Hexmage-EN
Legend
As a DM I greatly enjoy combat. I find it fun to build battle maps, design homebrew monsters, and think about how monsters will synergize. When running combat, I mostly just have to worry about what's on their statblocks and general tactics.
When it comes to world building and developing NPCs, though, I find the brainstorming portion fun but feel myself get more stressed out in the hours leading up to a game that I'd like to be more roleplay heavy. Combat feels a lot more straightforward and manageable to me versus the party having free reign to explore or interact with who they want in a non-dungeon environment.
For a more concrete example of what I'm talking about, I have been designing both a hag's lair and its features (including set dressing, unique items, NPCs, possible curses the hag could inflict, etc) as well as a more linear dungeon scenario. I've created a 10-page word document for the former, and it feels a lot more mentally intensive in trying to juggle everything I've developed, remembering the details, and creating on the spot improv for how NPCs react or what happens if a PC wants to know what books are on a bookshelf versus running groups of monsters.
Although, I think part of this comes from me trying to plan too much ahead of time and being afraid to wing it.
When it comes to world building and developing NPCs, though, I find the brainstorming portion fun but feel myself get more stressed out in the hours leading up to a game that I'd like to be more roleplay heavy. Combat feels a lot more straightforward and manageable to me versus the party having free reign to explore or interact with who they want in a non-dungeon environment.
For a more concrete example of what I'm talking about, I have been designing both a hag's lair and its features (including set dressing, unique items, NPCs, possible curses the hag could inflict, etc) as well as a more linear dungeon scenario. I've created a 10-page word document for the former, and it feels a lot more mentally intensive in trying to juggle everything I've developed, remembering the details, and creating on the spot improv for how NPCs react or what happens if a PC wants to know what books are on a bookshelf versus running groups of monsters.
Although, I think part of this comes from me trying to plan too much ahead of time and being afraid to wing it.
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