jupitershurricane

I've played at Tyler's table a few times and he is a stellar DM. What I love most is the shear amount of role play he can squeeze into a one shot. He's great at pacing and setting the mood. His NPC voices and setting creation are unmatched. Tyler is super flexible in his discord about asking people which of his one-shots they want to play and what time works best for them. He is able to keep battle pace up and responds promptly in chat. Very fun sessions, cool world building, and great customer service.

This mini Curse of Strahd campaign was a mixed experience. The DM allowed for some genuinely great role play moments, and the first three sessions were paced well. I also enjoyed the atmosphere created with Roll20. There were some fun combats outside of the finale, decent loot, and it was interesting to explore such an iconic module in a very condensed time frame. The DM also used character voices at times, which helped bring certain NPCs to life and added flavor. Unfortunately, the final encounter severely undermined the entire experience. One player spent roughly 90 minutes paralyzed, repeatedly failing saves and unable to participate, which was incredibly frustrating not just for them, but for the rest of the table as well. Strahd was played aggressively and strategically against a party of level 4 characters, and the fight felt less like a dramatic narrative climax and more like the DM attempting to beat the PCs. This ultimately resulted in a TPK after repeated knockouts and one-shot kills, with players choosing to stop rather than continue a long, punishing slog that no longer felt fun or fair. I have played one-shots that ended in a TPK and were still genuinely enjoyable, but this was not one of those experiences. Being told afterward what could have happened if we had won added to the frustration. Ending such a short campaign on this note was deeply disappointing. There was little sense of narrative resolution, and the final boss completely overshadowed the otherwise enjoyable sessions that came before it. While the first three weeks showed real promise and were fun, the finale left a lot to be desired that is hard to ignore. That said, this was a free game, and there are definitely DMs out there who charge money for sessions that are worse than this. Taking that into account, this lands at a 3-star experience. Not because everything was bad but because the ending mattered, it missed the mark in a big way.

Tyann is the most amazing Dungeon Mother ever, she is so helpful for beginners, she spent practically a week helping my party and I create very well rounded characters with background stories and in depth character traits which came up surprisingly often. She offered incredible resources that I did not know existed and was just genuinely so excited by all of our character choices in game. At one point I suggested something outrageous and got to watch her be absolutely bewildered by the choice. Tyann 's game play helped me realize that the fun and magic of D&D lies in storytelling and character creation more than battles. I will sign up for anything Tyann runs in the future! StartPlaying only lets me select three tags for her but I also want to emphasize the work she put into being inclusive and safe.

Alex did an amazing job introducing me to the rules of DnD and explaining things to me. He offered to DM a single PC party for me when not enough people showed up for the planned session. That 1 on 1 time was used to help me create my first character on DnD beyond and play a 1v1 battle. Alex is super informative, it is clear I just scratched the surface of his knowledge of the game, also a very logical world builder. For a world that I spent a relatively short time in, there was a quite a bit of back story and well-thought out conclusions as to how my PC ended up in her situation, which was fun to think about while he laid the scene for battle. I am so happy that Alex was my first ever DM.