#also protip for anyone who thinks of doing out of the abyss as their first campaign

[eviipaiadin]

oh i never made a post about it but my current d&d campaign is almost done. we had our ‘finale’ session on saturday and will have our ‘grand finale + epilogue’... eventually

the ‘final’ battle against the demon lords (mostly just yeenoghu) was pretty brutal and horrifying with a few pretty easy encounters before that to wrap up some loose threads

with just the final battle against my semi-homebrew demon lord who has been known to help the protags before but has now kidnapped one (1) of them for ‘’’’reasons’’’’, i have some overall thoughts about my experience running this campaign (under the cut cuz this gets long)

so i’ve attempted to run campaigns before, mostly using the old pokemon tabletop adventure system but i also did a short star wars campaign with some irl friends and i honestly am shocked that we are going to finish this campaign

i’ve always had issues with time management and committing to long-term goals. arceus knows i’ve written half a billion wips and often flake out on group roleplaying and other things so the fact that this campaign that we started over two (2) years ago is gonna finally be completed is very shocking to me.

for all the shit i talk about out of the abyss, i’m so fucking glad i’m running a module. sure, i’ve homebrewed a lot of stuff in the process but it gave me a framework to build from. the idea of running my own campaign, set in my own setting, with me having to come up with all the plot beats myself, is kinda horrifying but i really do want to do it.

making and buying maps and using roll20 in general has also been a big help. i’m a very visual person and the few times i’ve played games theater of the mind style, i’ve lost track of everything.

in regards to my competence as a dm, i think i’m a solid like 6.5/10, which is way better than i thought i’d be going into this. my organizational skills are not great and i would on occasion be running things by the seat of my pants. there were a few sessions that really sucked (namely everything involving the cyrus goes to jail arc, the gang gets attacked by a beholder and their small army, the ‘people get items’ session, and the maze engine) but also some that were really great (the purple worm nest, the tomb of pharaoh phasulias, the kobold keep, and the maze engine). there were also lots of just good sessions and some that weren’t awful but had moments that fell far flatter than i thought they would because i overestimated how threatening something would be (rip namagus, the world’s biggest disappointment).

i learned about how important having well-stated house rules prior to the game is. not even like just mechanic stuff but also what kind of stuff someone is comfortable with having their character do/have done.

i also learned that i really can’t do generic scary villains. all my villains are way too goofy to be scary. when i make demogorgon, the prince of all demons, into just some snarky asshole that constantly tells people to just like kill their friends and family and burn stuff, it kind of... makes it less enjoyable? at least for me.

that isn’t to say i don’t enjoy comedy characters. nappa the compulsive lying moss lurker, themberchaud the fat cat red dragon, ree asho the french thieving fake item salesperson... and of course, buppido the russian idiot derro that somehow survives every bad encounter. my favourite characters are easily jokesters or just plain jokes but i really wish i could better turn off my obsessive need to try and be funny all the time to make actually menacing villains.

i’ve also realized (related to the bad session stuff earlier) that i cannot balance stuff for shit. i like the heroes fighting a few powerful things which you can kind of get away with in smaller parties but with a party of (usually) six (6) pcs, they get focus fired too fast for anything too interesting to go down. that and my constant disrespect for magic bites me in the ass constantly when the party wizard plays far smarter than i could ever dream of, making any attempts at ‘mastermind’ archetypes a big ol’ waste of time.

now if you’re like a fledgling dm or someone who is thinking of doing it, don’t let this big ol’ thing freak you out. this is just my first go at it and it won’t be perfect the first time, obviously. you just gotta like do your best and learn what works and what doesn’t.

at the end of the day, i had a lot of fun dming this. was i stressed the fuck out at times? hell yeah. did it all work out? hell yeah (x2). people are forgiving and i’m sure most of my players would say i’m better than a 6.5/10 dm. except maybe kota but he has this weird thing called ‘standards’.