09-09-2025, 01:23 AM
Character: Adir Iphne
Event Name: Wheeled Menace
Responsiveness: 10/10, responses and narrations were quick and detailed, never felt like they were being absent or delaying. Perfect score here.
(I'm splitting the balance category between gameplay challenges and roleplay challenges)
Gameplay Balance: 9/10, we had two encounters, one smaller fight and one boss fight. Both were fun, felt well-setup, and felt genuinely risky but not in an unwinnable way. The only real complaint I have here is that the fights were honestly a bit too easy in some ways, but we also had a really powerful party and this event was ran a decent while after we gave our character information so we were all a decent bit stronger than anticipated as well, so kind of expected. It's not like they were at all cakewalks, either, as we did have some folk go down and I always did feel at risk of being taken out. Really good score, little complaints here.
The DM was also really dedicated to making these fights interesting, going so far as having two computers going to control multiple enemies at once, as a bonus positive.
Roleplay Balance: 10/10, the roleplay and dice-roll challenges were all done really well, felt interesting, and the difficulties on them all made sense and felt like a challenge, without feeling completely unwinnable. DM also offered extra really neat additions to dice-roll based challenges, such as characters being able to roll to 'assist' another teammate in doing the main hard roll, to make the difficulty check a bit lower. No complaints, these were really nice.
Storytelling: 11/10 right off the bat, the storytelling and narrations were wonderfully done, even with little UI manipulations to make the scene feel more immersive. The dedication to making it feel involved was supreme. I genuinely cannot think of a single issue, big or small, I had with this category. The story was interesting, including a very impactful twist to it that I wasn't expecting when we had first suggested the event, and it felt like the choices we took story-wise had very significant impact on the journey. The small less-important narrations like how the party reached the location were even beautifully done. It felt like we are genuinely moving forward through an adventure, and we were given ample opportunity to influence the storytelling ourselves with roleplay. The story also came to a satisfying conclusion, it made me feel like the reason we had gone there from an IC perspective was genuinely resolved. Legitimately cannot think of how the DM could've gotten a better score here.
Fairness: 10/10. The challenges were all difficult but fair, punishments were fairly dished out and were not by any means overboard, and rewards were dished out fairly and in a logical way with what we'd done. I never once felt like we were punished for no reason, nor that we were unfairly held back from receiving a reward. Everything was well thought-out, made sense, and felt perfectly fair. All of the rewards were done well and made sense in the setting and in regards to the challenge we completed to receive them. They all also had enough ambiguity to serve many uses, there weren't any super one-track or useless rewards, they all had a good amount of value. Relative to the difficulty in receiving them, these rewards were all quite fitting, and I didn't feel in any case that the reward didn't match the challenge to receive it. By the end, everyone was able to come away with something that they felt made it worth it.
In most cases, we were also given the chance to weigh whether we'd like to tackle the challenge to get the reward or if we'd rather just keep moving if it didn't interest any of us, which is something I appreciate heavily.
Overall: Easy 10/10, I cannot to any real degree imagine how the DM could've pulled off this event better. Get this DM if you can help it, absolutely wonderful experience all around.
Event Name: Wheeled Menace
Responsiveness: 10/10, responses and narrations were quick and detailed, never felt like they were being absent or delaying. Perfect score here.
(I'm splitting the balance category between gameplay challenges and roleplay challenges)
Gameplay Balance: 9/10, we had two encounters, one smaller fight and one boss fight. Both were fun, felt well-setup, and felt genuinely risky but not in an unwinnable way. The only real complaint I have here is that the fights were honestly a bit too easy in some ways, but we also had a really powerful party and this event was ran a decent while after we gave our character information so we were all a decent bit stronger than anticipated as well, so kind of expected. It's not like they were at all cakewalks, either, as we did have some folk go down and I always did feel at risk of being taken out. Really good score, little complaints here.
The DM was also really dedicated to making these fights interesting, going so far as having two computers going to control multiple enemies at once, as a bonus positive.
Roleplay Balance: 10/10, the roleplay and dice-roll challenges were all done really well, felt interesting, and the difficulties on them all made sense and felt like a challenge, without feeling completely unwinnable. DM also offered extra really neat additions to dice-roll based challenges, such as characters being able to roll to 'assist' another teammate in doing the main hard roll, to make the difficulty check a bit lower. No complaints, these were really nice.
Storytelling: 11/10 right off the bat, the storytelling and narrations were wonderfully done, even with little UI manipulations to make the scene feel more immersive. The dedication to making it feel involved was supreme. I genuinely cannot think of a single issue, big or small, I had with this category. The story was interesting, including a very impactful twist to it that I wasn't expecting when we had first suggested the event, and it felt like the choices we took story-wise had very significant impact on the journey. The small less-important narrations like how the party reached the location were even beautifully done. It felt like we are genuinely moving forward through an adventure, and we were given ample opportunity to influence the storytelling ourselves with roleplay. The story also came to a satisfying conclusion, it made me feel like the reason we had gone there from an IC perspective was genuinely resolved. Legitimately cannot think of how the DM could've gotten a better score here.
Fairness: 10/10. The challenges were all difficult but fair, punishments were fairly dished out and were not by any means overboard, and rewards were dished out fairly and in a logical way with what we'd done. I never once felt like we were punished for no reason, nor that we were unfairly held back from receiving a reward. Everything was well thought-out, made sense, and felt perfectly fair. All of the rewards were done well and made sense in the setting and in regards to the challenge we completed to receive them. They all also had enough ambiguity to serve many uses, there weren't any super one-track or useless rewards, they all had a good amount of value. Relative to the difficulty in receiving them, these rewards were all quite fitting, and I didn't feel in any case that the reward didn't match the challenge to receive it. By the end, everyone was able to come away with something that they felt made it worth it.
In most cases, we were also given the chance to weigh whether we'd like to tackle the challenge to get the reward or if we'd rather just keep moving if it didn't interest any of us, which is something I appreciate heavily.
Overall: Easy 10/10, I cannot to any real degree imagine how the DM could've pulled off this event better. Get this DM if you can help it, absolutely wonderful experience all around.