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Talons

Talons (she/her)

4.8

(19)

LGBTQ+
Queer
Neurodivergent
Women/Femme Identifying

1 year on StartPlaying

231 games hosted

Highly rated for: Inclusive, Voices, Storytelling

Average response time: 1 hour

Response rate: 100%

About me

Hi, I'm Talons. I'm a queer neurodivergent mess who has been DMing for 6+ years most of which has been spent in 5e D&D, but most of the last year has been Lancer. I have been running multiple campaigns here on Startplaying consistently since early 2023, and all of them are still going strong with happy players! As a DM I am unwilling to tolerate bigotry of any kind and will not hesitate to take the necessary steps to keep my games a safe place for my players.

GM Style

I do my best to give each NPC a unique voice and feel within the narrative. While running Lancer I tend to run the combats with a focus on the tactical side of the game when in mech combat, and lean into my strengths with voicing characters and improv when it comes to the narrative side of play, while staying true to the intent behind the narrative of the modules I'm running, as well as Lancer's setting in general.

Game platforms used
Game Master Reviews (19)

Proficiencies

Players say this GM is great at:

Inclusive

Voices

Storytelling

Dillon  avatar

Dillon

Played 16 sessions

She is an exceptional Lancer GM. Really good at running combat and allows a lot of RP.

Corax avatar

Corax

Played 17 sessions

decent GM, sometimes gives a bit too much info too quickly but overall, I would recommend very understanding to new players just learning the systems

Chase avatar

Chase

Played 30 sessions

Talons is among the best DMs I have ever had. With her talent, great communication, lovely and terrifying voices, inclusivity, carefully crafted worldbuilding, homebrew game mechanics, and a growing supportive community, she stands apart as one of the best DMs I've found on StartPlaying. She supports creativity and has interesting, serious, and hilarious characters. She adapts well to what players throw at her and builds off of player ideas. You feel as if your character is genuinely part of the world and you feel yourself fall into the world as that character. Overall, I'd give her 6/5 stars if I could.

Steven S. avatar

Steven S.

Played 1 sessions

Amazing ability with voices, characterization, and worldbuilding. Able to completely roll with players and collaboratively tell a story.

Serenity avatar

Serenity

Talons is a fantastic DM. I couldn't also select 'Amazing & fun voices' but she does that too! This one-shot was an absolute blast, and I'll definately be playing with her again in the future!

Summer avatar

Summer

Played 1 sessions

Talons has a great handle on world building and is one of the best I’ve seen on this site for giving each NPC life with amazingly new voices, details, speeches on the fly that rivals Matt Mercer seriously. That said think she would thrive best sticking to her own long campaigns or only two or three players on one shots for now. For a game listed as roleplay as high there was no apparent interest in helping characters connect before hand or giving characters any feedback/background on the homebrew world. Very easy going attitude of ‘what ever you guys decide’ or upon sending over the character info giving the response of good or equal to a thumbs up emoji. When the characters are meant to be roleplaying, two players with them IRL or actively in other campaigns took the spotlight with relevant info and past connections, one with a mic that kept cutting out, and when the rest tried to interact there was just talking over each other that wasn’t well resolved, but if you waited for non NPC interaction to roleplay like travel time or making camp they were skipped over to follow a schedule and get to the fighting/finale quicker. So the high roleplay is pushed instead for room for combat. Now I’m playing a literal fighter so in this case that should be almost as good for me (the shy artificer I felt a little bad for) but out of three combat encounters I think only one had more than a single round of combat (and that was a test to see if we were worthy not a single round happened in the climax). Another player convinced one fight to end early and the finale boss to remain unconscious after making a deal with the spirit possessing it(?). I was staring at the unused initive tracker during the final encounter in vexation as the final fight was actual a coordinated open heart surgery of organ harvesting. A good story but a little underwhelming for the non participants. So the end result was not much roleplay nor combat and rewards not even sure my character would find worth it. What is the value of a scale of this not dragon in this world? Will it help my character who really wants to get out of debt in any meaningful way? Unclear and left to me to decide I guess? The session ended on time and the regular players of hers seemed to have fun, talking about how this will come up in later adventures and referencing inside jokes. I am positive that is true as Talons definitely is a gifted DM that crafts a nice narrative that if you are a part of and involved in must be a truly epic experience!

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