Avi

Just played a one shot with Tim and thoroughly enjoyed myself. He handled the high level dnd 5.5e session very well and provided an open forum for players to build the character that they want to play from almost any source book available. Even with a one shot he clearly understood that dnd is players and their stories first and the campaign second. He's a flexible DM that provided a fun, thematic and compelling game. I'll definitely be back if he has more high level dnd sessions.

Alex is a phenomenal DM. He allows for plenty of RP in his sessions, and will take time to weave a player's story into the world that they are playing in. His combats are also challenging but fun- especially if you are playing with the right group of people at your table. He works with players to tell their story within the setting which I think is truly invaluable in a ttrpg. This guy gets it.

Joined a Fantastical Island one shot with gothfather and was sadly disappointed with the outcome. It was a homebrew session that ultimately ended up with the players versus his DMPC. We unceremoniously killed the DMPC because said PC threatened to kill us and chop up our bodies if we didn't look the other way. We paralyzed him and crit him into the afterlife. The DM came out after and said that the game is over and we are stuck on his fantasy island. We were somehow supposed to know that the person threatening to maim our bodies was the person who was supposed to get us out. We asked if we could do a session 2 to see if we could escape the island somehow (which was the point of the initial game anyway) and he told us no- "you only ever visit the island once". I just left feeling like i wasted my time and money and that in killing his DMPC, the guy decided to punish us afterwards. It would have been so easy to just let us RP the ending in 5 minutes or to let us come back and finish the adventure in a round 2 (which the players would have happily paid for)- but instead, everything ended so abruptly without a satisfying conclusion that I cannot in good faith recommend this DM to anyone.

So I've played several games with Matt now and initially I had a good experience. There were some red flags present but I chose to ignore them and keep playing because I really liked the group that I was in. Here are the red flags which ultimately caused me to leave the campaign: - Matt selectively chooses which rules he wants to obey and which ones he doesn't. He doesn't have a list of these so that one may follow along with. I find that he often chooses to improvise a rule that will remove player agency (like not allowing counterspell when the enemy is obviously casting a spell) while debating a rule that empowers a player like arguing whether free object interactions can be used to draw/ stow weapons. - tacking on to the above- he seems to just not understand some of the basic rules of dnd 5.24e like for instance what a free object interaction can and can't be used for. He will regularly tell players that to do something requires them to drop what they are holding when items can be drawn or stowed without wasting action economy in 5.24. - he enforces rules of modules that were written a decade ago and does not modify them for the current state of play. For example my character touched a cursed item and got imbued with an alignment shifting curse that was not removable (Rules as Written) and he was unwilling to let my character lose the condition without "consequences". I was forced to play 2.5 paid sessions as NOT the character I signed up for before the condition was fixed. He also behaved like he was doing me a huge favor by even allowing me the opportunity to change my alignment back to a good one. - Matt thinks that by making the game hard and having your character go down several times is fun. We'll finish the sessions where we were almost downed or outright went down multiple times and Matt would literally say at the end- "thanks guys that was fun". For who exactly?? My character was outright killed at one point but then he included a mechanic to bring me back with penalties to my attacks, ability checks and saving throws. "Hey wasn't that fun?" No Matt, it really wasn't... Downing players (regularly) and removing their turn where they can otherwise be contributory to the team never feels good for anyone- even if you're a hardcore player that enjoys brink-of-death encounters. - the man will complain for days about silvery barbs being broken while attacking the party with 7-12 enemies that are above our regular CR threshold. His encounters are hard yes. Every encounter is potentially a fatal encounter and then you have to deal with him whining about players finding ways (within the ruleset I might add) to empower themselves. Sir? You should not be competing with your players. Ultimately, towards the end, I left his games not feeling good about myself or my character and the thought occurred to me- "Hey why am I paying for this kind of nonsense?" Maybe I'm wrong but I've always felt like dnd was an outlet for people to play out and feel powerful with a fantasy character that they resonate with. The DM's role is to facilitate that. Sadly i think Matt missed that boat completely. He uses his campaigns to make things unnecessarily difficult and depriving players of their agency. I left after the 16th game and honestly wish i left sooner. I was mostly in it for the other players that made the world fun.

Very chill DM that focuses hard on player experience. I played a one shot with him and had a blast. Rule of Cool seems to be the prevailing theme of his DM style so I think most people will have a great time with Cain as the DM.