Hello All!
TLDR: I DM my party were challenging at times, but manageable it was fun, until they hurt my wee feelings at a bad time and I started a new party without certain people and now I feel guilt and have a hard time writing new content.
I've been DMing the last year and a half and I don't really have any other friends who DM and I half wanted to vent/ask advice.
So we started the campaign where everyone usually starts The Lost Mine of Phandelver. Loads of fun, I wanted to play DND but didn't know any DM's so I took on the role cause it makes sense. I roll crap dice when I'm playing a DND adjacent type games but great when I'm the games master. So it made sense.
I enjoy the story telling aspect and making a world type gig, majority of my party are great. First mistake was a party too big, we had 6 players so combat took a long time and you can see the players loose interest at times. So I tried to keep it interesting with lore and cool finds, I got players when they killed something to describe its final moments which they seemed to throughly enjoy so we kept the momentum going that way.
We got to the Nothic so I got them to give me secrets so the Nothic could torment them in combat. Creep vibes you know. Majority of the party gave me really incredible things to work with, things that could also make lil side quests, then I had one player prepare nothing so I helped him and the other player give vague secrets, thing I asked more about to understand but they refused to share. Fustrating but lucky these 2 didn't go near it so didn't have to worry about it.
I once had a player accuse me of cheating my dice, saying I saw a 7 not a 13, I had no answer to that I'm like I don't know what to tell you, my play style is I want them to win. I will give them challenges but always have back up things planned incase things so south quick, I enjoy creating horrific situations but would never cheat my dice. This player had irritated me beforehand with asking for things, like a pencil in the middle of game day prep, I told them I didn't have time to look right now, then they'd keep asking until I had to put everything down and find a pencil. Then it was another object 10 mins later. Like I'm busy please stop. So I didn't want to argue and just re-rolled the dice. I shouldn't have but was at wits end and wanted to move on.
Then I did end up catching a player cheat their dice, they'd roll on the app not like the answer and roll dice IRL. This was before I realised the app had a way to track rolls. So I sat them all down and made a rule if someone is caught cheating dice, they get disadvantage the entire session. Harsh idk? But it hasn't happened since.
So end of the mine, was just before Christmas, I got everyone lil notes book with their initials hand drawn in gold on them and some new dice as a lil end of campaign/christmas gift. I spoke to them over the christmas break i may take a few months to start my own personal campaign and then we start around Feb.
Important note 3 of my players I live with, one is my partner the other 2 are housemates. I set a poll in the GC for when everyone was available for the first session back. Only half the people responded (mind you I gave them plenty of days to choose from it was every Fri-Sun either morning/lunch/night session with the aim of 2 sessions a month) in my head I was like everyone is bound to have one morning/afternoon/night free 2 times a month especially with a lot of notice.
I reminded them 3 times in chat and 2 times in person to finally they responded. 1 person didn't but 5 out of 6 was good enough. So I set the date. Wrote and wrote and wrote. Day before sessions comes. Someone asks what time, I see the house mates change their answer to not available. I ask they say doesn't work anymore I say ok everyone else still come we can play the Animal Adventures DND so the rest can still get their fix.
Day of turns out they invited a bunch of their friend to our house to have a games night. On the night we had pre-planned DND, to say I was upset is an understatement - quick reason was Saturday we had the session planned, that Wednesday my grandma passed away, and if you believe it or not literally 4 weeks before that my other grandma has passed. So I was deep in that grief stage, but didn't want to let my friends down and also needed the escape. They also knew about this cause we obviously live together.
I gave them one last chance, I set a new poll with some dates and waited to see if they responded and low and behold they didn't, so I cancelled the entire session and started a new one with the players who were dedicated and actually interactive with the story. I think in the end even though it wasn't the worst thing they could of done, I think the timing with my loses was not great and I didn't want to play with them anymore.
I put a lot of time, money and effort into this, I often cook everyone dinner, I create their minis, minis of enemies, print maps, I help when I can, I give personalised experiences to their characters but man, that cut me so deep that I find it hard now to pick up the inspo again. I want to keep going with it but I don't know, I'm finding it difficult to concentrate and keep up the momentum like I used too. Has anyone been in this situation? How did you find that love again for writing and creating. Maybe I'm just a baby?
I did a lot of this with no expectation of being paid back or anything. I did a lot cause I wanted everyone to have fun and feel welcome. Did I go wrong by doing too much?