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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charles Dunwoody" data-source="post: 5597955" data-attributes="member: 17927">I thought I was losing my touch as DM as well (I'm getting old). I play Pathfinder so I switched to running Carrion Crown. I usually run my own adventures so I can tailor them to the players, but having lots of players quit and stop my adventures cold turned me off on adventure writing.Carrion Crown is beautifully written. It nearly killed me to run it. I felt like I was playing HeroQuest the boardgame every game with great fiction to go with it. A boardgame is fun to play every one in a while and fiction is great to read but neither one works for me when I'm trying to GM.So I wrapped the plot up and compiled a list of what my players liked. Kingdom building, pirates/naval adventures, ninjas, epic stories, Hyde like alchemists, and witches and threw in what I like currently--dinosaurs and monkey-men. I moved everyone south to jungles and a cutter ship to interdict monk-ninja monkey-men pirates selling illegal smuggled drugs.Written like that, it sounds awful and trite and childish. But in the real world, at a table with friends fried from work, it appealed to what we all wanted. The PCs flew by roc south and jumped off with potions of feather fall to their ship, which was under attack.On the way down, they had to fight off sonic-lance using reptiles while steering towards the next fight with monkey-men monk pirates. It was awesome.I finally gave the players and me what we wanted. It was that simple. Before, I tried to give all of us what was cool or hip or well-designed or well-structured. That sucked.When we had PCs charging in mid-air using the Fly skill and monkey paw punish kicked into the drink and going all ninja on the monks it was stunningly fun.These same death from above privateers later balked at investigating a fog-shrouded faerie island. The idea of having fey mess with them or perhaps losing ten years of life due to time moving differently in Faerie totally freaked them out. They were into the world in a way I hadn't been able to help achieve (it took both players and GM working together) in forever. They were scared, in character and out, of the wee little folk. I feel geekingly proud of that moment, even now.At 10 PM, I asked if we should wrap. Everyone wanted another last encounter. And I've had internet chatter for the first time in a long while about the game and what comes next.How cool is that? What comes next? Doesn't every GM want players to talk about what comes next? I know I do.I think the secret is to be okay with being childlike (not childish) and bring back the wonder. I still mix up 4E Athletic checks with PF Swim checks and no one cares (I'm old remember and CRS). They remember kicking sonic-lance lizard butt though and the chest beating speed of the monkey-men monks they kicked the ki out of and the fear of that fog-shrouded eldritch island in the middle of the sea.I'm a geek. Might as well go with it. My hobby isn't about pretending to be an elf. It is about the guys and gals around the table getting to do what interests them and me too.Took me a long damn time to figure it out, but it was worth sticking around to finally learn how to GM well again.</blockquote>

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