Ivo

I’m a lifelong GM myself, having started gaming with D&D Expert, and I’ve played in countless campaigns across many different systems over the years. As a result, I’m probably more critical than most when it comes to how a GM facilitates collaborative storytelling, preserves player agency, adapts to the table’s input/direction, and keeps players engaged with the setting in a way that works both in-game and at the meta-game level. I currently play in two of Chris’s games, and this guy gets it. He understands what makes a great GM and consistently delivers an engaging, collaborative experience. From one old head to another: don’t change a thing, Chris. You’re doing it right (maybe give us a tad more XP here and there you miser!). Great GM, I fully recommend and endorse Chris and his style of GMing. Chris attracts competent, thoughtful, and mature players to the table and I have enjoyed my experiences with him and my fellow players.

Chris is comfortable letting the game go off the rails, which may be fine for a casual game with friends. For a paid service, however, a GM should be conscientious about budgeting players’ spotlight and keeping the story moving. Chris also clearly favors his regulars—which is understandable when cultivating repeat customers—but when three of four hours are spent indulging one preferred player’s deliberate “trying to understand” routine, it comes at everyone else’s expense. Repeatedly feigning ignorance of the setting as a substitute for roleplaying, coupled with the “my quirky culture/criminally innocent naivety is my personality” routine, becomes exhausting filler once the character is established. Roleplay and dialogue should serve the collaborative story. Otherwise, the session stops being a roleplaying game and becomes adults playing make-believe. When I raised this criticism, Chris said it was a “feature,” not a “bug.” Well, we are using different code then; I cannot recommend.

After a private pre-game voice conversation with the GM, we decided to part ways. I suspect the GM felt threatened when during the discussion, it became known that I had decades of game mastering experience exceeding his own, and it became clear that (we) both as a prospective client and he as a GM, had very differing opinions on GM tradecraft and what we wanted out of the shared gaming experience. My subjective score of a 1/5 stars reflects my observation of the GM's style, which based on inference and years of gaming, are too restrictive for my taste, especially considering this is a paid service, which should be more accommodating for clients, not less accommodating/more restrictive for clients. I would take my business elsewhere.