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Message: <blockquote data-quote="adembroski" data-source="post: 6093686" data-attributes="member: 18869">The Players must love the game, but I must love the world.This is the most important lesson I ever learned. I DM'd for a long time "by the book", allowing any and all official content for fear of my players being dissatisfied with their choices. Over time, it wore on me, for two reasons; 1st, there was no way for me to keep a cohesive narrative (narrative does not mean plot or story!) when I never knew what my players would pull out of what random splatbook next, and 2nd, I didn't care for the world. Uber-fantasy, ala Forgotten Realms or Eberron doesn't interest me in the least.Finally I decided to design a homebrew campaign; a fantasy version of sub-Roman Britain and a dark ages take on Arthurian legend. I set house rule restrictions on about every area of the game; technology was restricted to 6th century arms and armor, magical items were limited, spell lists were cut back. I went a bit too far to be honest, but we made adjustments as the campaign went on and in the end, every one of my players proclaimed it the best campaign they'd played in. Mostly, it was because I was running the world I wanted to run. The players will adjust to your world, even if they do whine at first. If you provide the best game that the setting you love can provide, they wont care that the setting isn't their preference because they'll be engrossed in your setting.This of course requires the disclaimer that I did not rule things out for the sake of ruling them out, and I of course listened to my players vision of where they wanted to take their characters. We found compromises that fit the campaign, found alternatives that fit genre conventions. I think that back and forth with my players did me more good than anything else. I was not only more familiar with my world and the characters in it, but also the players controlling those characters.</blockquote>

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