Thomas Starzomski (he/him)
5.0
(6)
1 year on StartPlaying
Highly rated for: Storytelling, Creativity, World Builder
Average response time: Under 1 hour
Response rate: 100%
About me
Ever since I learned the system in seventh grade from my university-aged neighbor, I've been obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons. After a while as a player though, I knew I needed a change. So I took my everlasting love for writing and telling stories, and tried my hand at DMing. And although it wasn't great, since it was my first time, I loved it through and through. Surprisingly enough, so did my players! So I kept at it, honing my craft, running one-shots for my friends until I felt confident to run my first full campaign starting in the summer of 2020. That game brought me closer to people I feel confident calling my best friends, and gave me both core memories and the skills necessary to pursue this hobby further. I have been building the current setting of my games for a while now, and my wish is to watch it continue to expand with many players being able to touch down in its vast landscapes and enrich it with their own journeys and stories. I sincerely hope to provide an engaging, story-rich and overall fun experience for everyone at my table!
GM Style
I pride myself on running games set in richly built, living worlds that tell player-focused stories. I enjoy running challenging, tactical combats that push my players to their limits. I enjoy all levels of play, but I have a certain soft spot for the insane maneuvers that high levels provide.
Game Master Reviews (6)
Proficiencies
Players say this GM is great at:
Storytelling
Creativity
World Builder
Incredible story-teller. Thomas gave each PC and player their own time to shine within the story, allowing for fun and/or emotional scenes within the game. The NPCs were all so much fun to interact with, and combat was engaging and very well done. When our campaign finally reached its end, we all agreed that we would miss the story and characters we’d grown so fond of.
In my years playing D&D, I have never had as much of a fun and immersive experience as I did with Thomas as my DM. He is an excellent story teller and worldbuilder, the worlds he creates feel vivid, real, and immersive. He's very accommodating to player's goals for their charaters, knows how to craft an excellent story, and is very well versed in the more technical aspects of the game too. As well, he is incredibly talented at crafting meaningful and fun combat encounters (especially at higher levels) and he has run some of my favorite encounters to strategize through in my entire experience as a player of TTRPGs. Plus he's just a cool guy, would recommend
We played for 2+ years developing a rich, fun, challenging, exciting and terrifying environment, absolutely dripping in lore and immaculate story, we all balled our eyes out at the end of the campaign, and it was a highly immersive game as well, we worked together a lot developing a really intermingled universal lore with my character. Honestly one of, if not the absolute best campaign I’ve ever had the pleasure of being apart of
Thomas was open & honest from the beginning, and is an excellent DM for experienced & new players alike. He’s supportive, understanding, and incredibly creative when it comes to the worlds he builds with his players and anyone would be lucky to have him as a DM. As a DM myself, Thomas was a very nice reminder to me that you can allow someone else to take the reigns when it comes to DMing while still having fun. I hope to continue being able to keep playing more in his games for a while!
If you work with him in creating your character and their backstory (from newbies to long time players, he has managed to fit all of my party in) he will tie your lore together in ways you will have never thought of. He does voices, world-building better than some books I’ve read, is ready to provide room for player creativity, and prepared to adjust for a simple pass through a town to derail into a whole new side story of evil scientist experimentation on rats. With all the world building I don’t think you’d be able to have the full experience with a shorter campaign, but I highly recommend Thomas.
Thomas's storytelling is great, in the three years of playing in the same campaign with him, the story remained consistent, interesting, and novel. There were callbacks to past sessions and bits of information we knew sprinkled in. The world I played in was also amazing, with a full world map provided, and lore for each distinct place. He also collaborated with me and the other players to fully integrate our characters in the world, and we did some worldbuilding together. Combat encounters were super engaging, Thomas makes great use of the Legendary actions and often creates custom stat blocks for the enemies we fight. The encounters were always challenging but beatable. If you are a player who loves great combat, and a well developed world, Thomas is a great dungeon master for your game!
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