I want to learn about ways you make combat interesting and reward tactical creativity!

I'm a retired software developer and technical writer trying to learn how to write adventures. I can write instruction manuals in my sleep, but creative writing is a new skill. I did publish my first novel back in July. I'm working on a one shot or short adventure, depending on the group. I'd like to write it so children or adults could play it, with different challenges depending on player maturity. I'm open to suggestions.

So this year Halloween is on a Saturday and there are five Fridays. I have an idea to take the Crooked Moon campaign setting (folk horror, think headless horseman or Midsommar, maybe even the Blair Witch vibes) and turn it into a 5 week mini campaign every Friday night culminating in the final session on Oct 30. The campaign book is a brick would need careful structure to cut it down to 15 hours of game time (5x3 hour sessions). Any advice on how to go about this? Also I'm not even sure if it makes sense to do proactive role play in this kind of game but if it can be done I'm open to suggestions.

I’m looking to create a TTRPG experience that I can run for 25-40 people in a team building event for a company in like 2- 2 1/2 hours. I’ve got a lot of ideas on paper and I used some AI brainstorming to help me in spots. I’m probably 80 percent to completion for a final product. I use tables of 5 people and everyone gets a d20 to roll. Each table of 5 is the same class…ie strikers, defenders, scouts, arcanists etc an each table gets a story quest to figure out and accomplish using their teamwork, ideas and d20. Then each member of the team rolls and you add them up and compare group success or failure to a chart. The story is lead by this and consequences occur based on how each table’s missions go. Eventually leading to the final battle. I’m planning on using sound and PowerPoint for visuals. Thoughts? Suggestions? Ideas ? Any help I’d appreciate greatly

Hi all, I'm 6 months or so into my first proactive campaign. I'm doing it for a group of kids (9-14) in my community. Overall it has been a lot of fun and they really loved the collaborative world building component. But I'm noticing is my motivation and creative inspiration has been dropping significantly. Every week when Thursday rolls around it feels like a slog to design the encounters and do the additional worldbuilding. I have a few thoughts that give context to this and I'd love everyone's thoughts. First, one of my main motivations for proactive roleplaying and collaborative worldbuilding is because I love facilitating the creativity of a group. I used to be an orchestra conductor and I loved creating containers for people to play and be creative while I gently nudged them along. This is true in other contexts as well. I love workshop facilitation, group discussions, and anything like that. Thus, I leaned into collaborative worldbuilding because I wanted the creative ideas to come from *them* while I shaped them. What happened in reality is that, no matter how much collaborative worldbuilding we do, it leaves at least 60-70% of quest design, and other details of world building for me to do. There's just SO MUCH detail that goes into even making a small scene interesting that I'm finding there's no way to have the players cover even half of this world we are playing in let alone the actual encounter design. So, the first thing that's contributing to this dip in motivation feels like I'm actually not interested in doing nearly this much world building myself but this approach actually leaves a surprisingly large amount for the DM still to write. Second... the fact that it was *their* ideas that generated the world (and not mine) I think contributes to this dip in creative motivation. It's not that I *dislike* their ideas outright, but they just didn't pop out of my own creative brain. When I did a DM coaching with Deborah Ann Woll, she emphasized the importance of a kind of "scratch test" that writers do to see what inspires them. Like when you get tested for allergies (or used to), they would put certain allergens on you and see what bubbles up. So she encouraged me to do the same thing for writing / DMing. Write all kinds of scenes, tropes, story archetypes and see what moves you.