What's your favourite thing about DMing?

I know that feels bro.

Cursed as forever dm because my group is retarded.

Coming up with crazy story ideas, awesome plot points, great set pieces, and over the top battles. With my players looking forward to next weeks campaign.

It's a special kind of freedom when you can run a fantasy campaign set in World War 1, a pulp campaign set in the apocalypse, or a sci-fi campaign where the main villain uses showtunes to control peoples minds.

I love reading through the rulebooks so working out how everything functions on a mechanical level is a lot of fun. It's one of the few things I can get really autistic for.

Also I find I have more fun RPing and get into the various characters way easier than when I'm playing as a single PC. Bouncing around the various NPC characters is easy, but as a PC it takes me a long time to warm up and stop hemming and hawing over what I'll do next.

When I craft a good "GOTCHA!" moment that doesn't feel contrived or stupid. One that makes the players go "do'oh! I should have expected as much or done more investigating".

I like to punish my players for easy mistakes without making them feel like I'm gunning for them.

The girl in any given group will be inexplicably attracted to you, at least for a little while

...

that's right brother
that gaming group ain't ready yet

y-y-yeah
t-totally

Running Beholders

When you're a DM, it's always easy to find a group, no matter how much of a fag you are.

Genuinely entertaining my players and being entertained by them.

Receiving "Bonus EXP" bj's from my players. One of them's much better than his girlfriend is.

My group voted me out of DMing because I ran the game (dnd 3.5) as RAW and RAI. The Beguiler flipped out when I told them they couldn't spawn 15 guardsmen with major image, just "AN object, creature or force", just as it specifically states in the spell. I also had one player flip out because I told him a giant can't just "step over" a grease spell, if it's squares cross the grease it has to make the appropriate balance check. This was among many things.

After getting kicked out of DM spot, I said "well I guess DND 3.5 isn't fun for you." and one snarkily responded "Your interpretation of it.". I wanted to punch them in the face, it's like no, bitch, that's how the fucking game is played, those are the fucking rules, IF THAT ISN'T HOW IT'S PLAYED THEN IT ISN'T FUCKING DND 3.5 YOU FUCK.

this
and that

When a player without prior asking tells me that they're enjoying the adventure. Not that they like their character, but that they're having fun and appreciate my work as DM. I've heard it five times at most in two years...

When the players gush about the sessions with mutual friends who don't play.

When I can scare people who grew up watch the shit we can with "Theatre of the Mind."

When I don't pay for food or gas since no one else wants to DM.

I tried GMing a few times.

What I most liked about it, was making non-player characters. Constantly. Just an NPC-making machine

I've been just creative enough to GM and not anything past that pretty much my whole life. If I didn't run games, my brain would still churn out worldbuilding and scenarios as daydreams with no outlet. TTRPGs are therapeutic in that sense, giving all that nonsense a purpose.

When I play I get tired of PCs after a few sessions and want to ditch them for a new one. Being a DM allows me to use NPCs to scratch this charbuilding itch without disrupting the game.

i know I'll never have to sit through an unnecessarily drawn out combat, railroad, or series of npc monologues.
and I wont miss anything important when i have to pee

Your group is full of idiots then, don't sweat it as a DM. Assuming all of the shit was on that level you were justified because those aren't even good attempts at bending rules as those are clearly laid out.

>tfw pussied out of my first chance to GM

i want to feel like this about the rules, but they only intimidated me. The fact that the group has been playing for years didn't help

Punishing my players

I find the trick is to find a new system and read through it's stuff. I had only played maybe a dozen sessions of D&D and I hadn't read the rules at all. I found an interesting system I thought I wanted to run (cthulhutech) and I read the notebook and all 4 supplements (Its a really good read honestly on its own). Turns out I wasn't great for Dming a crime solving game right out the gate.
Then I found the Starship Troopers system and read through most of its stuff. Ran about 4 sessions straight (before schedule conflicts) and it went pretty good.

Still haven't read the 3.5 rules from the book, nor PF. I dunno that I ever will either. So my advice is learn a new system, I find it less intimidating because you are doing something completely new, not something you kinda know and reading it's book just feels like studying for an exam.

fpbp
/thread

Players who don't act like retards.

It took us like 10 years, but we eventually got there.

My campaign fell apart because I was too ambitious. I wanted to run a supers campaign. Golden Age, WWII, mystery men and all that. I had a lot of ideas but no grasp on the beat-by-beat gameplay. I should've used a pre-made campaign from the book. It didn't help that one of my players and previous GM studied the rulebook himself, hated it and made no secret of it. Finally, there was some shakeup among them and they said either run it quick or we can't do it. So I took that as a sign to say Fuck it.

Players who solve their problems with left-field solutions that are still in character.

I also had one player that channeled a bit of Blackadder into every character he made. He didn't have much range, but he made a lot out of what he did.

>tfw you're too insecure to truly accept that your friends enjoy your games
Fucking anxiety man. I genuinely think I've made good games but I just mentally can't accept that my friends like the games I run for them.
I'm extremely lucky to have been dropped into a really good RP group, no matter what we play everyone has always been more intent of playing characters and completing character goals than "winning the game". Feels bad that some of them have since kind of separated to do their own podcast thing, but life goes on I guess.

Power.

Knowing that I have a leverage when we start the after session orgy.

>I'm extremely lucky to have been dropped into a really good RP group, no matter what we play everyone has always been more intent of playing characters and completing character goals than "winning the game". Feels bad that some of them have since kind of separated to do their own podcast thing, but life goes on I guess.
Our main problem starting out was that we were all shitty teens, so you had all the typical cringy shit ("I'sleep with all the prostitutes").

Anxiety fucking sucks man. While the practical downsides are more obvious, I know from experience that the ways it undermines the things we enjoy are much more insidious.

It's way, way too easy to indulge in self doubt and in doing so devalue all our achievements, as well as making it hard to accept what others say, no matter how sincere the praise might be. I think the best you can do is, when none of that is hitting home, just try to hold on to memories of what they said, maybe even going as far as making a note of it. When anxiety starts to fade and your mood stabilises, the evidence is there to remind you of what you've accomplished.

>Not having the orgy before the session

I like to see how effectively I can surreptitiously lead my friends into following my storyline no matter how hard they try to free-form it.

This.

The most fun thing for me is seeing my players pull off something that makes me stand up and say wow, whether it's great RP, smart tactics, or lateral thinking.

There's nothing more fun than slaughtering someone's character. I run Pathfinder for 6 people and while there is a good storyline I love having people brutally killed off. So far one of them has been seduced by a succubus cause they went to visit her retardedly, one fell into a pit of zombies and was torn apart slowly when they grappled him, one fell into a pit of acid and was dissolved slowly, and another was dissolved by an advanced gelatinous cube. Sadly now they are level 6 and a lot of the fun ways to kill them at early levels are no longer valid.

One of the reasons I like it is because it helps me a lot to move forward with my fantasy setting. It helps me create a lot of NPCs and details of the world. Sometimes, I even turn one or two PCs into characters for the setting.

The sex.

Huh. Didn't know that eh-tier show was based off a comic. Is the comic just as mediocre as the show?

I'm new to DMing, but my first real campaign is going bombastically awesome.
So far my favorite part is getting to know exactly how everyone likes to play/RP and set up the next session ready to test them on it.
Only for someone to say/do something ridiculous enough to make me choke on my own laughter and give out bonus XP.

That's a panel from the original comic, Sandman, which is artsy fartsy but good. I think there was a spinoff focused on that depiction of Lucifer.

Raw creative expression. World building with payoff. Being able to make something cool and have my friends enjoy it.

>tracking XP
>not just having your players level at key points in the story
It's much less bookwork and feels more rewarding when it happens. I recommend you try it.

As another experienced DM, I'm going to second this. Seperate XP totals had their place in AD&D when asymmetric-XP-totals were a thing and a core part of the balancing mechanic, so it makes sense if you're running AD&D, but with anything more modern, it's just a vestigial limb.

I get to play a system that isn't fucking Dungeons & Dragons.

It's a spin-off of Sandman.
Excellent for the first two thirds, but gets a bit too bloated towards the end.

If you enjoy Sandman and/or Paradise Lost, I definitely recommend giving it a look.

Make sure it's the series from 2000 though, not the one from 2015; the latter one is sadly pretty rubbish.

Depends on you group I guess, but I like giving out bonus XP for good roleplaying/good ideas.

fpbp and i get to play a game done right
not meant to insult other DMs but i have very specific tastes and standards and can't be a player anymore

For me, the game never stops. I get to keep planning the campaign throughout the week.

I also get to play a more active role in combat, so I'm never stuck waiting for my turn.

I find that handing out XP after battles rewards players for exploring other nooks, and it makes the players feel good, rather than "yeah btw u level up".

Writing down the numbers and anticipating the next level that grows ever closer is a really good motivator to keep exploring that dungeon, and sets up some good teeth-clenching moments where they could actually die.

Really though, it's up to the gm, all i know is my own group.

When my players throw a curve ball at me. Really, just about anytime my expectation on what's going to happen during a session is wrong. Just recently thought my last session was going to end up in a big, drawn out combat, but my players opted for diplomacy and actually argued for a truce very well. I love that.

It's like game dev, except I don't have to deal with being a shit programmer and a shit artist. Dungeon and encounter design are my favorite thing.
Also I get to make cool stories that have satisfying arcs, tension and endings, which I've had a hard time finding lately.

I love catering to my players. Not playing favorites, of course, but I always encourage my players to make really rich (not wealthy, more like, deep) characters so that I can pull threads from their backstory in-game.

I love to see players' faces light up when I tell them that the town they're visiting is where one of them grew up, or that an old friend is sitting in the corner of the tavern, or that they've found an artifact from their ancestral clan, or that an enemy from their past is coming to settle a grudge. No detail is too small for me to not take delight in incorporating.

I feel like too many DMs cultivate a fear of rich characters in players because as they adage goes, giving your player any living relatives or loved ones is just asking for them to be killed, but I hate that. I think it's far less interesting for a player to see the villain kill their brother than it is for them to run into their brother in a street fight with some thieves, step in to help, and then meet for drinks while the brother explains he was defending a valuable map he acquired that leads to untold treasure.

The fact that I can do literally anything I can think of.

If I wanna do a mystery, or a heist, or a high stakes drag race, or a massive military battle, I can find a way to throw that kind of scenario at my players.