... meant that there was an opportunity for a few players to have some great roleplay interactions with one another which was rewarding AND rewarded. Everyone also got to pick up some armour and weapons they requested that left them flat broke, so they'll need a job opportunity now *rubs hands*.

I also can't help but feel like some of it is out of my control, like having more battle maps and visual stuff and not using pre-written modules (sometimes I resort to them to give me a bit of a writing break and to catch up on writing the next bit). Any suggestions from fellow people out there?

Is it normal to feel worried or anxious or like you're about to be "found out" or something if someone else runs it for a week? I know my players enjoy the sessions (or I hope they do!) and I allow for a lot of requests for character flavour, but... what if they like the other DM more than me? 😭😂😂

... allow them to divulge the information on their own time, which is actually an interesting dynamic. There's also some hints being dropped about the bigger mechanics of the overall campaign arc, so it's probably about time the players had an understanding of what the world has in store for them 😂

I will definitely do my best! 🫡

... Or, avoid it completely and save it for another time when everyone gets the full benefit of witnessing it. What should I do?

... since they're back in their hometown and have been gone for weeks, there has been a new form of information making its way round town - a News Paper. And it does NOT like what the party have been up to 😂 so some image improvement might be on the cards as well.

... work as a team and actually talk some tactics and use things to help one another out, so I think it showed that it was worth the build-up and the wait in the end. Now, the question is, how much to let them use to craft items out of that WON'T come back to haunt me! 😂

... and even though the session starting the module was a bit of a dud because the party didn't particularly take well to tracking something and encountering local flora and fauna, the Three Wave Combat encounter that happened at the end gave everyone something to smash and really pushed them to...

Turns out, tracking and hunting something through an unrelenting wintery landscape and interacting with the flora/fauna of the region to gain tracking knowledge and how to bait and kill the creature ISN'T the forté of a chaotically violent group 😂 but we live and we learn. Back to the drawing board!

Honestly, I don't have too many traditions that I stick to every year, but this is something I could get on board with because it was the most chilled fun I've had around Christmas in a while. And as a gift, everyone even levelled up, because clearly I'm a generous and benevolent GM. Only at Xmas. 😂

... with how chaotic the group is? It actually went more like 5.5 hours! 😂 Still, everyone had a good time after making their way through the Home Alone house, meeting Father Midwinter, encountering the Deck of Merry Things and then beating the snot out of Krampus and Julbocken.