schneefink

Last weekend I ran my first D&D session where my party explored an actual dungeon :) Well, an underground tomb of an ancient king, but that still counts. It was so much fun, for me and for them too. And it makes DMing so much easier if I know what they'll do! Not the details, of course, but I know they'll explore the dungeon, and the dungeon is a fairly controllable environment. It was so great to see what they did with what I had prepared, and the things I should have expected but didn't, like that they decided they want to adopt one of the dragons and the long ethics debate about whether or not to wake up people stored in stasis. In the end they did not make it to the final chamber, but it wasn't that important, and they did say they'll want to come back. (They haven't decided yet if/who they'll tell about the tomb, and that'll of course influence if/how they can come back…)

So now the question is what to do next. I still haven't figured out how to solve the problem with my main plot, at least not in a way that I find satisfying (I'm currently considering someone having infiltrated the MCU crossover characters via either mind control or a shapeshifter and trying to use the portal they're building to get back to their world for their own purposes, but logistics.) In the meantime I'll throw a few more side quests at them, that'll also help me clarify the idea. I really liked having a controllable environment and I would like to have that again, but I don't want to send them under the city yet (that's for a later showdown), so I was thinking about islands. Maybe someone, and by that I mean those building the portal, teleport them to a haunted island to ~~steal~~ recover a magical artifact for them, and they'll have to fight the smugglers on the island and the monsters and whatever ghosts there are and then figure out a way to get back. Would be fun, but I'd have to develop the island, and the next session is on Saturday… it'll be a transition chapter and I don't like running those, anything can happen and that makes me nervous, and transitions require the most worldbuilding and NPCs it feels like and I feel insufficiently prepared. But they did just get some loot so maybe there'll just be a lot of shopping ^^ Ah well, in an emergency I can always cut the session short, and so far my players are enjoying themselves.

This has been part of the most likely recurring feature "

schneefink talks about (being nervous about) the D&D campaign she runs."