I enjoy helping others experience the first time wonder of discovery, even after years of playing. It’s why I play in a custom setting and regularly create new monsters, spells, subclasses, and magic items. So many people crave that moment of first contact, and I love to help them find it.
On the DM side of that, when there are new things for the players to find, I get to stretch the creative muscles that I thought I had lost for years. I get to challenge myself to create new, interesting, and balanced experience to offer up for my table.
Make it up! It's your world, so put your own spin on it. If someone complains, BS a reason behind it and connect it to some lore about a hero that changed or fucked something up and since then they've always done it that way.
Some things to consider:
operating funds. Should they have a minimum of gp to set up? Should their be a minimum per month operating cost for admin staff? Taxes by city?
location. Should they need a guild hall? Do they have to buy the property or rent?
buyin from residents. Do they need support from residents to do it? Do they need to take care of some sidequests to get support of a few cantankerous councilman?
make up a weird third category. Do they need to throw a feast? Do they need to decorate their hall with the heads of monsters they killed? Does the local temple offer a blessing (with benefits for members) if they do some task?
My favorite part of DMing is to hide some inside joke into a dungeon or campaign. So everything seems like generic fantasy world but upon completing some quest it results in exposing some silly that is some dumb joke my friends.made years ago. That reveal is the best. I think in general it’s that I get to juxtaposition silly things and serious moments throughout.
I ran a battle royale style one shot for a big group recently, based on the Battle Royale module from DMGuild.
Because it was such a large group (11 players) I made a bunch of compromises:
initial 2.5hrs was team based, and sold to the players (in character) as if they could achieve victory together
during this period, each area/activity they wanted to achieve was run as a skill challenge
6 success before 4 failures to succeed on the challenge, DC changed depending on the activity
expending a short/long rest resource or spell slot could get advantage on the roll.
I kept it to 2 areas where they could acquire loot, 2 random travel events and a final longer (8/4) section of the final circle
in the PVP section, the in-game game master announces they must fight on to the death
again with this many players I needed to try and keep the game moving, I used NPCs and lair events to keep from players from hiding in the corner too long
as rounds went on I added another d6 to the lair action damage at the top of the round. Eventually I started upping the DC on the dex checks just to keep things moving as well.
As the other comment said, it was really important to be upfront with the players, out of game, about the challenges of PVP. It was unavoidable for players to be sitting around waiting for the combat to finish with little to do.
I also found delegating some tasks made it easier for me to keep a handle on such a large group:
timekeeper, trying to keep us to the limits I set at the beginning
loot giver, I’d announce how many/type of chest they found which corresponded to how many times they could roll on the loot table, and on which one. One IRL player did this for me and distributed as best he could
2 Minute Tabletop has a great module you can run. I just ran this with my family on vacation when we were looking for something to do in the evenings. I extended it a lot with some fetch quests before the tournament, and everyone had a good time learning their characters/practicing their mechanics.
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