My group and I are meeting about every two weeks now for three hours, which is great for us as we all have hectic schedules. Tonight they fought the BBEG and her minions to end the first chapter of an old AP we're running (RotRL converted to 5e). Man, I was horrendous. I did my best to come up with descriptive dialogue during the fight. I did my best to tie the events of the session to their backstories. I watched a ton of my favorite DM's on Youtube to get inspired. And. . . the enjoyment level for the players was probably a 6 out of ten.
What ended up happening was a constant and slow beatdown of a sack of hit points and a fair amount of yawning. Here's where I think I need help:
1.) I REALLY want to bring a much stronger RP element to the game while they. . . don't. Ends up with my describing too much and in too much depth. However, a meta game that just involves number crunching is extremely boring to me and I want to have some fun, too.
2.) I thought I was prepared but continually forgot to track advantage, fear, use of spells, etc. This led to pretty decent pauses in the flow of combat occasionally.
3.) I allowed the combat to devolve into a bunch of people whacking each other while stationary until someone ran out of hit points.
4.) Because of an insane smite crit from the paladin, the BBEG never got off an actual attack. While she had a lot of hit points, she was constantly playing catch up. This led for a really anticlimactic encounter.
5.) I didn't end on a cliff-hanger so the session ended somewhat antimactically, as well.
I realize that I'm writing issues that seem directly solvable but the real issue here is that I think that I'm all ready to address these things prior to play and in prep, etc., and yet they keep somehow happening. Any help here would be wildly appreciated, thank you!
What ended up happening was a constant and slow beatdown of a sack of hit points and a fair amount of yawning. Here's where I think I need help:
1.) I REALLY want to bring a much stronger RP element to the game while they. . . don't. Ends up with my describing too much and in too much depth. However, a meta game that just involves number crunching is extremely boring to me and I want to have some fun, too.
2.) I thought I was prepared but continually forgot to track advantage, fear, use of spells, etc. This led to pretty decent pauses in the flow of combat occasionally.
3.) I allowed the combat to devolve into a bunch of people whacking each other while stationary until someone ran out of hit points.
4.) Because of an insane smite crit from the paladin, the BBEG never got off an actual attack. While she had a lot of hit points, she was constantly playing catch up. This led for a really anticlimactic encounter.
5.) I didn't end on a cliff-hanger so the session ended somewhat antimactically, as well.
I realize that I'm writing issues that seem directly solvable but the real issue here is that I think that I'm all ready to address these things prior to play and in prep, etc., and yet they keep somehow happening. Any help here would be wildly appreciated, thank you!