Relowaeish

As my first formal DM through our Planescape campaign I’ve been a part of the past few months, I’d say Dean has been awesome at curating an exciting but chill gameplay experience! He’s great at accommodating the campaign to match my group’s entry-level experience: Teaching us the groundwork fundamentals and simplifying some of the mechanics to emphasize having fun. He doesn’t bog the game down by hyper-focusing on tutorials but is observant of we’re struggling: answering questions when they naturally occur instead of stopping the game to overly handhold, but gives advice on rules and play options available to us when we don’t naturally pick up on them. I haven’t felt condescended to at all during the experience, where some DMs might feel compelled to. There is a significant level of challenge based with how our group’s comp and how our characters have set their spells and progression (which is not skillfully optimized with half of us still learning the ropes), to which I appreciate since it doesn’t feel like he’s dumbed down the campaign just to let us win. Every victory feels exciting and satisfying, and it makes me think he put a lot of effort into how he balances each battle and session for us. He doesn’t overly stress us role playing as our direct characters, but always opens the floor to us doing in-character tableau when we feel comfortable. While this review is based on my first-timer campaign, I know he has experience DM-ing a number of more complex, higher skill campaigns with other groups. I think regardless of skill, Dean is a great DM for any group and campaign request!