Success! - D&D 5E Session Upgraded to Weird and Interesting

 In a very brief follow up I managed to have a great game of D&D 5E last night. We had a combat that was interesting, plot strangeness and good character development. The little things I did to make it work:

1. Thought about the "game I wanted to run," rather than the story I was running, evaluated how to make that happen with the current group, and executed it as intended;

2. Stayed the heck away from wandering monsters or any filler content;

3. Several characters got some new bonus secret backstories to help those players engage with the setting (and the planned changes I made) better; this helped them out a lot.

So three basic steps helped right the ship a bit, so to speak. On item 1 the level of complexity I engaged in to come up with a plot to wed the ongoing campaign in the "boring fantasy world" to the much more interesting and well-developed original campaign world (Keepers of Lingusia) was thoroughly fun for me and helped create more entertaining mystery for the players, especially the ones who've been gaming with me for years and can notice the hints and clues that something weird and multiplanar is going on.