Yorben

Milos cares about his players, he invests in their individual storylines and creates a balanced world. I have had some issue with Milos wanting to create a "different" feeling environment but at the detriment of his players, example: Milos wanted an underwater quest to feel different from regular combat by not allowing his players the ability to speak underwater, even with water breathing. This resulted in the sorcerer (me) not being able to use vocal components for spell, which meant i could move 15 ft per round and hit stuff with my fists. After alot of effort on my part (which really felt like I was asking for the moon) he implemented something where my character touched a specific statue and i got an air bubble around my head for 5 minutes. So he did try and help with it, but it did not feel like he understood the impact on spellcasters if they cant use vocals. Especially since its a ocean themed campaign and all. After many a session I was attacked in discord by a fellow player, calling me names and badgering me for the better part of a morning. Rather than jumping in Milos decided to simply ask to stop typing in discord and we would pick it up in a week or 2. This was not really something that could stew for a few weeks and i felt I had to leave the campaign. Sadly the culprit is still in his campaign as we speak, and I am (obviously) not. So ultimately, Milos is a decent DM, he cares about his stories and is good at creating the feeling of tension and dread in his sessions. He does lack a certain sense of authority within his groups where he is suppose to be the person to make sure people are nice to each other and create a safe space.

Do recommend! Vincent takes great effort to create a world where the player gets to explore and create. He uses the rulesets as guidelines and creates engaging and fantastic features and items for his players to have fun with. So far I have seen Vincent really put in the effort to tune his encounters to the specific player characters and to build story arcs for each of his players.

Dmytro is a calm and stable DM. He keeps his games moving while giving his players the freedom to explore role play opportunities. I always look forward to the weekly session

TLDR: Brian is the DM for you if: -you don't mind skipping a session last minute(and im talking 1 minute before starting) if your fellow party members cancel last minute and the player total drops below his protocol. -you don't mind having a DM that likes to play DMPCs that are overwhelmingly active during roleplay. -you don't mind your DM making up rules and mechanics on the spot to justify the way he wants the game to go. He does this quite a lot, interfering with the game mechanics so it runs his way. Even changing previously agreed upon rulings to make his narrative work. -you don't mind a DM that boots and blocks you if things get tough. It just doesn’t feel right. It feels like it is mostly about him as the DM and less so about the players. Long version: Brian is a charismatic enough person that does try to work with the players, however you will feel his disapproval if you ask to many question, though it'll be more passive aggressive or by being treated like a toddler. I have waited for this campaign to start since september 2025, we just didnt get the 4 signups needed to start this (at the time) 12dollar per session campaign. Somewhere in december we had 3 people signed up and i asked if we could start with 3. Brian's response was that he would not make enough money, which is fair, its his income after all. So i offered to let him raise the price to 15 dollars and if we could at least get started with the 3 people if we pay 15 instead of 12, this means he makes an extra 9 dollars per session which is just shy of the 12 he would get if there were 4 people with 12dollars per session. not to mention that he would than get 15 dollars per person when more people join. Win Win right? This was agreed upon and he changed the price to 15 dollars. He then asked if we could leave and rejoin the campaign so the 15 dollars would be applied to us, which was fair cause thats what we agreed upon. I left and rejoined and we finally set a starting date for the campaign. As luck would have it, we had a 4th player before the start date, so Brian was in luck for he now got 4x 15 dollars. Great, its not about the money for me, but at the time I could understand it was of course about the money for Brian. As i really like to avoid confusion and confrontation during sessions, I ask alot of clarifying questions before hand, which Brian at first very openly and enthusiastically answered(although you will always feel a little resentment or a little "see how much work i put in" kinda vibe). One of those question was regarding the purchasing of magical items in his world, I asked some questions, he answered them and a few days later we started another sessions. We got to the main town for the campaign and I asked to go to the magic shop to purchase an item. It was here that Brian suddenly (seemingly on the spot) came up with new rules on how to purchase magic items. When confronted Brian blames his memory problems, fair i thought, so refreshing his memory I thought we would change the rules back to what we had agreed upon in discord earlier that week. This didn't happen and the discussion kept escalating. I was done having the rules change on whim and asked for clarification going forward, we reached an compromise and moved on. After that session sadly 1 person left and we were down to 4 players. (keep in mind that we are all paying a premium of 3 dollars to be able to play with less people) The session was about to start at 0900am in my timezone and sadly 1 player canceled at 08:09am, 51 prior. Another player had allready earlier that week mentioned they were gonna be an hour late. I could allready guess what was gonna happen, and indeed Brian asked if we were willing to delay the session by an hour so we were 3 people. At this point i had to speak up, I wanted clarification going forward how Brian would decide on when a session would be canceled. So I asked him if he would cancel a session 1 minute prior to starting if a person would cancel at 1 minute prior(and the current player count would thereby drop to 2) Yes, it was his procedure to never play with less than 3 players, mainly because it would be a hardship on him to change fights and downgrade stuff, but also because to many people would be missing to much. I asked him if he felt this was fair to the 2 people that are there, waiting to get started, rearing to go! (this whole time i was being treated like a toddler, getting addressed in a very condescending tone "Jack....now Jack..... listen....... etcetc") His reaction game in the form of a question "Do you feel its fair for the people that are not there that they should miss what's going on in a session?" That was the final drop for me, those people that cancel their attendance seem to be more important than the people that are actually there to play! But it became clear quite quickly, as he mentioned that he would not host a session for 2 people, making only 30 dollars for 4 hours work, and explaining that that would be below minimum wage. I promptly left the voice.... Hoping I would cool down and could readdress these issues later. Sadly though, I got booted from discord and blocked from startplaying minutes after leaving voice. Brian can be a pleasant presence, as long as things go exactly according to his procedures and protocols. If you do not mind a DM that wants to be the center of attention in the game. In hour case that was him nudging and prodding us to let a green dragon live (rather than slaying the lawful evil thing) so that he could introduce the dragon as a "sidekick" (one of Brians homebrew things). So we let it live, it became our sidekick, and promptly took over many a roleplay opportunity. Suddenly we had the DM conversing with the DM and us players taking a back seat. I subtly tried to speak up how I was not against having the sidekick, but that i would like it better if the DMPC had a bit of a background role. The first reaction i got was "I thought my players would enjoy a green dragon sidekick". And if you don’t mind a DM changing certain mechanics to justify the actions he takes as a DM, for example: We were fighting on a road that ran through a forest, and we get attacked by 2 tigers and a sabletooth tiger. My character ran into the thicket of the forest during combat and we proceeded. When the sabletooth was almost dead he ran the creature into the thicket and suddenly the thicket meant heavily obscured and the creature gained +AC from it, allowing it a higher chance of escape. Now I really don’t mind such rulings, but they MUST be explained at the start of the combat, the DM should explain the battlefield and as such should explain to his players that those tree lines will give heavily obscured and thus +AC. And even if the DM doesn’t do this at the start of combat, as soon as one of the players enters the thicket he should absolutely inform that player that he is now heavily obscured, as that will influence the actions that player will take going forward! Not saying anything about it and then later on casually mentioning that the hostile sabletooth tiger in his retreat is heavily obscured in the same spot one of his players has stood moments ago REEKS of manipulation. And that is basically the vibe I got throughout, from changing the magic item shopping on a whim midgame to nudging his players to make certain decisions to the aforementioned story about the + to AC… So long story short, I had a very long wait (not Brians fault) to start, upped my entree money form 12 to 15 voluntarily to get the game started faster, we finally got started and it was basically one big disappointment. It just doesn’t feel right. It is all about him and less so about the players.