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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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 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)
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 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.
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.
That freedom is exactly what I like about ttrpgs too. How do you do it solo?
Oh it’s a whole method. I use oracles, i roll on tables, i automatically generate NPC’s.
The actual easy part is combat because “usually” there’s a best choice for the enemy to take in any situation that makes sense for them.
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.
Yeah in my opinion DnD should be a perfect mix of epic stuff happening and silly stuff happening!
Yeah in my opinion DnD should be a perfect mix of epic stuff happening and silly stuff happening!
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 enjoy watching my players hands shoot up in excitement when something incredible happens. Happened during my last session. Gave me all the fuzzies.
My favorite part is having to explain a rule for the 17th time.
