What honestly surprised you most when you ran (or played in) your first full campaign?
I’ve been talking to a lot of indie TTRPG creators lately — people designing their own systems, running campaigns, preparing Kickstarters — and one thing keeps coming up: the gap between what you planned and what actually happened at the table.
For some it’s pacing (sessions ran 2x longer than expected). For others it’s player attachment to NPCs they thought were throwaways. For some it’s the opposite — a carefully built villain got ignored completely.
As someone who builds tools for TTRPG creators, I’m genuinely curious what the community thinks:
What’s the one thing you wish someone had warned you about before running your first campaign?
Could be prep, could be player dynamics, could be the mechanics themselves. No wrong answers — I’m here to learn from people who’ve actually been at the table.
This was perhaps the most surprising thing for me too - just how little progress players make in each session compared to what I expected.
Also I was surprised by their interactions with NPCs. The first goblin they captured was made to lead them to his lair, whereupon his throat was slit. The second goblin they captured was made to march about in front of them as a trap detector before they eventually adopted him as their pet.
Huge importance would be read into random bits of dialogue, and I’d have to rework things to make that pay off for them instead of the thing they were supposed to notice.