What details do you appreciate?

Welcome to Fluther.

I don’t play the type of fantasy role-playing games that you allude to (more from lack of exposure than lack of desire), but I love reading history, especially in many cases “military history” to see how terrain and even political considerations make huge differences in the outcome of military campaigns.

So if those details matter to the game such that, for example, traveling along a land route will be influenced by elevation, steepness, marsh / hard ground and other influences, or a military assault might have to pass through a declivity that could be well defended by a relatively small force (as in the movie 300), then the details do matter and would be missed by players.

Otherwise, if “land travel” means “some number of miles determined by a throw of the dice” or something else having nothing to do with your setup / layout, then why bother?

Honestly, what I most look for in a Dungeon Master is someone who can give me something interesting on the fly. Say we’re exploring a series of caves and there’s a small one off to the right, if I explore it, but you haven’t put anything in there, make something up on the spot. Put in a treasure chest or a monster or an NPC who can give more information, that sort of thing.

As for what you’ve described, I personally love a very rich story. Once we are on the main mission, I need the DM to be able to answer any and all questions about the landscape. Is this rough terrain? What kind of checks do I have to make to get over this terrain? Do I take any kind of penalty in this terrain? Can I use it for cover? That kind of thing. You may not have thought of that some DM’s use athletic checks to jump over a river, for example, while others may use strength checks but if you can think on your feet, then you’ll do fine.

As a player, I also like to be able to interact with every aspect of my environment, including NPC’s. See if you can have a little something prepared for everything in a scenario. For example, maybe I want to ask an NPC for information on the dark lord who’s been plaguing the surrounding villages. Maybe this NPC over by the bar can tell me which direction to go in but that one in the square can tell me that the dark lord actually works for a more powerful guy who’s farther north. This way, your players can choose to pursue the closer dark lord by following the information of the NPC by the bar or they can choose to go after the bigger guy up north. You might have to tweak your story a bit, but it can be a lot more fun for you and the players if you have many possibilities.

I dig engaging interpersonal interaction between players and NPCs, particularly when it’s in an interesting and holistic setting. I tend to be able to tell if the DM didn’t put much thought into how pieces of a culture fit together, but rather did a quick mix and match. But of course, I went to school for anthropology and psychology. Some players just want a lot of combat.

Think about trying to make the local economy of a town or city have influences on the culture and the way they behave. It could even influence what’s available to them at stores and such (Like, why would a fishing village have piles of swords around, when they’d be more likely to use spears and tridents in every day work).

I have DMed for a couple of groups, and one of my favorite campaigns started with a session where the players rolled up their characters, and then we all worked up a basic map of the continent on which the campaign took place. We filled in all the common knowledge together, with each player placing their home town on the map and writing down a few things that the town was known for, i.e. “makes good cheeze” or “has a large library”. Then we made up together a few well known cities, topography, historical events and the racial makeup of the continent. No actual gaming took place in that session, but it was a blast working together to come up with the common knowledge, and it gave me a ton of ideas and material to work with. I particularly like adding racial, religious, and social prejudices to a campaign.