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.
I learned that my players will break any kind of logic puzzle in ten second flat, but can’t decipher a simple investigative clue to save their own life.
I was baffled at how much guidance I have to give them towards unraveling the mystery. I don’t know if I’m not that good at engaging their interests, if my clues are too obscure, of if they are simply not that perspective. They sure are creative with how they tackle problems tho, their shenanigans are hilarious
It’s my experience that many players have no idea that deciphering is *even a thing that needs to be done* with clues. They assume that clues are MacGuffins that you just collect in order to redeem for the ending once they’ve got enough, or that their characters are CSIs and the DM is the detective. Even if they intellectually understand the need to figure stuff out, there’s a chance they won’t think to talk to *each other* about ideas, or think that anything other than a one-step solve loses.