I think it has more of a willingness to be a DM and shoulder the burden versus any type of guide provided to us... I mean most of the editions I read to a degree say "at the end of the day DM's call" soo really to a degree a DM does make it's own rules.
I think the appeal, especially if someone is new to the game, is that if you are creating a character, you are just that, a character. If you are a DM you have to be everybody... and really at that point in most cases you probably are better off trying to find a beginner module of some sort and DM that to test the waters (but even than you have to willingly still be everybody, not just one)... you also have to anticipate your players, how they'd react, etc, which also makes first time DMing, not as appealing.
I think it has more of a willingness to be a DM and shoulder the burden versus any type of guide provided to us... I mean most of the editions I read to a degree say "at the end of the day DM's call" soo really to a degree a DM does make it’s own rules.
For a lot of aspiring (and not a few more experienced ones too) DMs, it’s a daunting task. And, especially once they start prepping an adventure or homebrewing something, they realize the daunting part isn’t learning the rules or putting in the hours or taking your players through a module. The hard part is taking an encounter and making it interesting, or making NPCs come to life, or thinking on your feet when your players throw you a curve ball - the hard part, essentially, is getting the stuff right that isn’t written down. And while most DMGs have their failings, the 5E one is particularly poor at helping prospective DMs figure out how to do that or even at instilling confidence they can do this; probably with a lot of trial and error, falling down and getting back up, but that’s ok - and that’s another thing a good DMG should convey, the idea that you don’t have to be great from the start and that it takes a whole group pitching in to have a great game rather than one person carrying everything and everyone. A good DMG would IMO go a long way towards inspiring that willingness in players to become DMs.
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For a lot of aspiring (and not a few more experienced ones too) DMs, it’s a daunting task. And, especially once they start prepping an adventure or homebrewing something, they realize the daunting part isn’t learning the rules or putting in the hours or taking your players through a module. The hard part is taking an encounter and making it interesting, or making NPCs come to life, or thinking on your feet when your players throw you a curve ball - the hard part, essentially, is getting the stuff right that isn’t written down. And while most DMGs have their failings, the 5E one is particularly poor at helping prospective DMs figure out how to do that or even at instilling confidence they can do this; probably with a lot of trial and error, falling down and getting back up, but that’s ok - and that’s another thing a good DMG should convey, the idea that you don’t have to be great from the start and that it takes a whole group pitching in to have a great game rather than one person carrying everything and everyone. A good DMG would IMO go a long way towards inspiring that willingness in players to become DMs.
I think that's a fair criticism of the DMG, but I'm sort of wondering (and this is me asking not challenging because I really don't know) I always thought the Essentials and Lost Mines of the Philanderer (sic, rather than look it up and get it right, I like that looking funny ... in fact I think my game world is going to have locale of that name) gave some coaching on that front. It's sort of odd, but I also get it that the "core books" weren't necessarily designed as the entry level products, but something picked up if you want to buy in further. On the other hand, I think it's ironic that the more "advanced" options in Tasha's and Van Richten's do more actual DM coaching, and on a breeze flip through it looks like Wild Beyond the Wynchlight is doing more intensive DM coaching as well on the RPing front. (All this sort of suggests my thinking that D&D. 2024 might be a consolidation of "the latest cool" as well as "stuff we should have put in the core in the first place").
But yes, suspending disbelief, verisimilitude, immersion whatever you want to call it, what some players and DMs just call "fluff" is a key soft skill to DMing. I don't know if I'd say it's the most important skill, but it's certainly important to a lot of play styles. I'd actually say the most important is the balance in world construction to provide players agency (which I sometimes flippantly call "knowing when to shut up.")
I'll say this... I've been DM'ing for a bit over a year now with the groups I've played with all having a good time... and I've never read the DMG.
I've missed out on a few details that only come up in the DMG, but honestly the PHB is my go-to book for referencing anything related to the game. A lot of the stuff that is in the DMG is the minute details that won't come up at most tables, or details that are elaborated upon or replaced by later books. I think Xanathar's Guide is a better DMG than the actual DMG.
That's one of the reasons I'm pretty excited for the 2024 reboot they're planning for 5e. One of the problems with D&D has been how difficult it is to errata things... like, the Ranger abilities ended up not being applicable to most tables, because a lot of DM's go for extremely simplified or zero exploration/travel rules. I think a nice, Day 1 redo of everything that works about 5e is a good idea, and hopefully will make DM'ing less daunting for new players. I can see someone wanting to DM, so they buy the DMG, which has useful information, sure, but doesn't really do as much to prepare anyone for the role of DM compared to just buying an adventure and the PHB and jumping in.
It's sort of odd, but I also get it that the "core books" weren't necessarily designed as the entry level products, but something picked up if you want to buy in further.
I mean, if you decide to become a DM... doesn't that sort of presume you're buying in further?
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It's sort of odd, but I also get it that the "core books" weren't necessarily designed as the entry level products, but something picked up if you want to buy in further.
I mean, if you decide to become a DM... doesn't that sort of presume you're buying in further?
What I mean, is that it's my understanding that LMO the Philanderer is designed to intro the game to players and DMs who are both new to TTRPGs, consequently the DMG buying in further has already been given a sort of cheat sheet or brief on the concerns you raised in your critique of the DMG. It seems to me someone buying the DMG has 1.) prior experience with TTRPG, likely as a DM and/or 2.) exposure to fundamentals of conveying a "sense of place" to the game via one of the entry or essentials products. But I've never looked though the Essentials set, maybe I lost mine to a philanderer.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
It's sort of odd, but I also get it that the "core books" weren't necessarily designed as the entry level products, but something picked up if you want to buy in further.
I mean, if you decide to become a DM... doesn't that sort of presume you're buying in further?
What I mean, is that it's my understanding that LMO the Philanderer is designed to intro the game to players and DMs who are both new to TTRPGs, consequently the DMG buying in further has already been given a sort of cheat sheet or brief on the concerns you raised in your critique of the DMG. It seems to me someone buying the DMG has 1.) prior experience with TTRPG, likely as a DM and/or 2.) exposure to fundamentals of conveying a "sense of place" to the game via one of the entry or essentials products. But I've never looked though the Essentials set, maybe I lost mine to a philanderer.
That seems kind of unlikely to me, since it presumes anyone buying the DMG has somewhat acted as DM already. That's not my experience, as far as I can tell most newbies go through LMoP and/or DoIP as players with a more experienced DM running it, and assuming there's a minimum of stability to that group then they likely won't run those same adventures again with the new DM at the helm. Those adventures are pretty good for an all-new group too, for sure, but that's a fairly rare occurence outside maybe D&D clubs at schools or something like that. I think the most common entry by far for a new DM is having been a player for a while and deciding you want to step up, in which case you're not unlikely to spring for a copy of the DMG or to borrow one. I also think that neither LMoP nor DoIP is all that great for covering the things the DMG skips over, despite being really great intros from a player perspective.
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Being DM is draining and a lot of effort. I'm doing RotFM and I have to prepare 10 mini adventures each time we play because they can choose to go any one of 10 cities. That's a lot of prep and time sunk in, not to mention the increased effort during the actual game time. For each 4 hour session, I'd probably put i at least as much prep time again. That's a full workday.
Even if I were playing with a friend DMing, I'd be at least bringing him gifts to say thank you. And a bunch of strangers wants him to do it for them for free?
Yeah, sure, the player base is growing too fast for free DMs. You can say that about most things in life, though. It's just that DMing is hard to do enjoyably and we're expecting people to just do it. And I'm saying this as someone who has never charged and has no intentions of doing so.
I think it has more of a willingness to be a DM and shoulder the burden versus any type of guide provided to us... I mean most of the editions I read to a degree say "at the end of the day DM's call" soo really to a degree a DM does make it's own rules.
I think the appeal, especially if someone is new to the game, is that if you are creating a character, you are just that, a character. If you are a DM you have to be everybody... and really at that point in most cases you probably are better off trying to find a beginner module of some sort and DM that to test the waters (but even than you have to willingly still be everybody, not just one)... you also have to anticipate your players, how they'd react, etc, which also makes first time DMing, not as appealing.
These view points and perceptions are exactly what I am talking about, and they can make potential GMs have cold feet coming from the community. These view points and perception are definitely not wrong and they are very true and vaild, as being the GM can be exhausting and overwhelming, and sometimes I just do not want to GM either. However, the same thing applies to being players too. I personally go fed up with my powerlessness to help my character the few times when I was a player, and that made me decide that being a player is not for me, not to mention having my creativity and potential be chained and shackled by the class system.
I think what the community and Wizards can do is to frame being a GM as something fun and exciting rather than as a chore. The community and Wizards already does a good job of making D&D appealing for players. You can just read the title itself, and it is already filled with expectations of fun that can be had from exploring dungeons and fighting dragons. Instead of immediately framing the role of the GM as an arbitrator of rules or enforcer of etiquette, I think the community and Wizards would do well to frame the role of the GM as having a lot of fun being an Ancient Red Dragon that is the literal Dungeon Master lording over a mountain range and abandoned castles or something.
I think Matt Colville does a good job of injecting fun and excitement into being a GM. He frames being GM as something you want to do because being GM is something fun and exciting in and of itself.
Playing online with strangers is a very different thing than playing with close friends. If I am going to DM with strangers, I would want to be compensated for my time until we became friends.
Second, many folks have high expectations for a DM these days. If I am expected to deliver then I'm going to have to spend more time preparing. And if I am getting paid, I need to know about the players and what they expect me to deliver.
Third, I've heard so many horror stories about players not engaged, not committed to the group, immature behavior, and so on. If the players are paying for the time, then they should be engaged during the time. That doesn't stop immature behavior, but again, if players are paying for the time, there will be more peer pressure for the players to be a party and not just some sore of edge lord screwing it up for the others.
Concerning the DMG, the AD&D DMG had much more text on how to think like a DM and how to Be a DM. It had to have this because there were fewer modules at first and little else to draw upon to build a world and be a DM. Two later released books, The Wilderness Survival Guide and the Dungeoneers Survival Guide (about 1981), went a long way toward helping new DMs come up with material and understand how it would fit together for a coherent world.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
DM'ing is easy, just have a command voice, be organized and have a plan. The biggest help for me was going through the Army's PLDC NCO training program, you learned how to communicate in an articulate way to your fellow soldiers by giving classes infront of 50 or 60 people. You learned how to read material quickly and accurately in a very short amount of time. So when you DM a module, you can quickly ascertain and grok the situations when need be. Lastly, being a DM is the best, you can come up with all kinds of voices and different personalities for your players to interact with. Personally, I wish I could DM more groups, because I do feel bad for those who cant find games but I am DM'ing 4 campaigns (Free, I do have some integrity lol), so I am stretched thin and my current groups thankfully put up with my drill sergeant mannerisms lol.
The way the game is set up, DMing requires a lot more work - both at the table and especially outside of it - than being a player. It's not a player base issue, it's an investment issue. There will always be people who are uncomfortable with playing the DM role, but as it stands it's hard to find people willing to put in the commitment. There will always be people who want to DM, but 5e requires a lot of expertise and homework (on top of narrative and multi-character roleplay skills) to do adequately.
Half the popularity of games like Gloomhaven is that they are "GMless" - everyone gets to play, nobody has to do extra homework.
The way the game is set up, DMing requires a lot more work - both at the table and especially outside of it - than being a player. It's not a player base issue, it's an investment issue. There will always be people who are uncomfortable with playing the DM role, but as it stands it's hard to find people willing to put in the commitment. There will always be people who want to DM, but 5e requires a lot of expertise and homework (on top of narrative and multi-character roleplay skills) to do adequately.
Half the popularity of games like Gloomhaven is that they are "GMless" - everyone gets to play, nobody has to do extra homework.
I do not think it is an investment issue. There are plenty of ways to reduce out of session work, and running existing adventure modules just requires reading maybe two or three times of a particular section before you run it for a session.
If the GM is okay with improv, homebrew, and a sandbox style exploration campaign, you can reduce out of session prep time to a bare minimum and just roll encounter tables in session. In my opinion, doing a homebrew campaign is a lot easier than running an adventure module since I can just pull stuff out of my ass and pretend it is something I have planned all along, when all I really did is just read encounter tables for inspirationa and I often skip the rolling and just pick whatever sounds interesting.
A lot of the posters here are pointing out the support fornbew DMs. Let me talk briefly about the flip side of the coin.
There are several reasons why I choose not to put myself out there and offer to DM a group on here. I've already spoken about one, but here's another one:
All the "AItA?" threads.
It seems like every couple of days, there's a new thread about how someone is a terrible excuse for a DM/player who has committed some crime against humanity because they ruled that no, you can't do a triple back jump and shoot 3 different Orcs with your heavy crossbow as part of your reaction, or horror of horrors, allowed a player a purely cosmetic pet that plays no role in the mechanics of the game. Okay, that's pretty extreme hyperbole, but I daresay you know the threads I'm parodying.
Now, if it were just that player, it wouldn't bother me. There are a lot of games and there will occasionally by the odd person who has to convince the Internet that they're right. But then the forum gets involved and rather than recognising that they're getting a highly biased and tailored account (and that's true of even the most scrupulously honest of us when recounting events in which we feel we're in the right), there is inevitably a multiple debate as some rush to dogpile on the BBEDM/BBEP and others disagree or, occasionally, try to point out that we know next to nothing of what actually happened.
I just don't want to have that happen to me. I mean, I'm sure my name wouldn't be mentioned, names never have before in my experience. But I don't want to be reading a thread and wondering if people are debating my decisions. I'm absolutely fine with the "In this situation, the DM ruled thusly, is that correct?" types, but not the emotionally charged complaining and lamenting that goes on in the AItA threads. I don't want to deal with it, and while it may not happen on DDB, there's Reddit, etc. I can guarantee that it won't happen at all by playing with people that I know.
Perhaps if we didn't encourage those threads and were firmly "We weren't there, we don't know what's been going on, and it wouldn't be right for us to judge someone without knowing those things. Try speaking to them in a calm non-confrontational way and see if you can resolve it. If you can't, then perhaps another group would be a more enjoyable experience."
Maybe it wouldn't change much, I don't know. I think it would encourage me though, or at least reduce the discouragement, if when potentially having to deal with players that don't get on with me, there isn't going to be a thread moaning about me when I'm just trying my best, albeit with inevitable mistakes and errors.
Just a few thoughts that ran on longer than I expected when I started!
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Third, I've heard so many horror stories about players not engaged, not committed to the group, immature behavior, and so on. If the players are paying for the time, then they should be engaged during the time. That doesn't stop immature behavior, but again, if players are paying for the time, there will be more peer pressure for the players to be a party and not just some sore of edge lord screwing it up for the others.
I wanna touch on this... I don't have any experience with being a paid DM, but I am a freelance artist and I have, for various reasons, given away free art in the past. People who get Free Art are often much harder to please than people who have paid for it. Someone paying money will, more often than not, recognize the time and effort it takes to produce art, and understand that asking for sweeping changes deep into the project isn't just a matter of just "doing it in photoshop real quick". I'd imagine the attitudes are similar with D&D... if you're willing to pay for the DM's time, you must value it at least a little.
That reminds me of something else that's kind of a tangent. Do you all remember Something Awful? One thing I remember about it was that they charged a fee to join their forums... not enough to be legitimately profitable long-term, but just enough to make sure that anyone who joined the forums had at least some sense of investment and if they were banned for breaking forum rules or something they wouldn't just pop up again with a sockpuppet account and cause more trouble. I'm not sure how well all that worked... I mostly remember these details from an article about something else that just used the Something Awful forums as a point of reference.
I chalk it up to selfishness and lack of confidence. There's always been groups where few knew the game well, and an inexperienced person ended up DMing. Whether it be the depth of the edition or simple lack of enthusiasm, ppl just don't want to put the effort in, and seek their own satisfaction.
There's also the disconnection of society too, with more technology and less personal connection, ppl aren't as interested in doing stuff with their friends as they are in indulging in their hobby. If your playing with a group of strangers using a group finder or application, your less engaged with the company of participants and more involved with the experience of play.
A lot of the posters here are pointing out the support fornbew DMs. Let me talk briefly about the flip side of the coin.
There are several reasons why I choose not to put myself out there and offer to DM a group on here. I've already spoken about one, but here's another one:
All the "AItA?" threads.
It seems like every couple of days, there's a new thread about how someone is a terrible excuse for a DM/player who has committed some crime against humanity because they ruled that no, you can't do a triple back jump and shoot 3 different Orcs with your heavy crossbow as part of your reaction, or horror of horrors, allowed a player a purely cosmetic pet that plays no role in the mechanics of the game. Okay, that's pretty extreme hyperbole, but I daresay you know the threads I'm parodying.
Now, if it were just that player, it wouldn't bother me. There are a lot of games and there will occasionally by the odd person who has to convince the Internet that they're right. But then the forum gets involved and rather than recognising that they're getting a highly biased and tailored account (and that's true of even the most scrupulously honest of us when recounting events in which we feel we're in the right), there is inevitably a multiple debate as some rush to dogpile on the BBEDM/BBEP and others disagree or, occasionally, try to point out that we know next to nothing of what actually happened.
I just don't want to have that happen to me. I mean, I'm sure my name wouldn't be mentioned, names never have before in my experience. But I don't want to be reading a thread and wondering if people are debating my decisions. I'm absolutely fine with the "In this situation, the DM ruled thusly, is that correct?" types, but not the emotionally charged complaining and lamenting that goes on in the AItA threads. I don't want to deal with it, and while it may not happen on DDB, there's Reddit, etc. I can guarantee that it won't happen at all by playing with people that I know.
Perhaps if we didn't encourage those threads and were firmly "We weren't there, we don't know what's been going on, and it wouldn't be right for us to judge someone without knowing those things. Try speaking to them in a calm non-confrontational way and see if you can resolve it. If you can't, then perhaps another group would be a more enjoyable experience."
Maybe it wouldn't change much, I don't know. I think it would encourage me though, or at least reduce the discouragement, if when potentially having to deal with players that don't get on with me, there isn't going to be a thread moaning about me when I'm just trying my best, albeit with inevitable mistakes and errors.
Just a few thoughts that ran on longer than I expected when I started!
I honestly can't see how any of this should prevent anyone from DMing. I mean if "being anonymously alluded to on the internet with negative connotation" is a concern, I really don't know how anyone could go about living their lives unless they lived in a bunker with some sort of automated package and delivery retrieval system.
I also think the "validate my complaint" posts, what you call AITA, actually don't weigh as much proportionally in the traffic as you're asserting. It's like I think you're saying the possibility of being discussed critically yet anonymously on the Internet is is the toxic consequences of online socialization ... when in reality I'd say sites like this and Reddit or ENWorld and YouTube and maybe even Twitter actually engenders better informed playing and DMing, for those actually willing to have conversations. Sure, as with most things, there are haterade channels, but I think DDB isn't one, and Reddit you can pick and choose where you go.
It's a kind of hypocrisy that happens in D&D communities. On the one hand, there is a general mantra that every DM and every group should "play D&D however they want", aka the classic, D&D is everything to everyone and there is no wrong way to play it, your way is the right way. That all changes as soon as you're dealing with a specific example and break down that circumstance on the forum.
Well it's a logic of fear, that seems largely unfounded "what will people think about me discussed hypothetically on an anonymized Internet forum" is really a disabling factor to going about life and something that most folks learn to get past sometime in the developmental, I think it's the mirror stage but I'm not a developmental psychology. And I don't write that to discount the people who do in fact have true clinical social anxiety, but those being treated for it learn ways to negotiate it and "never DMing because of the Internet" doesn't seem to be in line with protocols and adaptations with which I'm familiar. As for the hypocrisy, you're painting with pretty broad brush, but I'll except your argumentative style is Kaiju after your screen name. One can endorse there are many ways to play D&D while also be critical either constructively or interventionistly when toxicities or injuries are raised. Tolerance and permissiveness can always be challenged by exceptional out of order situations. That's sort of basic human operating system code. Sure sometimes the concerns aren't valid, sometimes they are, and sometimes insight can be gleaned from a. discussion.
I don't think it's happening because folks like to invent scapegoats for their dissatisfaction with this or that in their recreational pastimes I guess, but the OP began this thread insinuating there was something problematic about the present D&D player base that's detrimental to game play. I think the healthy response is a "the kids are all right stance" and the hobby is either "same as it ever was" or going through a great popular period. For those laying down invectives against the community ... I just don't think I'd adhere to a hobby that causes me such reflective anguish ... unless I was going through an adolescent oppositional/defiant/contrarian stage where my brain chemistry had me thinking no one really got D&D but me. Rock flag and eagle! as Charlie Day would say.
I would say that yes too many players not enough DMs at the moment. The only reason I ever was able to start playing DnD was because I offered to be the DM. Nobody else offered, and I now find myself playing only as a DM now. I think it can really turn people off because of being unable to find a DM, or at the very least a decent one.
I really don't see how this is any different to how it's been since D&D began.
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"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
All TTRPG's have this issue, I mean I am not looking at my Cyberpunk community and finding a lacking of players and too many GM's and a friend of mine just completed a Vampire campaign and has asked me if I can start up a new one as there GM is taking a break to go travelling. Personally my plate is a little too full right now to start a new campaign, and 15 years of GM'ing the world of darkness I need a long break from it.
Things will balance out, every new group will find someone to stick a hand up and say I will give it a go, one issue though is the number of experienced DM's who tell new DM's be a player first to learnt the game, I think that is really bad advice, if you wan't to DM then just dive in and DM if you have a group and are struggling to find a DM then take it in turns until one of you finds it is their calling.
I do not think it is an investment issue. There are plenty of ways to reduce out of session work, and running existing adventure modules just requires reading maybe two or three times of a particular section before you run it for a session.
It is an investment issue but part of the reason being a DM is seen as this massive investment of time is because of the perceived expectations by would be DM on what they think it means to be a DM and frankly if this forum is any indication, the very high expectations I think players have on their DM's.
If a GM worth their salt bothers to do any research, they will encounter plenty of ways to reduce workload to a bare minimum. I do not think it is too hard to stumble upon Matt Colville's videos, and he practically did most of the hard work already for a new GM in the first few videos. LMOP is great and I love it, but I do not think it is ideal to run for brand spanking new GMs with zero TTRPG experience. Matt Colville's short campaign is far shorter and more digestable in my opinion, and can quickly help players decide whether this is a hobby they want to dabble further in. LMOP is too long as my party of five shrunk to three after a few sessions.
You only need to plan one session in advance, maybe two if you know your campaign is relatively railroady. And if the GM is running premade module, all they got to do to prep is to spend an hour or two and just read the relevant sections a few times. Depending on how a GM likes to worldbuild, if they like to explore the world together with their players and let the dice reveal their discoveries, then there is not much you can do to prep since most of the work will be done when you actually play.
I do not think it is an investment issue. There are plenty of ways to reduce out of session work, and running existing adventure modules just requires reading maybe two or three times of a particular section before you run it for a session.
It is an investment issue but part of the reason being a DM is seen as this massive investment of time is because of the perceived expectations by would be DM on what they think it means to be a DM and frankly if this forum is any indication, the very high expectations I think players have on their DM's.
If a GM worth their salt bothers to do any research, they will encounter plenty of ways to reduce workload to a bare minimum. I do not think it is too hard to stumble upon Matt Colville's videos, and he practically did most of the hard work already for a new GM in the first few videos. LMOP is great and I love it, but I do not think it is ideal to run for brand spanking new GMs with zero TTRPG experience. Matt Colville's short campaign is far shorter and more digestable in my opinion, and can quickly help players decide whether this is a hobby they want to dabble further in. LMOP is too long as my party of five shrunk to three after a few sessions.
You only need to plan one session in advance, maybe two if you know your campaign is relatively railroady. And if the GM is running premade module, all they got to do to prep is to spend an hour or two and just read the relevant sections a few times. Depending on how a GM likes to worldbuild, if they like to explore the world together with their players and let the dice reveal their discoveries, then there is not much you can do to prep since most of the work will be done when you actually play.
I absolutely agree, but I also understand that for a new DM it doesn't intuitively come across as such, and that it takes some experience to really know what is needed (and more importantly, what isn't) to plan one or two sessions. I can offer all the good advice in the world to players who come to me about becoming a DM, but I can't necessarily make them believe it.
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I think it has more of a willingness to be a DM and shoulder the burden versus any type of guide provided to us... I mean most of the editions I read to a degree say "at the end of the day DM's call" soo really to a degree a DM does make it's own rules.
I think the appeal, especially if someone is new to the game, is that if you are creating a character, you are just that, a character. If you are a DM you have to be everybody... and really at that point in most cases you probably are better off trying to find a beginner module of some sort and DM that to test the waters (but even than you have to willingly still be everybody, not just one)... you also have to anticipate your players, how they'd react, etc, which also makes first time DMing, not as appealing.
For a lot of aspiring (and not a few more experienced ones too) DMs, it’s a daunting task. And, especially once they start prepping an adventure or homebrewing something, they realize the daunting part isn’t learning the rules or putting in the hours or taking your players through a module. The hard part is taking an encounter and making it interesting, or making NPCs come to life, or thinking on your feet when your players throw you a curve ball - the hard part, essentially, is getting the stuff right that isn’t written down. And while most DMGs have their failings, the 5E one is particularly poor at helping prospective DMs figure out how to do that or even at instilling confidence they can do this; probably with a lot of trial and error, falling down and getting back up, but that’s ok - and that’s another thing a good DMG should convey, the idea that you don’t have to be great from the start and that it takes a whole group pitching in to have a great game rather than one person carrying everything and everyone. A good DMG would IMO go a long way towards inspiring that willingness in players to become DMs.
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I think that's a fair criticism of the DMG, but I'm sort of wondering (and this is me asking not challenging because I really don't know) I always thought the Essentials and Lost Mines of the Philanderer (sic, rather than look it up and get it right, I like that looking funny ... in fact I think my game world is going to have locale of that name) gave some coaching on that front. It's sort of odd, but I also get it that the "core books" weren't necessarily designed as the entry level products, but something picked up if you want to buy in further. On the other hand, I think it's ironic that the more "advanced" options in Tasha's and Van Richten's do more actual DM coaching, and on a breeze flip through it looks like Wild Beyond the Wynchlight is doing more intensive DM coaching as well on the RPing front. (All this sort of suggests my thinking that D&D. 2024 might be a consolidation of "the latest cool" as well as "stuff we should have put in the core in the first place").
But yes, suspending disbelief, verisimilitude, immersion whatever you want to call it, what some players and DMs just call "fluff" is a key soft skill to DMing. I don't know if I'd say it's the most important skill, but it's certainly important to a lot of play styles. I'd actually say the most important is the balance in world construction to provide players agency (which I sometimes flippantly call "knowing when to shut up.")
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I'll say this... I've been DM'ing for a bit over a year now with the groups I've played with all having a good time... and I've never read the DMG.
I've missed out on a few details that only come up in the DMG, but honestly the PHB is my go-to book for referencing anything related to the game. A lot of the stuff that is in the DMG is the minute details that won't come up at most tables, or details that are elaborated upon or replaced by later books. I think Xanathar's Guide is a better DMG than the actual DMG.
That's one of the reasons I'm pretty excited for the 2024 reboot they're planning for 5e. One of the problems with D&D has been how difficult it is to errata things... like, the Ranger abilities ended up not being applicable to most tables, because a lot of DM's go for extremely simplified or zero exploration/travel rules. I think a nice, Day 1 redo of everything that works about 5e is a good idea, and hopefully will make DM'ing less daunting for new players. I can see someone wanting to DM, so they buy the DMG, which has useful information, sure, but doesn't really do as much to prepare anyone for the role of DM compared to just buying an adventure and the PHB and jumping in.
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I mean, if you decide to become a DM... doesn't that sort of presume you're buying in further?
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What I mean, is that it's my understanding that LMO the Philanderer is designed to intro the game to players and DMs who are both new to TTRPGs, consequently the DMG buying in further has already been given a sort of cheat sheet or brief on the concerns you raised in your critique of the DMG. It seems to me someone buying the DMG has 1.) prior experience with TTRPG, likely as a DM and/or 2.) exposure to fundamentals of conveying a "sense of place" to the game via one of the entry or essentials products. But I've never looked though the Essentials set, maybe I lost mine to a philanderer.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
That seems kind of unlikely to me, since it presumes anyone buying the DMG has somewhat acted as DM already. That's not my experience, as far as I can tell most newbies go through LMoP and/or DoIP as players with a more experienced DM running it, and assuming there's a minimum of stability to that group then they likely won't run those same adventures again with the new DM at the helm. Those adventures are pretty good for an all-new group too, for sure, but that's a fairly rare occurence outside maybe D&D clubs at schools or something like that. I think the most common entry by far for a new DM is having been a player for a while and deciding you want to step up, in which case you're not unlikely to spring for a copy of the DMG or to borrow one. I also think that neither LMoP nor DoIP is all that great for covering the things the DMG skips over, despite being really great intros from a player perspective.
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These view points and perceptions are exactly what I am talking about, and they can make potential GMs have cold feet coming from the community. These view points and perception are definitely not wrong and they are very true and vaild, as being the GM can be exhausting and overwhelming, and sometimes I just do not want to GM either. However, the same thing applies to being players too. I personally go fed up with my powerlessness to help my character the few times when I was a player, and that made me decide that being a player is not for me, not to mention having my creativity and potential be chained and shackled by the class system.
I think what the community and Wizards can do is to frame being a GM as something fun and exciting rather than as a chore. The community and Wizards already does a good job of making D&D appealing for players. You can just read the title itself, and it is already filled with expectations of fun that can be had from exploring dungeons and fighting dragons. Instead of immediately framing the role of the GM as an arbitrator of rules or enforcer of etiquette, I think the community and Wizards would do well to frame the role of the GM as having a lot of fun being an Ancient Red Dragon that is the literal Dungeon Master lording over a mountain range and abandoned castles or something.
I think Matt Colville does a good job of injecting fun and excitement into being a GM. He frames being GM as something you want to do because being GM is something fun and exciting in and of itself.
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Playing online with strangers is a very different thing than playing with close friends. If I am going to DM with strangers, I would want to be compensated for my time until we became friends.
Second, many folks have high expectations for a DM these days. If I am expected to deliver then I'm going to have to spend more time preparing. And if I am getting paid, I need to know about the players and what they expect me to deliver.
Third, I've heard so many horror stories about players not engaged, not committed to the group, immature behavior, and so on. If the players are paying for the time, then they should be engaged during the time. That doesn't stop immature behavior, but again, if players are paying for the time, there will be more peer pressure for the players to be a party and not just some sore of edge lord screwing it up for the others.
Concerning the DMG, the AD&D DMG had much more text on how to think like a DM and how to Be a DM. It had to have this because there were fewer modules at first and little else to draw upon to build a world and be a DM. Two later released books, The Wilderness Survival Guide and the Dungeoneers Survival Guide (about 1981), went a long way toward helping new DMs come up with material and understand how it would fit together for a coherent world.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
DM'ing is easy, just have a command voice, be organized and have a plan. The biggest help for me was going through the Army's PLDC NCO training program, you learned how to communicate in an articulate way to your fellow soldiers by giving classes infront of 50 or 60 people. You learned how to read material quickly and accurately in a very short amount of time. So when you DM a module, you can quickly ascertain and grok the situations when need be. Lastly, being a DM is the best, you can come up with all kinds of voices and different personalities for your players to interact with. Personally, I wish I could DM more groups, because I do feel bad for those who cant find games but I am DM'ing 4 campaigns (Free, I do have some integrity lol), so I am stretched thin and my current groups thankfully put up with my drill sergeant mannerisms lol.
The way the game is set up, DMing requires a lot more work - both at the table and especially outside of it - than being a player. It's not a player base issue, it's an investment issue. There will always be people who are uncomfortable with playing the DM role, but as it stands it's hard to find people willing to put in the commitment. There will always be people who want to DM, but 5e requires a lot of expertise and homework (on top of narrative and multi-character roleplay skills) to do adequately.
Half the popularity of games like Gloomhaven is that they are "GMless" - everyone gets to play, nobody has to do extra homework.
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile.
I do not think it is an investment issue. There are plenty of ways to reduce out of session work, and running existing adventure modules just requires reading maybe two or three times of a particular section before you run it for a session.
If the GM is okay with improv, homebrew, and a sandbox style exploration campaign, you can reduce out of session prep time to a bare minimum and just roll encounter tables in session. In my opinion, doing a homebrew campaign is a lot easier than running an adventure module since I can just pull stuff out of my ass and pretend it is something I have planned all along, when all I really did is just read encounter tables for inspirationa and I often skip the rolling and just pick whatever sounds interesting.
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A lot of the posters here are pointing out the support fornbew DMs. Let me talk briefly about the flip side of the coin.
There are several reasons why I choose not to put myself out there and offer to DM a group on here. I've already spoken about one, but here's another one:
All the "AItA?" threads.
It seems like every couple of days, there's a new thread about how someone is a terrible excuse for a DM/player who has committed some crime against humanity because they ruled that no, you can't do a triple back jump and shoot 3 different Orcs with your heavy crossbow as part of your reaction, or horror of horrors, allowed a player a purely cosmetic pet that plays no role in the mechanics of the game. Okay, that's pretty extreme hyperbole, but I daresay you know the threads I'm parodying.
Now, if it were just that player, it wouldn't bother me. There are a lot of games and there will occasionally by the odd person who has to convince the Internet that they're right. But then the forum gets involved and rather than recognising that they're getting a highly biased and tailored account (and that's true of even the most scrupulously honest of us when recounting events in which we feel we're in the right), there is inevitably a multiple debate as some rush to dogpile on the BBEDM/BBEP and others disagree or, occasionally, try to point out that we know next to nothing of what actually happened.
I just don't want to have that happen to me. I mean, I'm sure my name wouldn't be mentioned, names never have before in my experience. But I don't want to be reading a thread and wondering if people are debating my decisions. I'm absolutely fine with the "In this situation, the DM ruled thusly, is that correct?" types, but not the emotionally charged complaining and lamenting that goes on in the AItA threads. I don't want to deal with it, and while it may not happen on DDB, there's Reddit, etc. I can guarantee that it won't happen at all by playing with people that I know.
Perhaps if we didn't encourage those threads and were firmly "We weren't there, we don't know what's been going on, and it wouldn't be right for us to judge someone without knowing those things. Try speaking to them in a calm non-confrontational way and see if you can resolve it. If you can't, then perhaps another group would be a more enjoyable experience."
Maybe it wouldn't change much, I don't know. I think it would encourage me though, or at least reduce the discouragement, if when potentially having to deal with players that don't get on with me, there isn't going to be a thread moaning about me when I'm just trying my best, albeit with inevitable mistakes and errors.
Just a few thoughts that ran on longer than I expected when I started!
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I wanna touch on this... I don't have any experience with being a paid DM, but I am a freelance artist and I have, for various reasons, given away free art in the past. People who get Free Art are often much harder to please than people who have paid for it. Someone paying money will, more often than not, recognize the time and effort it takes to produce art, and understand that asking for sweeping changes deep into the project isn't just a matter of just "doing it in photoshop real quick". I'd imagine the attitudes are similar with D&D... if you're willing to pay for the DM's time, you must value it at least a little.
That reminds me of something else that's kind of a tangent. Do you all remember Something Awful? One thing I remember about it was that they charged a fee to join their forums... not enough to be legitimately profitable long-term, but just enough to make sure that anyone who joined the forums had at least some sense of investment and if they were banned for breaking forum rules or something they wouldn't just pop up again with a sockpuppet account and cause more trouble. I'm not sure how well all that worked... I mostly remember these details from an article about something else that just used the Something Awful forums as a point of reference.
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I chalk it up to selfishness and lack of confidence. There's always been groups where few knew the game well, and an inexperienced person ended up DMing. Whether it be the depth of the edition or simple lack of enthusiasm, ppl just don't want to put the effort in, and seek their own satisfaction.
There's also the disconnection of society too, with more technology and less personal connection, ppl aren't as interested in doing stuff with their friends as they are in indulging in their hobby. If your playing with a group of strangers using a group finder or application, your less engaged with the company of participants and more involved with the experience of play.
I honestly can't see how any of this should prevent anyone from DMing. I mean if "being anonymously alluded to on the internet with negative connotation" is a concern, I really don't know how anyone could go about living their lives unless they lived in a bunker with some sort of automated package and delivery retrieval system.
I also think the "validate my complaint" posts, what you call AITA, actually don't weigh as much proportionally in the traffic as you're asserting. It's like I think you're saying the possibility of being discussed critically yet anonymously on the Internet is is the toxic consequences of online socialization ... when in reality I'd say sites like this and Reddit or ENWorld and YouTube and maybe even Twitter actually engenders better informed playing and DMing, for those actually willing to have conversations. Sure, as with most things, there are haterade channels, but I think DDB isn't one, and Reddit you can pick and choose where you go.
Well it's a logic of fear, that seems largely unfounded "what will people think about me discussed hypothetically on an anonymized Internet forum" is really a disabling factor to going about life and something that most folks learn to get past sometime in the developmental, I think it's the mirror stage but I'm not a developmental psychology. And I don't write that to discount the people who do in fact have true clinical social anxiety, but those being treated for it learn ways to negotiate it and "never DMing because of the Internet" doesn't seem to be in line with protocols and adaptations with which I'm familiar. As for the hypocrisy, you're painting with pretty broad brush, but I'll except your argumentative style is Kaiju after your screen name. One can endorse there are many ways to play D&D while also be critical either constructively or interventionistly when toxicities or injuries are raised. Tolerance and permissiveness can always be challenged by exceptional out of order situations. That's sort of basic human operating system code. Sure sometimes the concerns aren't valid, sometimes they are, and sometimes insight can be gleaned from a. discussion.
I don't think it's happening because folks like to invent scapegoats for their dissatisfaction with this or that in their recreational pastimes I guess, but the OP began this thread insinuating there was something problematic about the present D&D player base that's detrimental to game play. I think the healthy response is a "the kids are all right stance" and the hobby is either "same as it ever was" or going through a great popular period. For those laying down invectives against the community ... I just don't think I'd adhere to a hobby that causes me such reflective anguish ... unless I was going through an adolescent oppositional/defiant/contrarian stage where my brain chemistry had me thinking no one really got D&D but me. Rock flag and eagle! as Charlie Day would say.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I really don't see how this is any different to how it's been since D&D began.
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
― Oscar Wilde.
All TTRPG's have this issue, I mean I am not looking at my Cyberpunk community and finding a lacking of players and too many GM's and a friend of mine just completed a Vampire campaign and has asked me if I can start up a new one as there GM is taking a break to go travelling. Personally my plate is a little too full right now to start a new campaign, and 15 years of GM'ing the world of darkness I need a long break from it.
Things will balance out, every new group will find someone to stick a hand up and say I will give it a go, one issue though is the number of experienced DM's who tell new DM's be a player first to learnt the game, I think that is really bad advice, if you wan't to DM then just dive in and DM if you have a group and are struggling to find a DM then take it in turns until one of you finds it is their calling.
If a GM worth their salt bothers to do any research, they will encounter plenty of ways to reduce workload to a bare minimum. I do not think it is too hard to stumble upon Matt Colville's videos, and he practically did most of the hard work already for a new GM in the first few videos. LMOP is great and I love it, but I do not think it is ideal to run for brand spanking new GMs with zero TTRPG experience. Matt Colville's short campaign is far shorter and more digestable in my opinion, and can quickly help players decide whether this is a hobby they want to dabble further in. LMOP is too long as my party of five shrunk to three after a few sessions.
You only need to plan one session in advance, maybe two if you know your campaign is relatively railroady. And if the GM is running premade module, all they got to do to prep is to spend an hour or two and just read the relevant sections a few times. Depending on how a GM likes to worldbuild, if they like to explore the world together with their players and let the dice reveal their discoveries, then there is not much you can do to prep since most of the work will be done when you actually play.
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Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
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I absolutely agree, but I also understand that for a new DM it doesn't intuitively come across as such, and that it takes some experience to really know what is needed (and more importantly, what isn't) to plan one or two sessions. I can offer all the good advice in the world to players who come to me about becoming a DM, but I can't necessarily make them believe it.
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