GSM: D(S)M

[GSM]

Event Preferences: Anything goes. I am a bigger fan of demonic or otherworldly-in-nature events, though don't expect major stuff until I get a foothold on DMing. If it sounds interesting, I'll probably throw my hat into the ring. (Don't bet on it. I'm very flippant.)
Other Notes: I'm not at all knowledgeable of DMing in E4, but I have proficiency elsewhere in tabletops/etc. I like more serious themes, so keep that in mind.

Are you currently running events, and if so, are you considering player requested events?: Looking to start. Please be kind.
Discord # or best means of contact: gsm on Discord. Do not DM me asking for a specific event to be run.

[Rottie]

Key/Character: Rok Wilkinsson
Which Event: To Enter Vanaheim: Sigurd

Responsiveness (Were their narrations posted within a reasonable time-frame and were they quick to respond?): 10/10 very fast, addressed everyone within reason.
Balance (How entertaining were the battles, and any obstacles/traps?): 8/10 Honestly was a bit on the easy side, but solid for a first event. Look forward to more environmental hazards and other dangers in the future.
Storytelling (Did it feel like an adventure, did the content of the narrations meet your expectations?): 12/10 Absolutely fantastic. Exceeded my spectations, came with the deep lore and gave everyone a fair bit of relevant IC to work with. Really let us decide how things progressed without depriving us of player agency.
Fairness (Were the punishments justified and earned, was the risk to reward ratio good?): 10/10 Rewards were excellent for the risk.

Overall: 9/10 Insane debut event, can't wait for the next one.

Any other comments: RIP My wife.

[CrystikRage]

Key/Character: Heimdall Eivorson
Which Event: To Enter Vanaheim: Sigurd

Responsiveness (Were their narrations posted within a reasonable time-frame and were they quick to respond?): 9/10, very rapid responses but felt like a bit of a slow burn at first as we were trying to figure out what was going on without much we could do to impact it. Kinda a 'waiting for the next narrate to move things along' moment. Regardless, event didn't suffer from it.
Balance (How entertaining were the battles, and any obstacles/traps?): 6/10 - fights were incredibly easy, but this is also the first event run by GSM, so I'm not expecting balance perfection from them. Everyone has to learn, and it's better that they're too easy than crushingly punishing. Regardless, not a single person was downed across both fights, which while I'd like to chalk up to being peak gamers... We're not all built that different.
Storytelling (Did it feel like an adventure, did the content of the narrations meet your expectations?): 10/10, atmosphere was great, venturing into the spiritrealm and being given four tasks to earn the right to enter Vanaheim? Very cool. I also liked that our choice to kill or spare the ECs mattered.
Fairness (Were the punishments justified and earned, was the risk to reward ratio good?): 8/10, rewards matched the advertised risk but as stated earlier about balance, very generous considering the inadvertent low risk nature.

Overall: 8/10 Very pogged first event from GSM, and I'm sure they'll improve more with each they run to conquer their primary weakpoint of balance. Given that it's not something you can just know, and that it's a shifting target from group to group, I'd say he did fairly well. Perm me next time tho.

Any other comments: I will dive off a dragon again.

[Sailor Ryu]

Character: Akane Nakano
Event: A Master's Edge

Responsiveness: With a few little interruptions here and there (Dog moments, few slow downs on our end), other than that it was shit hot fast when we were actually sat expecting narrates, and any slow downs we were giving warnings before hand.
Balance: MY LEG/10. I don't think I've ever audibly went "FUCKING NETZACH" before in my life, but this event made me say it aloud. Getting shot by 7 consecutive timebeams hurt too. Early on, things were more mellow, but those last 2 fights caused me more PTSD than my recent DEMOCRACY spree has.
Storytelling: For someone who I had to give a crash course on ancient lore to get up to speed on the theme of the event, you managed to pull one hell of a fucking story out of it. It wasn't what I was expecting, but considering how long ago it was I put the initial prompt up for the event, and what you did with it. I'd say it was honestly more fitting. From a journey of improvement to a journey of discovering the true self and what the heart really desires. (Scratching my legendary persona itch)
Fairness: 8/10. You gave out some of the cooler event items I've seen with this one, and although it was a god damn challenge, it was absolutely worth it. Mine was definitely on the lighter side, but it was thematically fitting, and 100% fits with everything that's went on.

Overall: 9/10. I am suffering.

Other comments: Glory to the Emperor. Ow.

[ruefuny]

Character: Murong Ze
Event: A Master's Edge

Responsiveness: It took a long time because the content was Long, not because we had to sit waiting for ages. This is just Good
Balance: I think the 0CD thing with the final boss kind of created a feeling of "the DM decides if you can win this round or not", but I did still have stressful fun. Every other fight was exclusively raw without reservations.
Storytelling: NIGHTMARE. NIGHTMARE. NIGHTMARE. Real dread. I'm very pointedly aware of railroading, but when I ran into things I couldn't influence here, it added to the horror in a very diegetic way rather than making me feel OOCly restricted. Had a cast of characters I WILL remember.
Fairness: Harsh and scary, but I can look at every single thing and see a clear intent to enable more storytelling later on. I can't really think of a more rewarding way to handle things than that. My snap reaction to the rewards was that they were too good, but then Everything Happened. And I understood.

Overall: 9/10. this was fucked up and my relationships with every character who attended will be part-defined by it from now on. what more do you want

Other comments: "i would rather confront someone with an existential crisis than gamble ONCE"

[Zhonya's Hourglass]

Character: Mikoto Shinjitsu
Event: A Master's Edge

Responsiveness: every narration was fast!
Balance: 9/10. living on the edge knowing whether I will have to use one of three invuls to survive touhou gameplay, or sneaking in an attack was mortifying
Storytelling: Fantastic. It was well prepared, and the lore was rich an enticing!! 10/10.
Fairness: 9/10. Rewards were tailored to the risk, we obviously didn't expect to come out of this unscathed, and, we didnt!

Overall: 9/10. 
Other comments: nightmares of lightspeed rush

[AdmiralDigi]

Key/Character: Janus Halbmond
Which Event: The Church of Broken Skin

Responsiveness (Were their narrations posted within a reasonable time-frame and were they quick to respond?): Always. A brisk pace, for an event with FOUR encounters and just enough fluff and intermission time to keep us busy? We got to go about our days long enough and without pause that we were tired, but eating (both literally and figuratively), 10.
Balance (How entertaining were the battles, and any obstacles/traps?): There was a few odd sillies that I feel were lingered on by my own inability and I take the blame where it is necessary for getting caught in a corner every other swing of the EC. Murderous Surge on an EC was HILARIOUS and had me rolling (in my grave, once I got clipped and went from 100% -> 0%). Other than that little slip up? Every fight from there was catered to with more accuracy and care. 9.
Storytelling (Did it feel like an adventure, did the content of the narrations meet your expectations?): 10. Holy shit. This was the most lore intensive event I've been on and every single sight or scene I got to go through filled me with a real, visceral dread. Ever been to a lake? Ever been to a lake with flesh-trees with little eyes and a living cathedral beyond the horizon, listening to a heartbeat in the depths? Then you realize you have to CROSS that giant blood lake as the surface eternally stitches itself up as a giant, living scab? Holy shit. 10.
Fairness (Were the punishments justified and earned, was the risk to reward ratio good?): Punishments due where they were. Rewards were all super sick, GSM really shot for the moon with this one. The unique mechanics outweigh any cool 'mechanical buff' I could ever ask for, because they're all cool and more than {Tags}. None feel unfair or super abusable, either. 10 for the items alone, god.

Overall: Really fucking knocked it out of the park. Would spend 14 hours of my day again (i'm not counting how long i was here for let me go to sleep asjfkldas)

Any other comments: helheim changes a mf

[ShiroKirishiki]

Character: Yuki Akatsuki
Event: The Church of Broken Skin

Responsiveness: Every narration was well written, evocative, powerful and captivating. I had no issues following what was happening, and they were pretty quick! (Even formatted, oooooooo)
Balance: 9/10. We had a lil too much fun with msurge spam! I may have been laughing too hard to properly aim, and then I ate fifteen ivory ruptures! Figure out the pattern work as a team (as you should!) and the fights are more than balanced!
Storytelling:  10/10. This was one of their babies, and it showed. It was an astounding story and I would have loved to have an entire week to explore this place. 12 hours went by so fast!
Fairness: 9/10. See Balance. The rewards were peak, though. Unreal amounts of detail and care towards the characters they were for.

Overall: 9/10.
Other comments: Please do my next event, I'm begging here..! Also, if you can get GSM, you are SET!

[Swiftkusura]

Key/Character: Hajime Akatsuki
Which Event: The Church of Broken Skin

Responsiveness (Were their narrations posted within a reasonable time-frame and were they quick to respond?): Excellent responsiveness, very few times were we ever waiting for a narration beyond the obvious downtime moments that we had throughout the entire event leaving the immersion amazing the entire time.
Balance (How entertaining were the battles, and any obstacles/traps?): The balance was amazing, there was a single hiccup but really that was a me problem more than anything and shouldn't be held against them. Other than that all of the fights were fun and unique and often times had a lot of tension throughout them.
Storytelling (Did it feel like an adventure, did the content of the narrations meet your expectations?): Perfect, excellent, amazing storytelling. There was not a single point in this that wasn't just an absolute banger of a post from them leaving us all wanting to go deeper and experience more, they were very much in their element and it showed.
Fairness (Were the punishments justified and earned, was the risk to reward ratio good?): Everything was perfectly made for an immaculate experience between fairness and fun as well as punishment for messing around and finding out, it was such a good experience all things considered.

Overall: 10/10 this was an unforgettable experience and I'm actually very sad that it has ended, yet unfortunately all good things must come to its conclusion.

[bonafidenubbin]

Character: Loramelian

Event: The Church of Broken Skin

Responsiveness: Damn you were FAST with your long, beautiful narrates, and more importantly you always took into account whatever we wanted to do, no matter how ransom and how ridiculous. A+ for figuring out how to work with Janus deciding to make a cursed Church sandwich on the fly, and it was also VERY cool how you worked with and accommodated the idea of the inversion rune live at the end. 10/10!

Balance: 9/10. Obviously the msurge round was crazy, and I actually think you could have punished us a little more in a few of those fights (though maybe not, I think Ansel was just our MVP of group protection). I'd have enjoyed seeing some slightly more variable patterns between bosses, too. But I DID love your boss patterns in general, and also that you didn't generally include the insta-death traps I'm used to going down to at LEAST once in most events. I actually felt like I earned my downs/survivals this time and it was probably the most efficacious I've ever felt while fighting in this game, so that was very cool. (ME? TWO BOSS FINISHES?) So overall I think this was really, really good.

Storytelling:  11/10. I don't even feel bad blowing the scale on this one. Incredible narrates with beautiful, fascinating, gory detail; a cool story in which I was invested and intrigued by the whole way through; and the best Dark Souls-esque boss names imaginable. The way it all linked into our different stories and motives was amazing, too.

Fairness: 10/10. Very generous rewards, but we did make it through 3 best of 3s and one best of 5 (!) with plenty of blood shed over 12 hours, so you made us work for them - and everybody got a similar level of awesome consideration. And holy shit. Holy shit. The items are SO interesting and relevant to everyone's IC.

Overall: i realize scale inflation is a thing but I have to give this a 10/10 anyway because this was seriously -excellent-. The exact creepy, spooky ambience I wanted and then all kinds of twists and turns I didn't see coming. I've been struggling of late but this really upped my enthusiasm and gave me so many RP leads to follow, it's such a lovely gift to feel invigorated again.

Other comments: I don't want to add to GSM's event backlog but y'all this is the fucking PREMIUM EXPERIENCE.