New GM - Advice greatly appreciated!
Hi all - my friends and I recently got into DnD. I am a new DM, and I've played one campaign before so relatively new to DnD in general.
We played through the Frozen Sick campaign as a warmup/trial, to see if DnD was a thing people enjoyed because most of us were new.
I did update the story a bit to make it my own and also make it bigger than it was. I introduced a prequel session, where my players made there way to palebank village, and also introduced a couple of gods that have shown interest in this group of new mercenaries/travelers.
Anyway, now where I need help... My friends do want to continue and I am so down to keep the story going! I considered this chapter 1. We are switching to Daggerheart to try that game system out as it seems interesting to us.
My question is how to move to a campaign story that's totally in my head. I have a vague idea of kind of mile stones in my story, but I'm trying/wanting to keep it open ended so the players decisions and what they want dictate more of the story.
My confusion is how I can make this fun? I am happy to put in prep time but what do I prep if everything is open to them? Most of them are re rolling their characters when we start again, so my plan was to introduce a monster that is harming people, and this group is basically getting blamed for it. That way they need to figure out whats happening and work together to kill the monster to clear their name... But how they do that is all their own! How do I prep encounters and loot and everything when it's all open for grabs?
Or am I letting the guardrails down too much? Should I have it a bit more structured?