Mallis The Builder

Very capable, understanding, and patient GM.

His improvisation skills and mellow demeanor are top tier. He was great with having sounds and music for most things. His communication out of game is decent. He seems to stick solely to the Rule of Cool and I never heard him stress or correct anyone on rules during play. His focus seems to solely be on the players having fun which is a great quality in a GM....if you have good group of players that all mesh well with what they consider fun. His ability to form a story was hard to grasp as the party seemed to sidetrack from his story quite frequently, but when a story element did arise, he seemed adept at it. I found myself pulling at threads trying to find what we were actually doing for most of the 3 sessions I played. His grasp of character voices wasn't very great, but I believe that is solely due to his accent. His ability to play a character was fine, just not the voices. He has very large groups of players and suffers from not being able to multi-task all of them at once. I noticed him not applying damage from some of my attacks simply because he was caught up with other player's turns. He forgot an NPC was with us and at the end of the session mentioned that the guy was forgotten and just died in an explosion. I rolled an attack out of combat because so many people were talking at the time, and it was never mentioned so I just sat back and watched while everyone else played. He gives the players a bit too much open freedom instead of direct options from the start and it slows down the game significantly because players often avoid making decisions. This then forces him to give direct options 15-20 minutes later to speed things along. I guess that's a good tactic for slowing down time and creating less work though. For instance, two of the other players took the spotlight in my last session and spent almost 40 minutes of gametime discussing in-game drug usage for their own jollies. We could have used some direction instead of being left to the whims of drug fantasies. The players took the drugs and rolled checks on what happened to them. Nothing happened to them at all. End of session came 1 hour later. It wasn't even mentioned. I felt like I took too much time up in my 2nd session trying to have fun and apologized to the group for it. I was ignored by all of the other players, save 1. Wasn't really welcoming at all. 3-4 hour sessions were always 3 hours or less. Was told last session would be "on him" because the session before was cut short. I still had to pay for it. Is he a good GM? Yes, he would likely be pretty great with 5 or less players. I would however advise joining a game of his where there aren't 7 players and you are happy with each session being a complete toss up of activity. Go in expecting chaos and try to enjoy it if you are into that sort of thing.

I've played games with Stew as the DM for several years now. His knowledge of the subject matter in everything he uses is exceptional. His ability to blend the environment into his explanations and characterizations really pulls you into the world you're playing in. I honestly can't say enough to how great of a GM he is and how helpful he is to new players looking to learn a new system.

The Emperor excels at all things The Emperor wishes to take part in. For he is grandiose and beloved by all. Send your praise to The Emperor and wish for him long prosperous life. His patience, understanding, and knowledge is a testament to his awesomeness.