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View Full Version : Hooray for DMing! (Sappy post)



AtwasAwamps
2010-01-04, 02:12 PM
The only actually purpose to this post is to talk about how goddamn happy I am. I know, its pointless, but I don’t get to gush often and I love to do it when I can.

For the first time in my life, starting about a month ago, I began running a D&D game for the group of people who first started playing with me earlier this year. They asked me to run a game, saying they felt I had a great grasp of the rules, storytelling, and RP from me seeing me play in two of their games. I took a lot of pain to make the games for them and worked very hard at it, crafting a fairly complicated plot but still trying to leave them plenty of openings to explore and expand.

One session in my entire plot focus was shifted and I’ve been running on pure story-adrenaline ever since, pulling encounters and plot hooks out of whole cloth, homebrewing like a madman, and…by all accounts…running a wonderfully enjoyable game.

It just makes me smile to see the group of different players I have get excited about the game I am running. I love the fact that everyone can’t wait to see what happens next, or that they are eager or happy to see a returning NPC or actually are scared or inspired by an NPC’s words or presence. I love when I see the confusion on their face at a twist they didn’t expect and their pure satisfaction in seeing it through.

At one point, I, as the DM, got up, went to the bathroom, grabbed a snack, and checked my telephone messages while the group spent up to 45 minutes RPing…literally, roleplaying out…a full round-table discussion about their next course of action. I didn’t railroad them…they locked themselves into a room to discuss what they were going to do next. My additions to this were purely the Psion psicrystal projecting irritating mental messages to him and the addendum that in his absence, the dread necromancer’s undead rat was going to eat his pillow and his bedding.

I have pitted them against a horde of animated furniture that proved to be their most challenging encounter yet, nearly killing two of them. Nobody has ever cheered more at destroying a bookshelf.

I have pitted them against a party of elite cultists, led by a crusader, when none of them had built ToB characters…the encounter resulted in a pair of enlarged drow spiked-chain wielders (one being the crusader, an “albino” drow, and the other the party’s drow fighter) clashing amidst a massive field of battle.

My players are enjoying my game, despite the fact that I regularly beat the crap out of them and go outside the rulebook on both sides to create cool, satisfying moments. They are patient with my need to look up rules and supportive when I rule against them, knowing that I will rule for them just as much. They trust me and I trust them. Hell, I have good, evil, AND neutral party members and they’re all getting along.

Despite all the horror stories out there that made me fear this task, it is incredibly fun. I hope that all of you have had or will have the experience I am having with my very first game.

Matthew
2010-01-05, 03:11 PM
Glad to hear you are enjoying yourself; I can certainly empathise. Running a game for a good group of people can be very rewarding.