I'm a forever DM since the eighties, and yes, nowadays there are lots of online tools, videos, podcasts etc to help an aspiring new DM.
But I still think the most important thing is to start playing with a group of good friends that tackle the game together, where it's allowed to make mistakes and learn the ropes.
To me it seems like there are expectations that a new DM can study on their own and then go out and be a pro DM for a group of strangers that may or may not be Mercer damaged and have absurd expectations. That's not how tabletop rpg's work imho - it is first and foremost a social hobby where you have to trust and enjoy the people you play with to have fun and develope as a DM and as a player.
So the only thing that can make DM:ing more appealing is to play with good folks. All the other things - learning to prep efficiently, adapt to players to optimize fun etc will come with time.
They can't. every story needs a story teller. Railroading things even more so that its easier on a DM would just make it less fun. AL had this 'DM reward' feature to encourage people to DM, but it just didn't mean anything.
So I disagree vehemently with this.
People can sit here and shit on Critical Role sometimes for things like "The Matt Mercer effect", but honestly, as much as he's done to bring players into the hobby he's also shown the world that DMing can be fun AND rewarding.
It's easier to see how much joy DMs get now than ever before because of live play podcasts, and I think going back to Critical Role, with the upcoming 8 episode mini, we're going to see Matt thoroughly enjoy being able to experience his world in a much different light. Those are things DMs can look forward to.
More campaigns, that are easier to prep and run. And honestly, a DMG that's a better guide to DMing. It's never not going to be a lot to do, but it could be less and it could be easier.
I think this is the first step.
A lot of the tools exist, but at the same time, I know one of my own personal shortcomings was SAVING the information and then indexing it in easy to use formats.
I've spent a bunch of time one day just figuring out random Inns, who the owner was, the main person behind the bar, etc. Then I did the same thing with general goods stores. Alchemist shops. When my game is starting, I take five of each have the info ready, and go. When it's used, I just put a small mark on that page knowing its done.
The idea that the DM is the end-all-be-all of the rules can hold people back. There is a LOT of pressure to make the "correct" ruling. At my table, I tell my guys that we'll play by RAW, and that if we can't figure something out in 30 seconds, I'll make a ruling and then we'll figure it out later. It takes the pressure off me to be correct, and it lets the players know that if I got something wrong, we'll play RAW when we figure it out (which reduces in-the-moment angst that comes with some DMs whose "arbitrary" rulings are then codified as the "right" way to play moving forward). It's a game. Relax. Let's have fun and fix things as we move forward.
This goes into social contracts, right. Hey, these are the expectations. If I **** up, that's fine, but let's not slow down the pace of play for everyone. Our time is limited, and its important, lets have fun! Let's not spend 30 minutes arguing about niche rulings. Same thing with player rulings, as a DM if your goal is to screw someone over, it's wrong. Period. I don't care what edition you've played in, how long you've played, how much experience you have. This isn't to say you can't have deadly encounters with the chance of player death.
The worst part about DM rewards is that it gives you PLAYER rewards for running games. That's lame as hell. If they want to reward DMs they should do what they do for MTG judges, Promotional swag, store credit, etc.
It's hard to do that with D&D. You could reward AL DMs in the same way you reward M:tG judges, but how? For one, AL is so much different than what D&D typically is. Problem is, how do you vet it? How do you recognize DMs in that way? Magic gives out custom foils to rated judges with a special stamp showing it was a Judge card. What would recognized DMs get? Access to ultra-playtest content(think pre-UA) to help gather info? Custom scenarios/modules?
What about non AL DMs?
I think it is doable, but for as much effort as we want Wizards to do it? It can be done by us as well.
WoTC should make promotional dice sets, dice boxes, etc. Give us STUFF we can use to run our games, you're already tracking your sessions ran at the store you're running at, let us have a reward checksheet that gives us milestones to work towards and excited to run more AL.
I don't want my time rewarded with experience and magic items. I want it rewarded with physical goods. Or maybe an initiative for certified stores to provide store credit for AL DMs so that we can actually buy the stuff we want for our home games and need for our AL games.
In terms of making GMing more appealing, I think one way is to compare and contrast the benefits of being a GM and a player, and highlight the perks of being a GM. As the person who was most interested in trying and playing D&D, I figured I would put on the mantle first before my players are ready, but the more I GMed the more I got used to it, and by the time I actually played a few times, I found that I liked being a GM quite a bit more than being a player.
Compared to a player, a GM has: - UNLIMITED Creative Freedom: For me, D&D's rigid class based system is stifling and suffocating, but as a GM, you can design your NPCs and monsters however you want. - ABSOLUTE Control: I never thought I was a control freak, but after being a player a few times, I feel kind of powerless to help and direct my own character, and that kind of made me realize I enjoy being the god of my game because I have so much more control and power. - ULTIMATE Power: See above. As a GM, you are unstoppable, and the multiverse literally bends to your will. RAW, dice, and reality can only challenge you if you let them.
These are some perks worth highlighting in my opinion: - Homebrew: You are free to mod the game however you like. You can make new races, classes, subclasses, items, and even entirely new game mechanics. You can also throwout whatever stuff, lore, and rules that you do not like too. - World Building: As mentioned above, this is basically an additional new game mode that you can enjoy. - Writing a Story: Like world building, this is like an entirely different game/hobby altogether that you can combine with D&D. It is different from writing a normal story, but it feels a lot more flexible in my opinion. - Solo Play: You can technically play by yourself, although in this case, you would be literally writing a story as there is not much input from anyone else. - Finding a Game: From my observations here, it seems like DMs are in high demand, so as long as you are not running a super niche campaign that only a few people would be interested in, you should not have trouble finding a game. And if you really cannot find anyone, there is solo play as mentioned above. - Spotlight: This can be a good or bad thing, but you are rarely out of the spotlight. As the GM, you are the foil to the players, and the PCs cannot really be shiny without something to interact with, and you are that something. Not only do you play as all the NPCs and villains, you are also all the traps, puzzles, environment, sentient magic items, narrator, etc. The only time the spotlight is ever off of you that I can think of is if the character is interacting with other characters and they act as each others' foils. - No Downtime: This can also be a good or bad thing. Since you are almost always in the spotlight, you are never bored since you are almost always playing and there is almost always something for you to do. The flip side is that since you are almost always doing something, you get very few breaks, unlike players who can take frequent small breaks when it is not their turn or spotlight. If you do need some more small breaks here and there, the best way to do it in my opinion is to encourage more interaction between the PCs, so you are basically offloading story telling to the players temporarily.
Way back in High School, I became interested in D&D. I really wanted to play, but the irony was that I'm honestly better as a DM than a player. The DMs that I knew were all burned out on it. The ones who were not were in the same boat as I was. I was the one who had the great fortune to be able to buy the books, the time to read them, and the degree of interest to stick it out. Every time I got into a game as a player I got frustrated and annoyed, because they didn't know the rules I'd taken so much time and effort to learn. Quite frequently the books were right there next to them. This is forgivable. The books were pretty terrible. They were poorly organized, all the rules were in the DMG, the DMG itself was even more poorly organized, and contained huge numbers of tables and charts scattered around with advice on other topics entirely.
I don't want to be paid, not in cash, or merchandise. I remember reading an article about someone who was initially thrilled because they got a job working for TSR and they got to work on their favorite hobby. They even got to playtest at work, and be paid to do it! What they discovered was that when it's your job to play a game, it stops being fun. You go home to what used to be a pleasant and relaxing hobby, and you feel like you are still at work.
The rules have been greatly streamlined and simplified, probably too much so, since things like using plain English, rather than a bunch of technical terms, has produced an enormous storm of arguments that get down to the tiniest little detail, such that the order of the words gets argued about. I recently learned that a Riding Horse cannot walk at a walking speed except in short bursts. The spell Mind Blank causes you to forget things you used to know.
D&D Beyond has made being a DM ever so much easier. I've got tools, I've got articles, I've got sourcebooks, and I've got the forums so I can find out how wrong I was about the rules. My experience as a DM has made me worse instead of better. I keep thinking I know what I'm doing, but I'm referencing things no longer found in the game. There are no "Free Actions" as such, only a few things that you can do freely. There are no "Surprise Rounds" anymore. Scores used to have a much less dramatic effect on play outside of Strength, so the rules on character creation make the most popular method of creating scores the arguably the worst choice. I'm getting better as I go though, and D&D Beyond is helping me there.
What else could make it more appealing to be a DM? Feedback. Hit that little up arrow more often. Send emails. Share your own experiences as a DM. Send private messages. There's a link for that on the poster's name to the left of their post and above the little picture. That would make it more appealing to me anyway.
There is one major thing D&D could do to make DMing easier: fix the CR system. The CR system as-is is convoluted, barely works, and is a headache for anyone trying to DM. How can we fix this? That's really simple take a page out of PF 2e's book and make encounter building not based on CRs having their own xp but monsters being worth X xp based on how far above or below the party's level they are. This also simplifies leveling as instead of having different XP amounts at different levels you can have the same amount of xp every level since xp is now based on encounter difficulty and not monster strength. The encounter building in PF 2e is one of the major reasons I'm converting over to PF 2e for my next campaign (granted I don't find any glaring issues with the system between now and then).
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call me Anna or Kerns, (she/her), usually a DM, lgbtq+ friendly
Better tools and starting info in the DMG. Some specifics...
Setting primers. A simple, SIMPLE explanation of the major established settings. Drop the flowery descriptions, and give me some bullet points. Explain major themes, tone, level of magic, what the important places and conflicts are, and what gods oversee it. Just 1-2 pages per setting, and a map of each.
Worldbuilding and homebrew campaign advice. Things like how to limit your worldbuilding and prep so as to avoid overworking yourself. How to guide the players back on to the intended plot without railroading. How to deal with some common derailment scenarios. Common derailments to plan for.
Better tools and random generators. Like, for naming NPCs, I'm picturing each race having its own D100 table, with sections for common names, silly names, hero names, and villain names. And give it columns for male, female, neutral, and family names.
Maps. Lots of maps. When you think it's more than enough, add more maps. Unlabeled regions and continents for homebrew. Town and city layouts. Dungeons designed as functional places. Dungeons designed as nonsensical gameplay fodder. Battle maps for common settings. Battle maps for unusual settings. Battle maps that emphasize gameplay mechanics.
Advice and a huge pile of examples on how to describe things and run good theater of the mind.
I mean don't we also have milestone levelling as an alternative? You can ignore CR to a certain extent with that too.
There is also variable HP/AC, reinforcements/retreats, adjusting the number of encounters/rests, and good old fashion fudging dice rolls.
Variable HP is the easiest and least intrusive option in my opinion, and you can drop a monster early if it is too difficult for the party and you need the party to survive. Alternatively, you can also maximize its HP if the party is killing things too quickly and you want to burn away a little more of the party's resources. For variable AC, it is a bit more of a hassle to keep track of compared to HP in my opinion, but it is doable too. You just can just flavor it as armor falling off if you want things easier, although dialing AC up mid-combat is a bit harder to justify, but you can flavor it as enemy picking up a shield, biology kicking in and hardening the outer carapace, or they activate a magic item that temporarily casts Shield or something.
Reinforcements can slow the game down if not handled well, but as long as you do not bring too much at a time, you should be fine. One NPC ally with a magic item is generally more than enough to turn the tide in favor of the party, but it can be very intrusive if not set up well. Another way to make things easier is to have monsters retreat before they die, and I prefer this way compared to bringing in an NPC ally since the NPC ally can feel like the GM is taking the spotlight. For beefing up difficulty, one or two additional waves of monster reinforcements is pretty easy to do and it is pretty immersive in my opinion; you do not want to bring too much monsters though, and 2 to 4 per wave is more than enough in my opinion.
Adjusting the number of encounters and rest is what is implied/recommended in the DMG, and I think it is a pretty good way to adjust difficulty too, although this is more of something you do before or after the combat encounter.
Personally, fudging dice rolls is my favorite way to adjust difficulty. It gives you the result you need immediately. Just do not over use it or use it as a crutch though, or else it would be pretty easy to catch on.
In terms of leveling, I like to do a hybrid of milestone and XP. I tell my players to use XP so they feel they are in more control over the progress of their character, but I can adjust the number of monsters and difficulty to limit how much XP they gain. And after they completed a meaningful quest or event or something, I can give them whatever amount of XP that feels appropriate or just tell them to level up directly to the next level.
For me, CR is fine the way it is. I do not think CR should be the only way to evaluate and plan encounters, and I think it is best used in combination with the above tools to fine tune an encounter in real time rather than trying to pre-plan everything to make sure everything is perfectly balanced.
1. demand more of your players. with the proliferation of spells, sub-classes, feats, fighting styles, etc. a new or novice DM can get overwhelmed. Let the players know they are responsible for their character sheet. In addition, they need to be ready to go on their turn- no tuning out on social media or whatever.
2. simpler campaigns, gradually more involved until the DM finds the sweetspot they find enjoyable. Someone above mentioned Mercer. I like Matt. Not everyone can spend full time creating worlds and campaigns. newer DMs can use the packaged modules/adventures and tailor to suit. A note to Wizards- make the published adventures easier to DM: more narrative, less cross referencing, put the stat blocks in the encounter.
3. DMs need to be ok to tell the group halfway through the session that they've gone in a direction not anticipated and more prep is needed to do it justice. "Let's pick it up next time". Some DMs thrive on major off the cuff diversions. Some get overwhelmed.
Finally, D&D is a game. If you are the DM and not enjoying it, then fall back and regroup to find a solution. Take a week or two off. Don't just miserably grind through it.
The DM duties could be more spread out, with the players doing more of the worldbuilding and storytelling. 5e does a little bit of this with the character background suggestions like flaws and bonds. But there could be encouragement to do more, like inventing your own minor proficiencies, home town, etc. Perhaps even encourage players to recommend outcomes of actions and the DM will tell them the DC to achieve that action.
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I'm a forever DM since the eighties, and yes, nowadays there are lots of online tools, videos, podcasts etc to help an aspiring new DM.
But I still think the most important thing is to start playing with a group of good friends that tackle the game together, where it's allowed to make mistakes and learn the ropes.
To me it seems like there are expectations that a new DM can study on their own and then go out and be a pro DM for a group of strangers that may or may not be Mercer damaged and have absurd expectations. That's not how tabletop rpg's work imho - it is first and foremost a social hobby where you have to trust and enjoy the people you play with to have fun and develope as a DM and as a player.
So the only thing that can make DM:ing more appealing is to play with good folks. All the other things - learning to prep efficiently, adapt to players to optimize fun etc will come with time.
WoTC should make promotional dice sets, dice boxes, etc. Give us STUFF we can use to run our games, you're already tracking your sessions ran at the store you're running at, let us have a reward checksheet that gives us milestones to work towards and excited to run more AL.
I don't want my time rewarded with experience and magic items. I want it rewarded with physical goods. Or maybe an initiative for certified stores to provide store credit for AL DMs so that we can actually buy the stuff we want for our home games and need for our AL games.
In terms of making GMing more appealing, I think one way is to compare and contrast the benefits of being a GM and a player, and highlight the perks of being a GM. As the person who was most interested in trying and playing D&D, I figured I would put on the mantle first before my players are ready, but the more I GMed the more I got used to it, and by the time I actually played a few times, I found that I liked being a GM quite a bit more than being a player.
Compared to a player, a GM has:
- UNLIMITED Creative Freedom:
For me, D&D's rigid class based system is stifling and suffocating, but as a GM, you can design your NPCs and monsters however you want.
- ABSOLUTE Control:
I never thought I was a control freak, but after being a player a few times, I feel kind of powerless to help and direct my own character, and that kind of made me realize I enjoy being the god of my game because I have so much more control and power.
- ULTIMATE Power:
See above. As a GM, you are unstoppable, and the multiverse literally bends to your will. RAW, dice, and reality can only challenge you if you let them.
These are some perks worth highlighting in my opinion:
- Homebrew: You are free to mod the game however you like. You can make new races, classes, subclasses, items, and even entirely new game mechanics. You can also throwout whatever stuff, lore, and rules that you do not like too.
- World Building: As mentioned above, this is basically an additional new game mode that you can enjoy.
- Writing a Story: Like world building, this is like an entirely different game/hobby altogether that you can combine with D&D. It is different from writing a normal story, but it feels a lot more flexible in my opinion.
- Solo Play:
You can technically play by yourself, although in this case, you would be literally writing a story as there is not much input from anyone else.
- Finding a Game:
From my observations here, it seems like DMs are in high demand, so as long as you are not running a super niche campaign that only a few people would be interested in, you should not have trouble finding a game. And if you really cannot find anyone, there is solo play as mentioned above.
- Spotlight:
This can be a good or bad thing, but you are rarely out of the spotlight. As the GM, you are the foil to the players, and the PCs cannot really be shiny without something to interact with, and you are that something. Not only do you play as all the NPCs and villains, you are also all the traps, puzzles, environment, sentient magic items, narrator, etc. The only time the spotlight is ever off of you that I can think of is if the character is interacting with other characters and they act as each others' foils.
- No Downtime:
This can also be a good or bad thing. Since you are almost always in the spotlight, you are never bored since you are almost always playing and there is almost always something for you to do. The flip side is that since you are almost always doing something, you get very few breaks, unlike players who can take frequent small breaks when it is not their turn or spotlight. If you do need some more small breaks here and there, the best way to do it in my opinion is to encourage more interaction between the PCs, so you are basically offloading story telling to the players temporarily.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >
Way back in High School, I became interested in D&D. I really wanted to play, but the irony was that I'm honestly better as a DM than a player. The DMs that I knew were all burned out on it. The ones who were not were in the same boat as I was. I was the one who had the great fortune to be able to buy the books, the time to read them, and the degree of interest to stick it out. Every time I got into a game as a player I got frustrated and annoyed, because they didn't know the rules I'd taken so much time and effort to learn. Quite frequently the books were right there next to them. This is forgivable. The books were pretty terrible. They were poorly organized, all the rules were in the DMG, the DMG itself was even more poorly organized, and contained huge numbers of tables and charts scattered around with advice on other topics entirely.
I don't want to be paid, not in cash, or merchandise. I remember reading an article about someone who was initially thrilled because they got a job working for TSR and they got to work on their favorite hobby. They even got to playtest at work, and be paid to do it! What they discovered was that when it's your job to play a game, it stops being fun. You go home to what used to be a pleasant and relaxing hobby, and you feel like you are still at work.
The rules have been greatly streamlined and simplified, probably too much so, since things like using plain English, rather than a bunch of technical terms, has produced an enormous storm of arguments that get down to the tiniest little detail, such that the order of the words gets argued about. I recently learned that a Riding Horse cannot walk at a walking speed except in short bursts. The spell Mind Blank causes you to forget things you used to know.
D&D Beyond has made being a DM ever so much easier. I've got tools, I've got articles, I've got sourcebooks, and I've got the forums so I can find out how wrong I was about the rules. My experience as a DM has made me worse instead of better. I keep thinking I know what I'm doing, but I'm referencing things no longer found in the game. There are no "Free Actions" as such, only a few things that you can do freely. There are no "Surprise Rounds" anymore. Scores used to have a much less dramatic effect on play outside of Strength, so the rules on character creation make the most popular method of creating scores the arguably the worst choice. I'm getting better as I go though, and D&D Beyond is helping me there.
What else could make it more appealing to be a DM? Feedback. Hit that little up arrow more often. Send emails. Share your own experiences as a DM. Send private messages. There's a link for that on the poster's name to the left of their post and above the little picture. That would make it more appealing to me anyway.
<Insert clever signature here>
There is one major thing D&D could do to make DMing easier: fix the CR system. The CR system as-is is convoluted, barely works, and is a headache for anyone trying to DM. How can we fix this? That's really simple take a page out of PF 2e's book and make encounter building not based on CRs having their own xp but monsters being worth X xp based on how far above or below the party's level they are. This also simplifies leveling as instead of having different XP amounts at different levels you can have the same amount of xp every level since xp is now based on encounter difficulty and not monster strength. The encounter building in PF 2e is one of the major reasons I'm converting over to PF 2e for my next campaign (granted I don't find any glaring issues with the system between now and then).
call me Anna or Kerns, (she/her), usually a DM, lgbtq+ friendly
I mean don't we also have milestone levelling as an alternative? You can ignore CR to a certain extent with that too.
Or, maybe, use the Encounter Builder tool?
<Insert clever signature here>
Better tools and starting info in the DMG. Some specifics...
Setting primers. A simple, SIMPLE explanation of the major established settings. Drop the flowery descriptions, and give me some bullet points. Explain major themes, tone, level of magic, what the important places and conflicts are, and what gods oversee it. Just 1-2 pages per setting, and a map of each.
Worldbuilding and homebrew campaign advice. Things like how to limit your worldbuilding and prep so as to avoid overworking yourself. How to guide the players back on to the intended plot without railroading. How to deal with some common derailment scenarios. Common derailments to plan for.
Better tools and random generators. Like, for naming NPCs, I'm picturing each race having its own D100 table, with sections for common names, silly names, hero names, and villain names. And give it columns for male, female, neutral, and family names.
Maps. Lots of maps. When you think it's more than enough, add more maps. Unlabeled regions and continents for homebrew. Town and city layouts. Dungeons designed as functional places. Dungeons designed as nonsensical gameplay fodder. Battle maps for common settings. Battle maps for unusual settings. Battle maps that emphasize gameplay mechanics.
Advice and a huge pile of examples on how to describe things and run good theater of the mind.
There is also variable HP/AC, reinforcements/retreats, adjusting the number of encounters/rests, and good old fashion fudging dice rolls.
Variable HP is the easiest and least intrusive option in my opinion, and you can drop a monster early if it is too difficult for the party and you need the party to survive. Alternatively, you can also maximize its HP if the party is killing things too quickly and you want to burn away a little more of the party's resources. For variable AC, it is a bit more of a hassle to keep track of compared to HP in my opinion, but it is doable too. You just can just flavor it as armor falling off if you want things easier, although dialing AC up mid-combat is a bit harder to justify, but you can flavor it as enemy picking up a shield, biology kicking in and hardening the outer carapace, or they activate a magic item that temporarily casts Shield or something.
Reinforcements can slow the game down if not handled well, but as long as you do not bring too much at a time, you should be fine. One NPC ally with a magic item is generally more than enough to turn the tide in favor of the party, but it can be very intrusive if not set up well. Another way to make things easier is to have monsters retreat before they die, and I prefer this way compared to bringing in an NPC ally since the NPC ally can feel like the GM is taking the spotlight. For beefing up difficulty, one or two additional waves of monster reinforcements is pretty easy to do and it is pretty immersive in my opinion; you do not want to bring too much monsters though, and 2 to 4 per wave is more than enough in my opinion.
Adjusting the number of encounters and rest is what is implied/recommended in the DMG, and I think it is a pretty good way to adjust difficulty too, although this is more of something you do before or after the combat encounter.
Personally, fudging dice rolls is my favorite way to adjust difficulty. It gives you the result you need immediately. Just do not over use it or use it as a crutch though, or else it would be pretty easy to catch on.
In terms of leveling, I like to do a hybrid of milestone and XP. I tell my players to use XP so they feel they are in more control over the progress of their character, but I can adjust the number of monsters and difficulty to limit how much XP they gain. And after they completed a meaningful quest or event or something, I can give them whatever amount of XP that feels appropriate or just tell them to level up directly to the next level.
For me, CR is fine the way it is. I do not think CR should be the only way to evaluate and plan encounters, and I think it is best used in combination with the above tools to fine tune an encounter in real time rather than trying to pre-plan everything to make sure everything is perfectly balanced.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >
Really good, thought-provoking thread.
A few things come to mind:
1. demand more of your players. with the proliferation of spells, sub-classes, feats, fighting styles, etc. a new or novice DM can get overwhelmed. Let the players know they are responsible for their character sheet. In addition, they need to be ready to go on their turn- no tuning out on social media or whatever.
2. simpler campaigns, gradually more involved until the DM finds the sweetspot they find enjoyable. Someone above mentioned Mercer. I like Matt. Not everyone can spend full time creating worlds and campaigns. newer DMs can use the packaged modules/adventures and tailor to suit. A note to Wizards- make the published adventures easier to DM: more narrative, less cross referencing, put the stat blocks in the encounter.
3. DMs need to be ok to tell the group halfway through the session that they've gone in a direction not anticipated and more prep is needed to do it justice. "Let's pick it up next time". Some DMs thrive on major off the cuff diversions. Some get overwhelmed.
Finally, D&D is a game. If you are the DM and not enjoying it, then fall back and regroup to find a solution. Take a week or two off. Don't just miserably grind through it.
The DM duties could be more spread out, with the players doing more of the worldbuilding and storytelling. 5e does a little bit of this with the character background suggestions like flaws and bonds. But there could be encouragement to do more, like inventing your own minor proficiencies, home town, etc. Perhaps even encourage players to recommend outcomes of actions and the DM will tell them the DC to achieve that action.