I’m running a campaign right now that’s very episodic and I’m starting to feel like I’m just running five room dungeons over and over. This will help me spice things up.
As a DM, I love when my players absolutely love or gravitate towards an NPC I made. So many times my players latch onto an NPC and it becomes their mascot. It also works really well as a tool for plot hooks or to give players engaging side quests to chase.
Not strictly a dnd thing, but I'm a worldbuilder first and GM second so my favourite part is creating a world for the players to explore. And their faces when they begin piecing together a puzzle, or remember some lore, or recognize a name.
I do almost entirely solo, but my favorite part is the unexpected.
If you play a computer game, you know what’s going to happen or what’s within the boundaries of the simulation it’s running. Tabletop isn’t like that. It can spiral into anything and end up anywhere. That’s very refreshing and mentally engaging.
Here’s an alternative take based on how I’ve played a druid in a multi-year campaign:
The druid can pick whatever animals they’d like, but:
Each animal type can only be chosen once.
The chosen animal should be thematically appropriate for the environment (e.g. don’t choose elk in a desert or snakes in the arctic).
My DM let me choose whatever animals I wanted except for dinosaurs. I didn’t want to abuse that by spamming 8 wolves every encounter so I came up with these self-imposed restrictions to try to make things interesting. I think that the “each animal can only be used once” limitation in particular was very interesting because it gave the spell longer term strategic implications as well – “is this encounter scary enough that I want to burn one of my stronger summon options”.
My flavor for the restriction was that, since the animals are actually fey spirits, they didn’t like being “taken for granted” and always summoned in the same form. They would only respond in the way you ask if your need was truly great
DM here. The biggest thing for me is when the players get emotionally engaged to the story and the beats. They fell actual hatred for the BBEG. They get so excited about a reveal that they all can't talk for a minute. Something happens in game, and half the players are having a chat in the Discord in character, outside of game time. The reactions from the players are so rewarding.
The next best is when they come up with a solution to a problem in the game that I hadn't even considered. It's kind of fun to have to just say "OK. Hang on a minute. I was totally not prepared for y'all to try that, so I'm going to need to figure out what they impact of that is." The players always get really excited about that; I think they love to stump me.
Here’s an alternative take based on how I’ve played a druid in a multi-year campaign:
The druid can pick whatever animals they’d like, but:
Each animal type can only be chosen once.
The chosen animal should be thematically appropriate for the environment (e.g. don’t choose elk in a desert or snakes in the arctic).
My DM let me choose whatever animals I wanted except for dinosaurs. I didn’t want to abuse that by spamming 8 wolves every encounter so I came up with these self-imposed restrictions to try to make things interesting. I think that the “each animal can only be used once” limitation in particular was very interesting because it gave the spell longer term strategic implications as well – “is this encounter scary enough that I want to burn one of my stronger summon options”.
My flavor for the restriction was that, since the animals are actually fey spirits, they didn’t like being “taken for granted” and always summoned in the same form. They would only respond in the way you ask if your need was truly great
As a DM, my favourite part is the worldbuilding. I love figuring out how the setting works, what its history is and who the prominent people are. I do worldbuilding as a solitary activity sometimes, but having an audience makes it better and having a participatory audience is best. I ran a year-long campaign I called the "zero-prep campaign" where I didn't do much or any preparation ahead of each session, letting the party's decisions guide things and frantically filling in the universe around them as they went, and I managed to produce one of my most cohesive and fun settings yet.
As a player, it's similar but much smaller scale - I focus on building my character. I try to settle in to his or her skin, get to know them, figure out what they think about and how they'd react to various situations. The character is on a road I don't know the ultimate destination for and I am keen to find out.
I like the term “zero-prep campaign”. I think I want to use that now. I’ve also had the most fun with those, although planning ahead can be very rewarding in its own right.
I also love the world building, but I think I approach it from a different direction. Rather than prepping sessions, I like to build mechanics and details into the world. These are often informed by the actions of my players, but in the game it allows me to run a similar “zero-prep” style because the world already exists. Especially after several campaigns in the same world, when so much has been generated over hours of play.
The experience of seeing my world unfold before me, and seeing the wonder and emotion on my player’s faces, brings me so much genuine joy. I feel like I did when I was a kid.
Not strictly a DnD player (Pathfinder and World of Darkness mainly) I love the “creatively appropriating” ideas and concepts from other media, figuring out what makes different genres work and pulling everything together into an awesome narrative. I love it when my players get into their characters.
My current PF campaign is heavily Destiny inspired, so I’m pulling all kinds of ideas from the lore and the game itself and reworking them into a more strictly fantasy setting.
DM here, mine is a bit vague and cheesy but whatever. Favourite part is seeing how excited my friends get when something cool happens! Whether it's pulling out a spicy combat encounter, or they connect the clues of some big plot point, or they pull off something heroic and/or disastrous in game and we all know it's unforgettable.
Being a DM feels a bit like hosting a party (except less overwhelming). It feels like giving gifts to my friends in the form of a fantasy world. It's highly fulfilling, and we end up weaving many joyful memories together.
Have you used any supplementals? I’ve dug through most of Mandymods stuff (shout-out to her) but haven’t looked at Dragnacarta or the interactive Tome yet.
We're at the start of our campaign (they've just gone though Death House) so I've yet to dig deep into it but I have been taking a close look at both MandyMod and DragnaCarta.
At first I was preparing to follow MandyMod closely with the Fanes and stuff but it ended up getting a bit overwhelming for me and I realised I didn't actually need or want all of it. So I've dialled back a bit and am just taking bits and pieces of inspiration wherever fits. I've liked stuff from both supplements so I'll probably continue to do so, although I have to be careful with MandyMod because there's so much homebrew lore in it that I need to remind myself what is module lore and what is fan lore. Nevertheless, there's a treasure trove of stuff to add which is a really nice change for running a module.
I haven't actually heard of the interactive tome, marvel missed that but I'll have to check it out!
Both as a player and a DM is theorising and imagining ways that different scenarios would go. Both tactical combat and social encounters. Even if the ideal circunstances don’t come up and my characters is not that broken or my players predicable enough for this to happen, It feels so good to make a decent build that makes sense or cool encounters.
I love creating the bones of a world or a situation, then seeing how the party interpret, contribute, and react to it, then reacting to their decisions for the next session.
Also sometimes, making traps and BBEG plans for them then being able to pull it off (and watching like a proud parent as they successfully get out of the situation)
Yes exactly. For me, the most rewarding part is including the breadcrumbs to the real story while allowing them to explore the world we're building together.
I’ve just been throwing breadcrumbs in front of my party for years now and taking them where ever they go. Its been so much more fun than just ‘telling my story’ for me. I would always have the start of a story I wanted to tell, but could never sort out the middle and the end, so I just let the players do it now and enjoy the show.
For years now i thought the details and the world building behind the campaigns is the most fun part, at least for me. After now three to four years building a world, without having my players play even one session in this world. I don’t deem my world ready yet. I think it’s never gonna be played. Its to much fun just creating the world. I don’t want my player find a loophole while playing and me having to fix it mid game with a not as perfect solution as it could be.
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