a recent campaign, one of the party members had been kidnapped. They received a tip that the character was being held in a stronghold beneath the town and that the most likely means of entrance was through the sewer system. When they found the spot where they could get into the stronghold, they failed the perception check to find the hidden door. They decided to get through the 'wall' that their best option was to go swimming upstream through sewage rather than try to break down the wall.
Can you tell us your best memory from the table?
I put together an Edgar Allen Poe themed Halloween one-shot... During the leadup to the game, I explained that it was a horror-based game and that not everyone was likely to survive... What I actually had planned was a true horror outcome... TPK. But not just a TPK, just before the last character died, there was the realization that the succubi that they thought they were supposed to fight ended up actually the "good guys" and that the being they were releasing was not good but would ruin the world. It was priceless.
Do any skills you use for your day jobs help you when you DM?
Naturally, designing towns by day works well when world building by night. And having my players as my test subjects for a new batch of wine actually helps them get a bit more outside themselves when roleplaying...
What advice or house rules would you share with new DMs?
I follow a lot of DM on various social platforms as means to find different ideas for situations... One of my favorite house rules I believe I picked up from Diana of the Rose which does not allow the players to make their death saves... The biggest irritation for many DMs is the metagamer. Even players who are good about not metagaming tend to follow whether or not a fellow party member has passes or failed on death saves and take character actions based on it... By not letting the players roll their death save, the rest of the party will not know if they are dead or not and actually react to the situation more like their character would.