u/Wolfpup88

My mother's side of the family gave up their Indigenous ancestry long ago (Great, Great, Great grandparents' time) and thus I dont' really lay any claim to that ancestry. While it was done for protections, it was still done. I wanted to do my research with the understanding that I know Indigenous individuals keep many things such as This Creature on the very down low and I have no one in my family to pass down information nor really anyone near me to go to. I want to learn more about the Indigenous folklore, stories, history, ect. I also will admit I have a podcast where I talk about true crime, cryptids, paranormal, ect. I saw on here that a few years ago, someone asked about the Navajo's feelings on people such as myself talking about them on the internet. They said to check out Chilluminati since it was the closest correct information they had found. I have also skipped Google and tried to go to Indigenous creators only. I'm not really asking for more information on the ritual or anything like that and I know that talking about them directly is forbidden (which is why I try to not say Sknwalkr much). Is there anything else we should know NOT to do? I'm not interested in going looking for one. I'd very much like to avoid them tbh even though I'm way up in WI where The Creature isn't really known to be. I'm also Wiccan and I believe that the more knowledge I have... the safer I am (since I can make wards and keep certain things from entering my home.)

So I am running a game with a party that is... flavored. Some have played, some haven't. They are also not totally consistent in their availability. SO I wanted to build a campaign that would allow for all of this. On top of that, I was supposed to be co-DMing with another person who ALSO wanted to be a player however when I started my game, some personal things came up for him and I became the sole DM (didn't know that when I built the campaign though).

Long story short, I built the Backrooms and I'm super excited about the backstory of how the Backrooms came into my DND world. This also allows for people to "no-clip" in and out when they are unavailable.

I had one of my monsters show up who was supposed to be a tank but they ended up trapping him. no problem, I wasn't invested in this monster. So they slowly widdled him down but I felt like they were taking so long so I was just randomly subtracting numbers so that the fight wouldn't take 2 hours (I didn't realize just how little their attacks would be since they were level 2 with magic users and like 1 fighter so it was my fault anyways so I was willing to take the L and make the fight go faster. Especially since this wasn't my MAIN creature on this level)

One of my players didn't really have anything and could only be a support character. Finally he did an actual attack AND the monster was down enough. I let him get the final kill (he rolled 8 on damage and the creature literaly had 10 hp) because I didn't want him to feel as if he didn't contribute and lose interest in the game.

His cleric symbol is literally a little orphan girl's skull that he had killed as part of an order he had received from his clan. I used that opportunity to describe the girl coming out of the skull and enveloping this creature and the creature screamed but it wasn't in physical pain but the release of emotional pain and everyone freaked out about how cool of a moment it was.

I build and DM my games as a co-writing situation. i don't like to railroad, I like to reward my players for good rolls and interesting stories but don't OVERLY punish for bad rolls unless it IS a desperate situation. I want them to go and be like "That was super cool, I wonder what we'll run into next." Does anyone else do this? How do you guys DM when it comes to things like this?