It is Wednesday. Time for:
Reddit GM Advice Thread
The first question got deleted but it was about setting difficulty in a challenging campaign with several big bad's to choose from.
Next, an awesome idea bout a feuding kraken and Green Dragon.
And then half a dozen questions about one's DM Style...
Here we go!
Difficult campaign with a high challenge factor and lots of Big Bad targets to choose from.
I'd expect the players to do research and make a plan, picking a strategic target. Plans always go wrong and that is okay but it'd be fun to make the plan anyway and try to make smart choices.
This was on my mind for a Tuesday Campaign Ideas post that will go up on my blog in 6 days.
Does it make sense for a kraken and a green dragon to be feuding?
Who cares about making sense? That sounds awesome. Things that don't make sense happen all of the damned time in the real world.
Forests are sometimes next to the ocean.
I suggested some questions to daydream about. I'll check in today and see how that feud is going.
Shit, there's a whole campaign in that idea. Love it.
These questions were fun to answer:
1. How do you keep your characters engaged and your lore fresh till the end of your campaign?
2. Do you give your lore from the very start? (Why or why not?)
3. How do you handle character goals or character arcs?
4. How do you differ from other DMs?
5. Homebrew DMs, any advice?
6. Aside from the schedule, any musts to discuss during session 0?
My answers to the above are in the blog post:
Questions, thoughts, techniques, disagreements full of generosity and kindness all welcome in the comments below...
@Judd and sometimes oceans overrun forests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submerged_forest
@Judd has there been any fallout on Reddit from the meme you shared that accidentally shocked and offended D&D redditors? Are people calling you out as that Story-Hating Hater?
@edheil 514 comments later...
Yeah some fallout.
Reddit RPG politics are FUCKING STRANGE. People thought I was either a terrible DM or a player who knew nothing about DMing or a player who wants the DM to just do what they want and nothing else.
It was BONKERS. Don't read it if you don't want to drink from the firehose of negative vibes.
@Judd @edheil thing it revealed to me was how limited most folks understanding of RPGs is.
Like, if you lived and played your whole life in one type of one game, and really just couldn't even understand how people might be different than that, you'd get a lot of the weird responses there.
(The other ones are just people being fuckhats.)
@Judd I read a little of it when it went down. It was a huge bummer, and it really underlines how wack the world of modern D&D is. :(
@Judd yup. That’s a lot of insane.
I get that some people enjoy railroads. Pathfinder Adventure Paths sell well. But sandboxes are also popular.
I had to laugh at the guy who wrote a long backstory for a haunted house that would be next to a house his PCs might visit. I get wanting to have plot hooks in your setting to draw upon, but I don’t have time to work on stuff until my players decide to go somewhere.
But play what you want. 
My gaming friends now talk about Olga ALL OF THE TIME.
We can't stop joking about poor, fictional Olga.
I spend most of my time giving new DM's/GM's advice and stay away from this kind of bullshit.
Also, the DnDMemes community is the worst DnD community.
@Judd That was kind of what I wondered, if there were people dogging your advice with "HEY THAT'S THE GUY WITH THE BAD KERMIT OPINIONS, DON'T LISTEN TO HIM" or something.
I was hoping not.
@Judd I wouldn't put it past Reddit drama. I'm glad it hasn't happened. :) @2ndLevelBard @deinol
@Judd You could write a whole dissertation on roleplaying culture by looking at the assumptions people made about what you were trying to express and why. (And why you were wrong!)
Memes are extremely terse and therefore vulnerable to interpretation in ways wildly at variance with how they were intended.
Semiotics, man! It's all semiotics.
"He wants X, not Y! That's stupid, we all want Y!"
No, man. He wants Z.