One thing I think was crucial was my selection of players. What you need and want from a player is an important thing in gaming, and I made my choices carefully. I picked my two closest friends who have been playing D&D with me for nearly a decade now; I also picked my wife, a long-time gamer who I trusted to pick up our roleplaying style. Taken together, I had my favorite people, who all also happened to be veteran tabletop game players who knew me and my style well. The result was haunting--I threw some roleplaying prompts at my players, and they were immediately working in game. I found the balance I was looking for.
I want to drill down on this balance. Part of it was mechanical. Brokk could handle any combat challenge well. Aurora could do anything with magic she could imagine. Lethanin could address any abstract problem with ease. All of them could speak with people well (depending on the person). Brokk was reserved but bold; Aurora was outspoken and wild; Lethanin was quiet and unpredictable. Brokk connected to people through quiet action. Aurora related to people with big energy and passion. Lethanin connected to people through observation and understanding. As a group, there was very little they could not do, and this was by design. I know Brokk's player to prefer quiet, simple action. I know Aurora's player--my wife--to tend towards big gestures and bigger energy. I know Lethanin's player to stand back and speak when certain. This has always been channeled by the characters I've seen them play. I wanted to give them the advantage of a cohesive team, and it seems to have worked.
For years, I've been developing a new style of prep notes. Rather than script a few actions, I determine what the people involved want, usually going into what these NPCs are like to better understand their motives. In moments of improvisation, this has served me well in the past. But I wanted to expand this and run a whole campaign with this model. So I developed my main NPCs--my gods and especially my dragons--as much as I could and began the campaign with "all of these people want different things." Some of them wanted to cause chaos and destruction, others wanted to expand their power, and some wanted to defend reality from incursions by the gods. So with notes on what each dragon and god felt about the situation, I started the campaign.
It worked. The beginning was a little rocky and will need refined, but I think in this case, jumping right to the action wasn't a bad thing. But it would be foolish to look at the campaign and resolve that a rocky beginning discounts a campaign that otherwise worked smoothly from start to finish. When the party met Jarvia or Niela or Hriskin, I had notes on how those dragons thought and behaved and what obstacles faced them, and the scenes were easy. I don't necessarily think that doing notes this way is the solution for everybody, but I do think that finding the method that feels natural to you is always going to be valuable.
Another big element of the success of this campaign is that I did not try it as a beginner. I could not have managed this campaign as a beginner. My campaigns before were either set in a city or in a sandbox, and just setting a party loose on my whole world was something I had never done (and was nervous about). But years of running games and years of writing homebrew material for this site paid off, and I was able to make my world seem rich and varied. It was an especial surprise that as the player characters visited cities to improve them, I was able to offer details that made them all distinct from one another. This is something I couldn't have done as a beginner, and I'm glad I tried it now.
Another thing that worked because I have experience is relying so much on one style of play. There was occasional combat (reminding the party of their power or killing another dragon) and occasional hijinks (little silly moments along the way), but the bulk of this campaign was roleplaying and storytelling. Aurora told the tale of her transformation from willing Dalton to Fae dragon; Brokk told the story of his leaving behind a dark past for a soft future; Lethanin told the tale of a man who refused to become anything but what he wanted. Together, they told the story of a group of strangers-become-friends who save the world and assume power to improve it. The heart of this campaign was the choices the players made to define their characters and the world, and without their consent and skill and my experience with the roleplaying/storytelling style, it could have been a disaster.
Perhaps my favorite element of the campaign is also one that will vex me as a DM moving forward. In the course of the campaign, the party and other dragons brought poverty-alleviating measures and new opportunities to cities across my world. Over time, this increased the quality of life considerably. Out of love and moral duty, my players spent dozens of hours in epilogues improving my world, and it was magical to see. My troubled industrial city became a thriving metropolis. My port city plagues by crime became a booming trade town. Aurora's health potions spread far and wide at cheap prices, making average health considerably higher. Evanoch was no longer a place where struggle was an assumed part of life--it was a place where life was easy and comfortable.
And that's what will vex me. My favorite things to pose as enemies in tabletop games are negative societal forces: greed, apathy, fascism. With a world as good and pure as the players left it, it will deeply pain me to insert one of these things into the beautiful world they've made. So I've come to a decision.
If I am able to come up with an idea that serves the world my players made without tarnishing it, I will return to Evanoch. But my players gave me the campaign of a lifetime, and I want to leave it in the perfect state they left it for me, at least for now. We'll call this a hiatus, likely with some dabbling in non-DMing and other systems. For now, I couldn't be happier with this campaign on every level. I hope that all of you can one day experience the same satisfaction.
That's all for now. Coming soon: a pirate D&D one-shot, a guide to the planes, and imagining the future of tabletop games. Until next time, happy gaming!
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