Little GM Pleasures

>When the players engage with the puzzle you made and find the right answer through logical thought and teamwork
>When you have so much material and so invested players that you can start running smaller downtime adventurers for half the group at a time, or even solo sidequests, over the week before the next session
>When you take two or three unrelated one-shot adventure modules and tweak them a little bit to bind them seamlessly together with one another and with the overarching setting

>when you jack off into the food you serve and nobody notices

>When nobody in the table can tell you've been doing your magical realm from the start

>When you make a long complex plot that you kept on the background, and finally the players manage to put the pieces together little by little during the course of the game.

This

>When you make your secret Cosmic Brownie Smoothies for them and revel in their agony.

>When a PC casts fireball in a flammable area

wrong image

I had a PC do that with Burning Hands. She dealt some damage to the enemy and a good deal more to the entire rest of the party.

The first one works too to be honest.

>When the entire group is there in time and are all really looking forward to play instead of being dragged there by their boyfriends or brothers

>When That Guy realizes the error of his ways and curbs himself into a helper of the party instead of a thorn to the GM

>GMing a group of fairly new players
>Think up some subtle hints to bring them on a railroad if they don't know what they should do next
>The party end up thinking up this exact plan on their own
They grow up so fast, dont' they?

>things that rarely if ever happen

I had a guy cast firebolt in a distillery.

On the plus side he soloed like 7 bandits

>When the players think they dodged your railroad but the plot is about to catch up to them in a big bad way.

>When the players are so involved in the game, you've gone an hour over the usual stop time, and no one says anything
>they all knew but didn't want to stop now
>even though some have to work tomorrow

Truly the best feel

>When the players enjoy your NPC writing so much they're actually concerned for their wellbeing and will do everything they can to keep them safe

That's why it feels so great when they do.

This is my current group's mindset right now, we're all mildly close friends so that helps.
I was that guy for the first 3 sessions but after browsing Veeky Forums during a 1month break in the campaign I realized that I was That Guy and instead of reveling in my shitty behavior I made to better myself.

>When you hint an npc they know might be evil and they boil it down to two they suspect, and end up telling the evil one that they think the other is evil

I posted elsewhere today but:
>Playing single session beer and pretzel oneshot
>Good fun is had all round, quest ends and game wraps up nicely
>players want to spend another 30 minutes just finishing RP with NPCs
I tell you that level of earnest investment really tickles my pickle more than anything else

You could get a longer campaign out of that.

>When one of your players cancels so you don't have to DM this week

>Not rolling a short sidequest for the other players

>When your players actually care about the lives and goals of NPCs they've aligned with beyond muh loot and muh xp.

>when players sacrifice easy loot for better longterm consequences for your fictional world that will long outlive their character

they really care :')

um....was it mac and cheese?

>when you let your players follow a false conclusion they themselves came up to while trying to solve the main storyline of the campaign, just to see the amazment and revelation on their faces a few sessions later when they realize they were wrong the whole time

>legalize_gay_marriage.jpg

>When the players actually go towards the content you had planned.

I mean, I have no problem improvising, but it's just a load off my back when I don't have to do it.

>When you give the players three or four different directions to go to, each with their own plot hooks, and they choose the one you yourself were secretly the most excited about

>When the players take up on a subtle hint and team up with the bad guy, missing the even more subtle hints that he was the bad guy all along until it's far too late

I fucking love my current players. They're both capable of good roleplaying, teamwork, and just pure fun.
They outdid themselves with the all-martial party last year, but my favourite story comes from the lasts sessions.
>One of them has a little brother, 15 y.o., and he gets really interested.
>So we add him at the table as an extra when he's here.
>they get a lost village in a valley, often raided by bandit and such.
>I jokingly add that the inhabitants are so poor, no one has shoes.
Young brother : "Well my character is a hunter that lives on hbis own, if I take the time to kill some animals I could surely make something..."
>Party goes batshit insane
>Open a kind of communautary shoeshop, giving away shoes to the inhabitants, heping them with their chores, teaching them out to defend themselves, building a fence around the village etc...
>I start giving more detailed background and personalities to the villagers, I wasn't prepared for this, it was just a normal plot hook.
>2 sessions after one of my player ask if it would be okay for him to DM some miniscenarii inside that village
wut.jpeg
>They start having mail exchanges where they roleplay slice of life or little advenntures in and around the village.
Theyhavebecomeselfsufficient.ppx
>One player has one of the NPC from the village as his love interest, which is DMed in mini-adventures by the only female of the group.
>mfw I am going to throw an army of bandits and an evil warlord at that village
>mfw when i know they're gonna fight like hell to preserve all those smiles.
I love my players man.

>which is Dmed in mini-adventures by the only female of the group

what?

I mean, the rest of your story is great and sweet, but what?

Basically, they're having miniscenarii in group of two or three, where one player takes the role of DM and plays all the NPC and stuff of the village.
Last campaign we had, the girl roleplayed a romance with another Player. It was über-cliché, and I thought it was gonna become super awkward, but honestly it ended up being top notch character interaction, albeit cliché.
In the scenario that she's DMing for another player, there's a romance blooming between the PC and a farmer's daughter, and I trust her to make it great.
Is it more clear ?
(I'm sorry, my english is still lacking).
(Edit: I deleted the original post because there were so many errors in it)

I just don't say anything because it's my magical realm too

Cosmic brownie shake

>tfw your party discusses a situation OOC, and comes up with a better solution/idea than the one you had planned, so you steal their idea.
>Tfw your party thinks they "jumped the rails" but you hadn't even planned out that section of the map.

>When you build a map in Roll20 and set up the dynamic lighting and move an NPC token through it all and find that it works and is correct, and now you just can't wait for the party to go in there