Is it YOUR adventure or is it THEIR adventure? By this I mean, are the players playing your story or are their actions influencing the world, regardless of what you have planned?
Making it up as you go? That can mean many things. In general you should have at least a short term plot point worked out, with two to three side quests. Have three hooks from three different sources which point to the main plot point and/or stay on it. Unless you are a fictional writer, improv actor, or very good at explaining concepts to others, it is really hard to run a campaign/adventure "on the fly", running encounters "on the fly" is generally taxing enough for most people.
Are you "stealing" elements of published adventures? In general it is easier to find something in the 50 years of DnD history, tweak it to fit your needs, than it is to start from scratch and have a cohesive encounter/adventure/campaign.
If you are spending more time reading aloud than your players are talking, that is generally a BAD sign of interest and preparation.
Gage the pacing, plan enough to cover the normal pace plus 50% more, have an overarching theme to the adventure, at least one overarching plot, and make sure the player's are the ones making the decisions. If they've provided backstory/history to their character there should be some unresolved issues and/or some character goals, these should be woven into the campaign/adventure for further player "buy in".
For much more help than that, you are really going to need to provide many more details.
The most important thing you can do is: ask your players. Ask them what they like and what they don't like. And maybe you will need to prepare a bit more. Improvising everything is extremely difficult.
I had fears about this happening to me... recently started to DM and a few in group are new to the idea.
I hit on an idea after reading about Adventurers League. AL is organized roleplay. Lots of cool things about it and I hope to try it sometime. But as I understand the basic idea is a collection of one-shots which players can jump into in any sequence. They may or may not use the same characters each time they play. Etc https://dnd.wizards.com/playevents/organized-play
I decided to borrow that basic idea except tie things together with some underlying background plots which the party can either engage in, or not. The campaign centers around a guild of adventurers who, each session, are hired by some new client to perform some task - rescue a princess, protect a prized race displacer beast, babysit a couple of aging wizards as the delve for some lost artifact. So far it has been a lot of fun. Players can either play as the character which is an official member of the guild, or they can play as a sellsword and negotiate price for their services with the rest of the party. This allows players to try out different characters if they get bored with theirs and yet remain in a persistent storyline.
As mentioned before, you really don't want to make it up as you go. You should have a rough idea for NPCs with motivations that can interact with the PCs world. A good go to is that a high level (compared to the PCs at the start of the adventure) NPC is trying to find a thing to let him do something. The PCs will hopefully have motivation to either hinder, help. or do the thing themselves (If not, have the NPC"s quest for the thing impact the PCs). With that structure, you could set up a pretty decent length adventure with the ability to plug and play dungeons from just about any adventure (with one of the treasures replaced with the thing or to stretch things out, part of the thing). You could introduce other NPCs looking for the thing if your PCs are competitive. Hopefully, you get the idea.
You can literally rip of plot lines from every SciFi or fantasy TV show/book ever made.
Also, your adventure should account for character level in more ways than just CR. The PCs' interactions with the world should be larger as they go up in level. Stopping the local gang is a big deal for level one characters. By level 10, the stakes should raise to saving a kingdom.
So, I am making up an adventure up as I go, but my players don't seem very interested. pls help
Is it YOUR adventure or is it THEIR adventure? By this I mean, are the players playing your story or are their actions influencing the world, regardless of what you have planned?
Making it up as you go? That can mean many things. In general you should have at least a short term plot point worked out, with two to three side quests. Have three hooks from three different sources which point to the main plot point and/or stay on it. Unless you are a fictional writer, improv actor, or very good at explaining concepts to others, it is really hard to run a campaign/adventure "on the fly", running encounters "on the fly" is generally taxing enough for most people.
Are you "stealing" elements of published adventures? In general it is easier to find something in the 50 years of DnD history, tweak it to fit your needs, than it is to start from scratch and have a cohesive encounter/adventure/campaign.
If you are spending more time reading aloud than your players are talking, that is generally a BAD sign of interest and preparation.
Gage the pacing, plan enough to cover the normal pace plus 50% more, have an overarching theme to the adventure, at least one overarching plot, and make sure the player's are the ones making the decisions. If they've provided backstory/history to their character there should be some unresolved issues and/or some character goals, these should be woven into the campaign/adventure for further player "buy in".
For much more help than that, you are really going to need to provide many more details.
The most important thing you can do is: ask your players. Ask them what they like and what they don't like. And maybe you will need to prepare a bit more. Improvising everything is extremely difficult.
I had fears about this happening to me... recently started to DM and a few in group are new to the idea.
I hit on an idea after reading about Adventurers League. AL is organized roleplay. Lots of cool things about it and I hope to try it sometime. But as I understand the basic idea is a collection of one-shots which players can jump into in any sequence. They may or may not use the same characters each time they play. Etc
https://dnd.wizards.com/playevents/organized-play
I decided to borrow that basic idea except tie things together with some underlying background plots which the party can either engage in, or not. The campaign centers around a guild of adventurers who, each session, are hired by some new client to perform some task - rescue a princess, protect a prized race displacer beast, babysit a couple of aging wizards as the delve for some lost artifact. So far it has been a lot of fun. Players can either play as the character which is an official member of the guild, or they can play as a sellsword and negotiate price for their services with the rest of the party. This allows players to try out different characters if they get bored with theirs and yet remain in a persistent storyline.
As mentioned before, you really don't want to make it up as you go. You should have a rough idea for NPCs with motivations that can interact with the PCs world. A good go to is that a high level (compared to the PCs at the start of the adventure) NPC is trying to find a thing to let him do something. The PCs will hopefully have motivation to either hinder, help. or do the thing themselves (If not, have the NPC"s quest for the thing impact the PCs). With that structure, you could set up a pretty decent length adventure with the ability to plug and play dungeons from just about any adventure (with one of the treasures replaced with the thing or to stretch things out, part of the thing). You could introduce other NPCs looking for the thing if your PCs are competitive. Hopefully, you get the idea.
You can literally rip of plot lines from every SciFi or fantasy TV show/book ever made.
Also, your adventure should account for character level in more ways than just CR. The PCs' interactions with the world should be larger as they go up in level. Stopping the local gang is a big deal for level one characters. By level 10, the stakes should raise to saving a kingdom.