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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheAlkaizer" data-source="post: 8348910" data-attributes="member: 7024893">For a about a year or two after having discovered D&D, I was solely a player (that was a long time ago). Then I thought "Hey, I already draw tons of maps, kingdoms and invent characters. I could be a DM, it'd be fun!" so I convinced several of my friends to give a try and let me introduce them to D&D. I was probably around 15 at that time. Then I spent all my summer preparing the campaign like a madman. But I made the fatal mistake that many DM do at one point. I literally created an encyclopedia or characters, how they dress, what they like, what they eat, their personality. Same with locations, history. I created several naming languages, refused to use real animals or plants, everything had to come from my creative genius. The level of detail was out of control.This stuff is very fun. But in my experience, very, very few people can turn that into a successful novel, comic, movie or D&D campaign. It's not that interesting to other people. So September comes, we have our first session and two things happen. First, I absolutely bombard them with facts. Every moment is an opportunity for me to share something. "Oh, I'd like to order food with the innkeeper", "He presents to you a menu with a dozen recipes, here they are, and let me explain what these animals and plants are". My players were really overwhelmed, and about an hour in, it was obvious that they were not having fun. The second thing that happened, is that in the moment, as I had to improvise, it was hell to try and be coherent and consistent with everything I had written. I couldn't remember all I had written on my characters and well, I wasn't (and am) not much of an actor, so it fell very flat and felt formulaic.All my friends found excuses not to play the next session, and I was crushed. I stopped playing for about a year. And then I a one-shot as a player at a local game store. And there was a much older and experienced DM that really blew me away. I told him my story, and he taught me the lesson that I hadn't learn yet from my mistake. I was severely overprepared, I put too much effort on stuff that's only exciting to me, and I didn't see a campaign as it should be: a freeform story that has a will of its own.I'm very happy to have learned that lesson when I was young! I still see some DM my age do the same thing nowadays.</blockquote>

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