comments:
It seems like you skipped the session zero and not everyone seems to be on the same page. Question did you read the whole Daggerheart Book? Make sure you and the players read it. Mostly read over the player principles for the players. Also read over the session zero section and CATS. It also seems like you are trying to appease your players too much. This is a D&D DM mentality and Daggerheart is not that. If players want to accomplish something, then put it on them. A perfect of example of you doing this is when you struggled with NPC names, instead have the players come up with the names. Want to appease your players? Let them tell you what they want to do as their characters in the campaign. Set boundaries in the world first like: “This campaign is gonna be about trying to put right what the gods seem wrong in Fanewick”. This allows them to be able to have a creative focus. Next let them create their characters together. Look up knife theory and have your characters build their story with this in mind. This will give you so much material to work with. Lastly have your player set up goals they want to obtain. They can be things they are looking for, player development, quests, so on and so on. There is a great book called The Game Master’s Handbook of Proactive Roleplaying which helps with building stories that create an engage player as well as putting the story building on the players rather than the GM doing all the work. Like I mentioned before, it seems like you during too much work to appease your players. Stop. Don’t too much work. The Sablewood Messenger teaches you how to not do all the work. Remember those player questions that you start with that build the world? Do the same thing here. Don’t plan too much per a session, instead just ideas. Don’t know what to call NPCs that the players will meet? Set it up as a question the players will ask. “There is a group of ruffians who roam the outside of the city. What do they call themselves and who is their leader?” Lastly you might benefit from running the other one-shots that Darrington Press has released. The Wish Thief is free and this weekend they will release The Dying Spire for Free RPG Day. When I first started with running games I leaned heavily on one-shots to get my bearings and to get everyone used to the game. I would recommend the same. Another lastly, StartPlaying is running workshops for GMs starting this week. There is one for how to run Daggerheart. You may want to join it to get some tips.