I was impressed with the pacing of the event. Not only did he keep things moving, but he played with expectations: I assumed the event was done after cookies had been given out and we were strolling back to town, but after a brief lull suddenly the action picked up again. (I especially enjoyed at the campfire, after it seemed that whatever was going on with Willow had been fixed, how it started becoming increasingly clear that something was quite wrong with her -- kudos to Willow's player as well for that.)
I enjoyed the way that he had planned in advance to allow characters from level ten all the way to epic to make essential contributions. (I was also impressed that he managed to include combat encounters without making them trivial *and* without wiping out the lower-level party members: after one fight I saw that nearly all the epics were at Injured, but not a single lowbie deathplaned.)
I liked how he reframed what "victory" meant. It was novel to come against a evil villain whose greatest strength *wasn't* personal combat, but instead things that were harder to directly fight back against. At the same time, fighting wasn't totally futile: by besting him we were able to achieve certain short term goals, such as preventing him from killing Shanala before she could give us information.
I was most impressed with the way that his DMing style faded into the background. His presence was often unfelt, making me unsure how much of what was happening was him and how much was players and the engine, right up until the instant he did something that made me realize he had been there all along. That he was able to get so much done, while hardly ever having to "become visible" to the players in an OOC sense, was quite a feat.
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And of course, his seeming ability to be in two places at once was explained when he let it slip that Thor was online for the event as well. I'm not sure who to give credit for what, so I'll just have to give Thor a rave as well!
