I’ve started running Curse of Strahd and have been having a ton of fun making wacky homebrew things for my party and tweaking the module. Unbeknownst to the players so far, I have made them all a secret Dark Power trying to use them to usurp Strahd and Vampyr, and they’re just waiting to offer their dark gift.
For example, I have a druid with some fire giant ancestry who loves Produce Flame and is their front line, so he’ll be offered a slightly weaker Rage with the Path of the Storm Herald desert feature to use once per long rest. The celestial warlock would get charges to boost his Eldritch Blast damage and some secondary healing in exchange for sapping his life.
Giving my players powerful upgrades alongside typical class advancement can make some encounters harder to balance around, but as long as we’re all having fun who cares about balance??
I’m like you, I love making homebrew items and monsters to throw at my party in equal measurements I also really enjoy creating lore and reasons why things are happening in the setting. I’ve been meaning to try a module so I can practice working within an existing story framework more.
I’m much better at tweaking preexisting things than coming up with my own off the bat, so I havent tried a fully homebrewed setting, but I’ve played in two now with another group. Taking the bones of a module and fleshing it out is pretty satisfying though, have you looked into any to run?
I looked into Descent into Avernus, but honestly, I wanted to make so many changes to that module it wasnt worth it. I also toyed with Strahd but horror and being scary isn’t my thing either. I kinda stopped looking since my group is taking a break for a good while, but if I end up dming again it will almost certainly be with a premade module.