Nobody seems to know what life is going to be like for them. This is actually a good aspect of reality, if it was predictable to any real extent nobody would play. The unexpected is just a byproduct of our limitations, no matter how much experience we get, no matter how educated, or compassionate, or centered, or wise, life is just too much to keep track of in any meaningful way and a lot of the really important information is hidden. So if you are a control freak, maybe work on giving that up.

I have been struggling with the notion of control. I play a fair bit of Dungeons & Dragons, and I DM a lot. I used to think that this was just because nobody else would and I really wanted to play, but after...wow. Ok after a LOT of years playing off and on in different editions as schedules and location and friends availability allowed, I may just have to accept that I DM because I prefer it to being a player. 

I have gotten to play in games a few times and while I do enjoy it, I am not very good at it. I tend to be a bit of a spotlight hog, I get bored easily when it is not my turn or when circumstances do not allow me to do much of anything...like when it is not my turn and the wizard who could have been plotting out his spell choice for the last three people's turns is having to look something up instead of just saying FIREBALL!! or whatever...for instance.

So I DM, I am always busy even if its just listening to the party make up an insane plan and trying to work out what is going to go wrong with it then holding myself back from telling them that unless it is something that their character would reasonably see instantly.

I also have a lot more fun with world building that making an infinite number of characters I will never play, though admittedly I do that too sometimes. 

At this point though I have run homebrew worlds, Forgotten Realms, Exandria, and iterations on the modern world, but with mutants, or magic, or superheroes or all the above.

I am leaning towards a new home brew but I also want to do something completely new based on Proactive Roleplaying. There was a video by GinnyDi and a book "The Game Master's Guide to Proactive Roleplaying" by Jonah and Tristan Fishel. This book and the video that introduced me to it were interesting not because the ideas presented were new but because they were familiar but formatted to the thinking of different people. I always sought to make my adventures about my player characters, I just never had anyone say that by explicitly asking your players to make their back stories have concrete goals built into the character that it would make that process a lot easier. 

So now I have an opportunity to integrate some of the ideas from the book into my own methods and create a campaign that is genuinely player driven rather than the tired old trope of the BBEG. There will probably still be some forms of big bad, and there will be evil and good, but depending on the players goals they might be heroes or they might be the BBEG of someone else's story. I can think of at least one player this might be true for.

Ah but where to hold it? At first I was inclined to put it into my homebrew world, and I eventually will try this, but my experience using the Forgotten Realms and Exandria has highlighted the fact that with an existing world with an extensive Wiki it is a bit easier for my players to find bits of the world that appeal to them and play with those.

I won't be running it for a few months. Likely not till the new rulebooks for 2024 drop, but I have been tinkering with ideas for the campaign in the back of my head and other places for a few months now, pretty much a few weeks after I stopped running the last one.

My other goal is to work on short form adventures that can ACTUALLY be completed in a single session. So far I have not had a lot of luck in this.