Honestly I never know what to right on these things.
I'm kinda goth kinda punk, geek. I love stories and drama, improv, and roleplaying. I've been playing Table Top Rpgs since I was 12. My first game was a Cyberpunk 2020 game. I've been GMing games since about the same time. Started running ADnD after school and been gaming ever since.
I always wanted to be a story teller. I enjoy fantasy, sci-fi, and Horror. I grew up on classical literature and mythology
I got my associates in game design and development and I'm constantly exploring, Developing, and experimenting with new styles and ways of telling stories.
So my GM style has a wide range of variance. I can shift from deep roleplay to a pure combat dungeon crawl with ease. I like to develop deep stories and Emotional roleplay, and have had players laughing and crying in the same session. One player once said I "do 10d10 Emotional damage"
I make and use maps, Create handouts and put a lot of time into my games. I tend to to run serious games and I run my games long term. I like to compare them to a TV series, each session as an episode in a larger season of stories with a large story arch through the season and the campaign as the series as whole with a long arc across multiple seasons.
I greatly encourage and work to evoke strong roleplay and interpersonal stories and drama, and stories that see characters Grow over time.
I tend to focus on rule of cool over rules. And use rules mostly as a guideline but always try and make things fair. I do however believe that character creation is a process between players and the GM and will sometimes not allow things or disapprove characters because I believe the best games require the right mix between Setting, character, and player all working together.
I also ask all my players to follow the philosophy of leaning into the story. The conflict between the lawful good paladin, and evil warlock in the same party can be fun and create drama when both players decide to explore and develop that conflict through roleplay across a story instead of turning it into a fight to the death.
And here is a review left by one of my players -
"Crystal is perhaps the best Dm I have had in a while. I Dm on occasion but only for a small handful of people. Crystals style can be quite unforgiving but it is reasonable, if you don't think about your actions it will likely bite you on the arse later kind of like real life. However if you say what you want to do and have a reasonable explanation as to why it would work, crystal will generally let it happen. There is a good balance of role play and combat which allows for the story to progress in the players direction. I really enjoy their dming style, and every session I have had with them so far I have come away from looking forward to the next one, and still buzzing from the sessions the next day, even when my characters have had a brush with death, ie Edith nearly becoming part of a forest via tree-hugging (especially after that to be honest because that forest was intense!). "
-deathofrats