I’ve started running Curse of Strahd and have been having a ton of fun making wacky homebrew things for my party and tweaking the module. Unbeknownst to the players so far, I have made them all a secret Dark Power trying to use them to usurp Strahd and Vampyr, and they’re just waiting to offer their dark gift.
For example, I have a druid with some fire giant ancestry who loves Produce Flame and is their front line, so he’ll be offered a slightly weaker Rage with the Path of the Storm Herald desert feature to use once per long rest. The celestial warlock would get charges to boost his Eldritch Blast damage and some secondary healing in exchange for sapping his life.
Giving my players powerful upgrades alongside typical class advancement can make some encounters harder to balance around, but as long as we’re all having fun who cares about balance??
For me on either side the sentiment can be summarized by moments of “holy shit. That just happened…”
Plans going perfect, plans going awry, shocking acts of RNG, excellent performances of narrative or improv.
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.
I love when my players get deeply immersed in a scenario I created and engage with all of the NPCs and create a story we’ll tell each other for years.
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.
I always say it’s not ripping off, it’s an homage! I love pulling inspiration out of other media.
Three years ago I wrote some notes regarding the lore and background of the world I placed my players in. Now they’re invested and actually hunting down the villain I added only as a background.
Nothing is as good as players being invested and exploring the world well past my initial ideas.
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.
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.
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.
(Also hello from a fellow Curse of Strahd DM!)
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’m like you, I love making homebrew items and monsters to throw at my party in equal measurements I also really enjoy creating lore and reasons why things are happening in the setting. I’ve been meaning to try a module so I can practice working within an existing story framework more.
I’m much better at tweaking preexisting things than coming up with my own off the bat, so I havent tried a fully homebrewed setting, but I’ve played in two now with another group. Taking the bones of a module and fleshing it out is pretty satisfying though, have you looked into any to run?
I looked into Descent into Avernus, but honestly, I wanted to make so many changes to that module it wasnt worth it. I also toyed with Strahd but horror and being scary isn’t my thing either. I kinda stopped looking since my group is taking a break for a good while, but if I end up dming again it will almost certainly be with a premade module.
I love when players start putting clues/lore together and figuring things out.
It shows they care about my setting and they’ve been paying attention.
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So rewarding when they engage with it like that! I’ve been trying to plant foreshadowy bits so they have a few “oh damn” moments coming up.
I wish I could have this. Two of my players take notes, but only one takes them in enough detail to piece things together. I recently gave a the not-so-great note taker a dream (full text was provided in a message) with a bunch of bread crumbs for their character to follow. It was to encourage them to talk with the other player characters and try to solve this mystery together by utilizing connections that the other players have. In this dream, I gave them:
- A very uncommon first name of an important NPC they can seek out. The NPC is the Empress of one of the opposing countries.
- A description of an area, including geographic markers that they could use to pinpoint its location. This place is very unique. If they ask someone in game that studies any sort of geography, they will likely be told where to go
- A description of another set of the mcguffins that the team had just gathered. This is literally their main quest right now
The response I got back from the player was “Yeah… i don’t know what i need to pull from this”. This is from the player that keeps contacting me after the game saying that they want to interact more with the world and do more RP. When pressed with “well you could ask one of the other characters for help” I got a “nah, I want to do this on my own”.
Please send help…
As a player I love any time we actually get to play, quite a lot of time spent away from the table unfortunately.
My favorite part is having to explain a rule for the 17th time.
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 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.
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.
