Where do you shine?

as a DM, in what area are you best in? Dungeon crawls? Political Intrigue? Wilderness adventuring? Planar travel?

I hate to say it, but while I love puzzles, I'm terrible at them.

Terrible at coming up with long term plans.

Good with role playing. Just had a session where I tracked down a young rogue who managed to snag some odd 70 platinum pieces that were marked with symbols outside the country we were in and offered him a job with the government ala Jimmy the Hand and that went well.

Good with tactics to a point. I can usually piggyback off other players to get some great gestalt effects going like casting bullstrength on a dwarf whose already in a barbarian rage.

I'm still trying to figure that out. I want to be good at handling city/town settings and all the NPC interactions that go on, but for now I guess I'm best at the dungeon crawl, handling combat situations better.

Most of the time after I DM, I walk away disappointed in my own performance. I have great plans on what I want to do, but in the thick of running things I end up focused on rules and tactics and keeping things moving and end up forgetting a lot of the little things I wanted to do that I hoped would add more depth to the session. In the end, my players all seem to be enjoyng themselves and don't seem to notice the issues I think I am having, so I guess I'm doing OK.

Oh, and as for where I shine, it is usually my forehead

I'm fairly good at intrigue and subterfuge style games.

After my last extended campaign, I might have to boast being pretty good with "purloined letter" type situations, where the answer is right under the PCs noses.

I'm fairly good at setting up final conflicts that tip the PCs back on their heels without doing TPKs.

I am NOT good at defining and characterizing distinctive NPCs. Have to work on that...

I tend to do best at providing interesting locations, and do pretty well at keeping a session moving.

My players have told me: World creation, that the world/game is very interactive and they feel they are living it rather than playing it.

I can occasionally produce the really great NPC and I am pretty good at running political intrigue with a complex terrain of agendas and factions. I like creating NPCs memorable enough that even if they are not important, if they show up in a subsequent season, the PCs remember them.

But all my best work is at the world-building level. I create vibrant mythologies and cultures and internally consistent worlds. For me, most adventures are just about following-through the implications of the world I have built.

One thing I like to do that helps me monitor the success of the world I have created is to give two different things in the world the same name/term so that the word's use can only be picked up from context. If the players start employing the term correctly in context, I feel I've done my job. Better still if I've created overlapping confusing terminology and players start correcting eachother about it.

NPC's. Beale Knight has to help me through the rules. I am OK, I think, at most things but my players seem to really appreciate how I play the NPC's.

I can't say I really "shine", but players have often told me that I am quite good in the descriptions of both places, people and the action.

The other thing I feel very comfortable with nowadays is with the rules themselves. That doesn't mean I know everything (I still have lots of shady areas) but I have become very good in giving players the belief that I do and in adjudicating on the fly how to deal with situations "not covered" -> the official excuse for when I actually don't know or remember.

What I'm not good at all is in providing good and intricate storylines

I like to think I'm good at making interesting NPCs (not always likable, but interesting), weaving characters into the campaign as a whole, and creating interesting plots. I'd like to think I'm pretty good at running interesting encounters too, when I put the effort into it. As far as what I'm not good at -- I really need to work on my dungeon-making ability as one of my players loves them, and sometimes I get a little too wrapped up in trying to come up with how the plot will go while integrating PCs into the adventure, and wind up getting stuck. I'm entirely too perfectionist.