Oh man… I’ve DMed once and only once. I fudged a LOT of stuff in the spirit of making the game as fun as possible for my friends. All of the bad never played DnD before. I used only Excel spreadsheets for combat. I tracked health secretly and would sometime allow something weaker to die in one hit if a char rolled high and really excitedly said their damage number. I tried to be as descriptive as POSSIBLE about what their sword/mace/arrow did to the inside of the gobbo’s guts/skull.

We played verrrrry loose with rules. I wanted to run full TotM. My partner was the cartographer… they did STELLAR, and told me I described stuff really well.

It was some of the most fun I’ve had. I spent like 60 hours prepping the campaign, and let them know it’ll be kinda railroad-y at first. They made a decision to go off course near the beginning and I made up some convenient reason they couldn’t… then I began writing the next part of the story because one char was VERY intent on going that way. I just needed some time to figure it out cuz I’m new.

It was wonderful. The last thing that happened in our campaign was our friend accidentally killing our other friend with some bad rolls (we agreed critical misses should have consequences cuz it’s funny)

…before we could play again, the friend who was downed died in real life. I love you, ******.

Anyway thanks for reading my rant.