Bradley

Joe was an incredible GM for my group. We had players with varied roleplaying experience, from none to seasoned veterans and Joe was able to easily adapt to all of our play styles. Some players wanted to go light on the roleplaying and heavy on the smashing and others were reversed and really wanted to be very thoughtful about how their character interacted with other players and NPCs. Joe filled the world with a lot of cool and interesting NPCs for us to interact with. The NPCs we played with were both designed exclusively by him or also designed by the player character's backgrounds with Joe's expert input. This made me feel like I really had an effect on the story. Joe's NPCs were all very unique. He portrayed them all individually with accents, voices, and styles of speech. He let us discover the connections they had with our players or other NPCs or the jobs we pulled. Joe's combat and "dungeon" scenarios were really interesting and varied. My group threw him a couple of very bizarre curve balls and he expertly rolled with them, incorporating them into our story. This was a new system for all the players (but not for Joe) and he did a great job guiding us through the system. He takes an approach that champions the players, so if we wanted to do something that didn't quite fit in with the rules, Jeloe was able to work out how we could make that fit. He also reminded players when we had an ability we weren't using. This really helped us learn the system, and for me, Orbital Blues was very different from any other system I've played. With interplayer conflict, we didn't have much, but the conflicts we did have Joe was able to navigate us through. Our group found that we often talked over each other or offered suggestions at inappropriate times to other players. Joe implemented and enforced rules and best practices to limit these conflict. That shows me that he is very able to adjust his GM style to meet the unique demands of whatever group he's leading. Joe uses safety tools and was very up front about them in our Session 0. We, as a group, discussed what topics were off limits, what topics we were to be careful about, and what topics were okay. Joe kept us on track and kept these in mind. There was one point where something potentially sensitive came up that we hadn't talked about previously and Joe was very mindful to pause the game for a check in. Overall, I would say Joe led an amazing game that incorporated his ideas and story lines while including input (both explicit and through our actions) from EVERY player. We all had an amazing time! I think Joe even made a couple of new RPG nerds out of my group!