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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 6749485" data-attributes="member: 29398">OK, I think I'm starting to see where we're coming at this a bit differently...Here's one rather big difference: 6-9 months is barely scratching the surface.  A good campaign is maturing at 6-9 years and still has legs for more.  "Let's roll up some characters and drop the puck" is fine - it's excellent, in fact - but it's (almost certainly) shallow at least to begin with.Fair point.I do play with friends, some of whom I know would love to put one over...not so much on the DM, but on the game.  New DMs tend to get cut some slack, of course...for a while.Perhaps we're a bit more adversarial in our overall approach - call it the 1e influence, perhapsAnd sometimes you need to be confident enough to win an argument.  Let's face it, they happen. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I'm not sure on this one...I've been DMing for over 30 years and I'm still learning the trade......as evidenced by what you so rightly say here.Depends on approach, I suppose.  Me, I like to have the world mostly designed and rules mostly in place before puck drop; and have a decent idea of the world's history and much better idea of the regional history of where the party will start out - which I can then mine for story ideas later if needed.You run full sandbox, then, with the players driving the story?  In our lot the DM usually sets a story in motion to begin with, and the players then either run with it as intended or run off with it as very unintended.Before I started my current campaign I storyboarded out what the first few dozen adventures might look like, with ideas for further beyond that if the game lasted long enough.  It has, and 7.5 years later I'm now on version 10.2 of that storyboard.  It bears very little resemblance to what I started with. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Don't you-as-DM also track their treasury - at least the items?  We run a mirror list - the players keep a list showing what they know about an item, and I keep a mirror list which shows what the item really does. (there is no auto-knowledge of item properties here, and never will be).  This mirror-list system is also really helpful when they get around to valuing and dividing their loot.The players also do their own mapping...but I also have a map, either in a module or drawn out by me ahead of time, with lots more info.  I've learned the hard way I'm incapable of designing dungeons on the fly without having one room eventually try to occupy the same space as another. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />As for the logging, I do that as DM and post it online each week in point form.  As player I've tried keeping such records in the past but I've found myself spending so much time writing I'm losing touch with what's happening; and I don't want to stop proceedings while I write it all down.  That said, players are on their own hook for recording potentially useful story information; the online log merely shows what they did, not (in most cases) what they know.Lan-"the challenge is then to get some players to actually read the bloody log between sessions"-efan</blockquote>

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