Hey everybody! First time poster, long time lurker here! I’m a relatively new DM who has been running my second group ever for the past 3 months, and our last session left me so happy and proud of my players that I thought I’d share. Sorry for the wall of text in advance!

A little background on me: I’m 25, and was never allowed to play D&D tabletop growing up due to my religious family. Ironically, I was however allowed to play all of the CRPGS, and read the R.A Salvatore books religiously, but wasn’t able to actually play until I moved out. About 2 years ago I was finally able to convince my some friends to give it a shot, and though I wanted to be a player, agreed to DM as I was the most familiar with the rules and setting.

My first group was 9 players. At the time I was ecstatic that so many people wanted to play, and we kicked off with Lost Mines of Phandelver leading into Storm King’s Thunder. I should state that my DM style is studying up in advance, but largely improvising due to the unpredictable nature of my group. I quickly realized that DMing is not necessarily an easy task, and while everyone had fun, looking back, I had clearly bitten off more than I could chew and it showed. We got through the first few story beats and cities before a few members of our group moved away, and life happened for everyone else. We ended up taking an indefinite hiatus and quit playing.

A little over 3 months ago, some of the members of the first group mentioned how they missed playing D&D, and I agreed to DM again if we could make all of our schedules match. After asking around and setting a few personal restrictions, we got a group together. I decided if we played, that Curse of Strahd sounded like a great adventure that everyone involved would enjoy (who doesn’t love a little horror) and the idea was well received.

My current group is 5 players, with a sixth joining every once in a while. I talked to my players and made it clear that I’m still learning and am open to constructive criticism, and that I would like to keep the group relatively small for both the adventure’s sake and my own.

So we’ve been running CoS, and I decided to start off with Death House, using /u/MandyMod ‘s absolutely stellar breakdown of CoS to help flesh out the story a bit. If you haven’t looked at it, what they’ve done is amazing and I highly recommend it. Anyways, I expressed to my players at the outset that this was a highly dangerous adventure with good roleplaying opportunities. However, many of my group are new, or very inexperienced with D&D, and the first few sessions firmly categorized them in the “murder hobo” subset of players. I can’t fault them for that, but as a longtime fan of D&D and it’s setting, I’ll admit that I was utterly dismayed at the beginning. We only have 3 or 4 hours a week to play, so it’s taken a while, but last session they finally reached Vallaki, and boy am I proud of them.

My brother’s dwarven cleric promptly got thrown in the stocks for trying to coerce guards and then mouth off when he failed to do so, while the rest of my party managed to make their way to the inn before paying a visit to the Burgomaster’s mansion, where Ireena had gone to speak to the Baron. At one point, after meeting the Baron, the party was conspiring about what to do next in the mansion’s den, and as they left they opened the door and knocked a maid down who appeared to have been listening at the door. One player, a drow assassin, pulled the maid inside to question her. My first thought was “Oh man, they’re about to murder her and start a whole mess of consequences. Here we go.” Imagine my surprise when they managed to talk their way out of it, citing being in the road as making them skittish, and then using another player’s Tiefling and their appearance as a distraction. After resolving that, they then discussed how best to hide some of the group’s more recognizable nonhuman characteristics from the general human populace using magic or disguises. Even my more timid players were roleplaying in character and responding to the conversations, and participating more comfortably, and this continued throughout the rest of the night. I even got to role play as the absolutely amazing Rictavio, who I gave a goofy charismatic air and is certainly among my most favorite roles so far since I’ve been a DM. Before this last session, DMing wasn’t something I actively wanted to do, but did because I enjoy D&D and wanted to play in some capacity, accepted the responsibility. After months of world building, preparing, and encouraging my players, it was a joy to see my group finally getting comfortable with their characters and realizing how to interact with both the world and each other. Every player was more than willing to role play the events that took place, and actively realized that the consequences of their actions had weight, and that they were in a powder keg of a town on the verge of exploding. And they acted accordingly. I have always wanted to be a player, but this past session has shown me what is truly special about being a DM, and has me very excited for what our adventures in the future have in store. This reddit had been a huge help in general, so thank you all for being here and helping me to this point so I could realize just how wonderful DMing truly is!

TL;DR Reluctant new DM runs new group, realizes his love for DMing.