I would recommend looking for a Westmarch style discord server. It isn’t a traditional campaign, more like a big world where you can take certain quests. Try looking it up!
Then virtual tabletops come along and you still can't find a group and...well, you wonder if you're the one doing something wrong.
You aren't doing anything wrong. And you definitely are not alone. Matt Coleville argues, and I think he is probably right, that over the course of modern history, far more people have wanted to play D&D than have actually been able to play it. And this is probably still true. The big-name streams have what? Hundreds of thousands of viewers? How many of them actually have a game going, long-term? I'd bet nowhere near that many.
Because you still need a group of your friends to not just watch the show with you but want to play. And most importantly, the weak link -- you need someone willing to DM. And hardly anyone is. So that is the other problem... A) you need to find a group of people who are all interested, and then B) one of you needs to bite the bullet and DM. And B) may be a bigger sticking point than A).
And I think you hit on something with the popularity of D&D streams. It lets you enjoy it even though you don't have a group of your own. Although, I don't enjoy streams myself, that goes for both video games and tabletop games.
I think the streams are a double-edged sword. Great for the hobby, in that they increased the popularity by probably 10-fold, interesting many more people in the hobby than have ever been interested in it before. But the popular ones are high-quality productions with very experienced GMs and players, thousands of dollars worth of sets and props, multiple mics and cameras, animated stats going off in one corner of the screen, etc. This sets an impossible standard for a new group of players (and especially a new DM) to live up to.
Someone just getting ready to start will watch these shows and the DMs will say, "I can't do that." They can't voice act. They aren't good at improv. They don't know the rules off the top of their heads like this. They don't have a chest full of painted miniatures and high-quality glossy printed battle mats or painted 3D diorama backdrops. They think "this is how you're supposed to DM," see that, and give up. "I can't do that... someone else needs to DM." And every person in the group will say the same. Because nobody (normal, without an internet show and a large budget) could do this.
The potential players are watching professional actors, maybe dressed up in costumes, with hundreds of dollars worth of props like foam or plastic swords, prop glasses and tankards of ale, bags of 100 dice of each type, $100 cherry-wood dice trays, each with their own HeroForge custom-made professionally painted miniatures, stacks of their own copies of the rules, and knowing the ins and outs of their characters like normal people know their own bedroom closet. And those potential players think, "this is how you are supposed to play D&D" and, knowing they can't do that, they give up. Because again, nobody (normal) plays D&D like this.
So watch these professionally done streams (and no, I am not just naming one of them -- many are like this) with experienced webcammers or actors and people who have been playing for years, and you see what they do, and think, first, "That looks like fun!", and then when you start planning to maybe do it, "We can't do that." You look at your own zoom window, with everyone sitting there in sweat pants and cheap headsets, with the bad audio, and the grainy video, and you compare it in your head to the uber-stream, and think, "This isn't what I thought it would be like when I watched it on YouTube..." and are disappointed. And this loses a lot of people back to just being "watchers" of RPGs, rather than players of them.
Thankfully, I have played RPGs since before there was a widely-known internet for people to even stream to, let alone enough bandwidth for the streaming. I have seen D&D played by kids (when we were young), college students (as we grew up), and adults (after college). I've played multiple old-school RPGs that focused more on die rolling than narrative. So I had seen something of what "playing D&D in your spare room" looks like -- which is how it is played by probably 99.9999% of people who actually play it. So when I started watching these streams, I immediately clocked that the expensive looking sets and backdrops behind them, the props on the table, the costumes people were wearing, the thousands of dollars worth of miniatures and dioramas and full-color glossy battle-mats -- those are all great, and make for a good show, but I knew they were not how most people actually play the game. So I was not disappointed when my own Zoom game came together and we were just sitting there in our spare rooms, with our grainy low-FPS transmission, bad audio, and bare-bones gameplay (no props, no miniatures, no battle mats, digital dice, etc). But people who just came into the hobby from watching the streams, are much more liable to be disappointed.
It's like watching NASCAR races before you learn to drive and thinking to yourself that you want to drive because you expect it to be like that. It won't be. EVER. Nobody drives like that except the tiny little fraction of people who manage to get into such a race. 99.9999% of drivers, just try not to get into accidents while they navigate the streets of their town to pick up the groceries.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
In the Beforetimes, long long ago, there were places called game shops that hosted events for D&D where anyone could come and play. I remember those days, DMing for new and interested patrons. But then the COVID came, and we were scattered to the winds...
(Really though, a lot of game shops host D&D events, so when this is all over try to find a local one...the one I used to DM for had a waitlist but ran games every weekend. My group from there continues online using Zoom and Discord)
Yeah, although when I learned about an FLGS running AL “near” me (25 miles), and started going to play, because I only ever DM’d at “home,” I played a grand total of once. After that I ended up as a DM because we had too many players and too few DMs. I was also the only one willing to run a table of mostly jr high boys. While in some respects I was willing to help, and had fun doing so, I really wanted to play. Then COVID hit AND we moved 28 miles further away. Sigh.
I played a grand total of once. After that I ended up as a DM because we had too many players and too few DMs. I was also the only one willing to run a table of mostly jr high boys. While in some respects I was willing to help, and had fun doing so, I really wanted to play.
This.
It is a story that is replicated around the world by nearly every DM who has ever DMed the game. Yes, we are happy to DM sometimes. But we would also like to play.
And since there are never enough of us, we hardly ever do.
I have been DMing 5e for a year now. Know how many times I have played, rather than DMing, 5e? Zero.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
It's not a troll thread. The OP is suffering from what many thousands, probably tens of thousands, of people have over the years since D&D came out -- an interest in the game, and no good way to play it because nobody in the OP's social circle has any interest. Matt Coleville talks about this in his long (wonderful) video on Roleplaying. In speculating why the D&D streams have taken off so much lately, he says that in the history of D&D, far more people have wanted to play it, than have actually played it. Before there were streams, these people would buy all the books, read all the books, buy dice and miniatures, and all the rest, but never had a chance to use any of it because they had no one to play with. When the streams came along, these folks got to at least watch other people play D&D, but many still cannot play themselves. This is exactly what has happened to the OP.
Yes, the title of the thread is a joke. But the thread is about a serious issue, which is that so many more people want to play D&D than can.
Heck, I'm one of them, if you restrict the definition to playing and not DMing. I am currently DMing D&D. But I have never played, as a player with a PC, the game of 5e D&D. In fact, I have not played as a player in a TTRPG since probably 1991. DMed/GMed, yes. Played? No. I'm always the one who GMs.
So... no, it's not really a troll thread. It's actually expressing a very frustrating circumstance for many people, some of whom have been in this circumstance for literal decades -- that for all the D&D they ever have gotten to play, it may as well be just some hoax perpetrated by first TSR and now WOTC, to sell books to people who think they'll be able to play some day but never will.
IMO, best thread title I have seen in a while. Provocative, clear, makes you click on the thread... and the first post describes the issue in a tongue-in-cheek way that also very clearly expresses the frustrations many of us have felt.
Again, I say us, because although I am running a game as DM, I still haven't played 5e as a player.
100% agree. And for many many years, I felt the same. I mean, I was hooked early on because a friend of our had the rules... I think I was 8... or had seen the rules or something. We shared a few dice amongst the four of us, and then he had a couple of machetes at his uncle's house that we enacted the scenes with... and that was as much as I knew until I got my first red box set from my parents at Christmas my 8th grade year (I still have no idea how they heard about it or found it). I was a very avid reader, but with D&D I drew maps, I created new characters and I wouldn't play again until I was in my late 30s having bought nearly every book of every edition since.
Then one day a joke was made, some additional comments were had with a co-worker of my wife's and soon we were in a game. It was Classic World of Darkness for the most part (Mage was his favorite, and he was the Storyteller... so...) and we played for 9 years nearly every Saturday. It was a golden age of gaming. We were hard core... we took turns making food, all of the guys at the table had the same birthday... it was... strange and yet beautiful. And then there was a gaping hole when he did not wake up one morning. In the meantime I had started DMing with a group of guys at work for 4th edition... and we had some fun with it but within a year nearly all of us were living in different towns or working at different companies and that game died. And there was a time... a time of stillness where things were forgotten that should not have been forgotten.
In 2017 I had picked up painting miniatures a lot and went to ReaperCon and was excited about it and was talking with some of the grad students at the college I work at and soon enough we started a game up. We've now burned through a few different students that we've added to the mix or friends of friends, but our group migrated online before the pandemic hit and we've continued right on through. Three of us now rotate through different campaigns and while I don't get the deep story that I loved in our CWOD games (that guy was just amazing and creative and had a knack for knowing when to let the roleplay breathe and when to dive into action)... we have progressed a long way from our Adventure League days where I wasn't sure if I was going to keep playing.
So, I very much understand that feeling of not having a game and having all the materials. And even when you have experienced it, there are going to be times in life where you still reach for something that feels unattainable or that can never be recaptured. And sometimes you have to realize that if you're not the one to reach out and share what you know, no one else will be able to experience what you can provide.
We had finally gotten a local game shop before the pandemic came. Of course they didn't focus on D&D... who could? But they seem to be still hanging on with MtG and other things though they had to move locations and downsize for a time. This might help but even though I play nearly every week, I am guilty of not going in and seeing the scene and helping others to find the hobby. And I think that is as much of a contributing factor as anything. When you do find that table that you play at... suddenly you are no longer looking and your actions show it... you go to the place where you play and no one knows where that is and nearly no one will ever find out about it and so they keep going out and searching. I know of at least three other tables (1 is the IT group on campus, which will be my fallback if this ever ends... and 1 is a mix of History and Government faculty and the last one plays at the store... sort of... there's so much homebrew in the store version that it is hard to recognize as D&D) I would argue in our town of nearly 30K there are a dozen games and tables I would never know anything about. So I wear my shirts and hats and will talk about it with anyone that brings it up. 95% of the time when someone does, they already have a table.
Yeah... there is no golden key to D&D... but there are keys... and there are tables... and most likely, the best one is the key in your pocket and the table at your residence.
Then virtual tabletops come along and you still can't find a group and...well, you wonder if you're the one doing something wrong.
You aren't doing anything wrong. And you definitely are not alone. Matt Coleville argues, and I think he is probably right, that over the course of modern history, far more people have wanted to play D&D than have actually been able to play it. And this is probably still true. The big-name streams have what? Hundreds of thousands of viewers? How many of them actually have a game going, long-term? I'd bet nowhere near that many.
Because you still need a group of your friends to not just watch the show with you but want to play. And most importantly, the weak link -- you need someone willing to DM. And hardly anyone is. So that is the other problem... A) you need to find a group of people who are all interested, and then B) one of you needs to bite the bullet and DM. And B) may be a bigger sticking point than A).
And I think you hit on something with the popularity of D&D streams. It lets you enjoy it even though you don't have a group of your own. Although, I don't enjoy streams myself, that goes for both video games and tabletop games.
I think the streams are a double-edged sword. Great for the hobby, in that they increased the popularity by probably 10-fold, interesting many more people in the hobby than have ever been interested in it before. But the popular ones are high-quality productions with very experienced GMs and players, thousands of dollars worth of sets and props, multiple mics and cameras, animated stats going off in one corner of the screen, etc. This sets an impossible standard for a new group of players (and especially a new DM) to live up to.
Someone just getting ready to start will watch these shows and the DMs will say, "I can't do that." They can't voice act. They aren't good at improv. They don't know the rules off the top of their heads like this. They don't have a chest full of painted miniatures and high-quality glossy printed battle mats or painted 3D diorama backdrops. They think "this is how you're supposed to DM," see that, and give up. "I can't do that... someone else needs to DM." And every person in the group will say the same. Because nobody (normal, without an internet show and a large budget) could do this.
The potential players are watching professional actors, maybe dressed up in costumes, with hundreds of dollars worth of props like foam or plastic swords, prop glasses and tankards of ale, bags of 100 dice of each type, $100 cherry-wood dice trays, each with their own HeroForge custom-made professionally painted miniatures, stacks of their own copies of the rules, and knowing the ins and outs of their characters like normal people know their own bedroom closet. And those potential players think, "this is how you are supposed to play D&D" and, knowing they can't do that, they give up. Because again, nobody (normal) plays D&D like this.
So watch these professionally done streams (and no, I am not just naming one of them -- many are like this) with experienced webcammers or actors and people who have been playing for years, and you see what they do, and think, first, "That looks like fun!", and then when you start planning to maybe do it, "We can't do that." You look at your own zoom window, with everyone sitting there in sweat pants and cheap headsets, with the bad audio, and the grainy video, and you compare it in your head to the uber-stream, and think, "This isn't what I thought it would be like when I watched it on YouTube..." and are disappointed. And this loses a lot of people back to just being "watchers" of RPGs, rather than players of them.
Thankfully, I have played RPGs since before there was a widely-known internet for people to even stream to, let alone enough bandwidth for the streaming. I have seen D&D played by kids (when we were young), college students (as we grew up), and adults (after college). I've played multiple old-school RPGs that focused more on die rolling than narrative. So I had seen something of what "playing D&D in your spare room" looks like -- which is how it is played by probably 99.9999% of people who actually play it. So when I started watching these streams, I immediately clocked that the expensive looking sets and backdrops behind them, the props on the table, the costumes people were wearing, the thousands of dollars worth of miniatures and dioramas and full-color glossy battle-mats -- those are all great, and make for a good show, but I knew they were not how most people actually play the game. So I was not disappointed when my own Zoom game came together and we were just sitting there in our spare rooms, with our grainy low-FPS transmission, bad audio, and bare-bones gameplay (no props, no miniatures, no battle mats, digital dice, etc). But people who just came into the hobby from watching the streams, are much more liable to be disappointed.
It's like watching NASCAR races before you learn to drive and thinking to yourself that you want to drive because you expect it to be like that. It won't be. EVER. Nobody drives like that except the tiny little fraction of people who manage to get into such a race. 99.9999% of drivers, just try not to get into accidents while they navigate the streets of their town to pick up the groceries.
I will only add this - just like there are enthusiasts who buy cars so that they can take them specifically to a racetrack (and will never race competitively), there are people who are elevating their prop game to incredible levels and they don't stream a thing.
I mean, Wyrmwood's recent kickstarter are close to 9 milion dollars in modular gaming tables and that was DURING the pandemic.
To be honest, a show like Critical Role is pretty tame when it comes to "production flair" - sure, they have minis and Dwarven Forge tiles and they look awesome but this is old school. I have seen on r/DnD posts by enthusiasts with disposable income whose creations are at least as intimidating - hand sculpted original minis, animated tabletops with special effects, mouth watering cosplays, custom ordered artwork, 3D printed fragments of dungeons and so on.
I agree with most of your post but in my specific instance I was more intimidated by what regular groups can do with their time and DIY experience and disposable income than what CR did - at least with CR I had the excuse that they are professionals but with stuff found on r/DnD I know fully well that it's not necessarily a good excuse.
A lot of forever-DMs actually prefer to run the game instead of play. Might be some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, who knows.
Every now and then I am able to convince husband, who’s been DM’ing for almost 40 years now, to play instead. He capitulates to indulge me because my experience is so different to have him as a player but he does not enjoy himself very much; if he does enjoy it, it’s not for very long at all. DM’ing and playing are very different activities when you get past the fact that they use a shared set of rules.
It’s a shame so many enthusiasts who would rather play feel stuck DM’ing but anyone who does it deserves real props. To run a game is not a simple change of hat—you need a far bigger toolkit, it’s much more involved than being a player and there are people out there depending on you for game.
I will only add this - just like there are enthusiasts who buy cars so that they can take them specifically to a racetrack (and will never race competitively), there are people who are elevating their prop game to incredible levels and they don't stream a thing.
Sure, there are enthusiasts who do this.
But most people never do. And new kids learning to drive can't. Just like new players shouldn't expect everyone to show up at the table for the FIRST night of D&D with custom-made fully painted minis, Wyrmwood dice trays, $30+ sets of metal dice (I have the latter two myself), and the like.
I'm not arguing that there are no enthusiasts. What I'm saying is that it presents new players, who have never gotten to play in person before, with a vision of something very, extremely, unlikely to happen around their own table or in their own zoom, especially if everyone else is a newbie too.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I will say, in my experience, it's easier to turn friends into D&D players than the other way around—especially friends who have no idea what the hobby is. People who've never seen Critical Role, have no expectations, and probably only know the game because of Stranger Things. You can even just introduce it as a board game night, and then ask who'd be interested in continuing the story once every week or couple of weeks. No big expectations, just some beer-and-pretzels fantasy fun. Then see where it goes from there.
That said, I've been lucky to have friends who are interested enough to get into it. Sometimes things just don't work out, and that frankly sucks. OP, I hope you find your group someday soon!
Critical Role definitely changed the way I play, and motivated me to start DMing. Though, I went a step further and am incorporating meals into the game. (I'm no voice actor, but I can give stories depth in other ways.)
My party just entered a forest where they were mobbed by a pack of Stirge. The goliath collected the severed chunks after the battle and asked if they were edible. (This was shortly after a conversation about how carefully they would need to track eating/drinking.)
Consequently, I'm researching recipes appropriate for the species and terrain for them to enjoy next session as part of their mid-adventure short rest. (Using a variation on J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's oven-fried chicken wing recipe )
There are plenty of TTRPG streams that are just a bunch of folks on Zoom or Twitch with a VTT or not playing the game (and I'm actually surprised, happily surprised, how well some do via monetization of streams and patreons and such). I'd say my preferred online content comes from the much broader B list (Mann Shorts when they actually play, Seth Sarkowsky, Legal Kimchi) than A listers (Critical Role and Colville). So I'd say, if you look past where the sponsors behind the big influencer want you to look, I'd actually say streams and YouTubers provide actually a very accurate portrayal of gaming.
That said the illusion of "overhead" can be intimidating. One step down from bespoking your table like Critical Role would be Beedle and Grimm editions. They ain't Wormwood, but they are 5-10X the cost of a module for their prestige formating of the same module. And even below that, there's my pet concern, the notion, often put out here that you have to have all the books to play D&D. I think there are many people who get the core books, or maybe the PHB or an Essential or Basic kit, they start playing, and they enter into a broader community space like here and they find entrenched arguments over Tasha's when they don't even own Xanthar's. There was a thread on here around the same time as this one that was speaking to that about managing the ever expanding content when the OP wanted to run a game from a smaller set of sourcebooks. While I disagreed on the OP's position and proposed solution in some ways, I wonder where the true basic entry spaces for the game really are. We all say "you don't need all that" to play, but it does seem most community discussion is generally centered on either a. the latest or forthcoming product or b. conversations that center on the perspective of the completionists. I don't think there's an easy solution to it, and I'm more talking out loud and calling out myself than calling out anyone or any faction on this forum, but this last issue is something I try to keep in mind when I'm on here and other D&D spaces.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
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I would recommend looking for a Westmarch style discord server. It isn’t a traditional campaign, more like a big world where you can take certain quests. Try looking it up!
OK, here you go: https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/play-by-post/99658-to-prove-d-d-exists-for-echolon
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Yeah, sure. Can't have Echolon playing by himself. Basic Fantasy Land, Forgotten Realms-ish.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Gotta say the ploy worked. There is a CHANCE I might play with my sister's family, and I dumped money in.
You aren't doing anything wrong. And you definitely are not alone. Matt Coleville argues, and I think he is probably right, that over the course of modern history, far more people have wanted to play D&D than have actually been able to play it. And this is probably still true. The big-name streams have what? Hundreds of thousands of viewers? How many of them actually have a game going, long-term? I'd bet nowhere near that many.
Because you still need a group of your friends to not just watch the show with you but want to play. And most importantly, the weak link -- you need someone willing to DM. And hardly anyone is. So that is the other problem... A) you need to find a group of people who are all interested, and then B) one of you needs to bite the bullet and DM. And B) may be a bigger sticking point than A).
I think the streams are a double-edged sword. Great for the hobby, in that they increased the popularity by probably 10-fold, interesting many more people in the hobby than have ever been interested in it before. But the popular ones are high-quality productions with very experienced GMs and players, thousands of dollars worth of sets and props, multiple mics and cameras, animated stats going off in one corner of the screen, etc. This sets an impossible standard for a new group of players (and especially a new DM) to live up to.
Someone just getting ready to start will watch these shows and the DMs will say, "I can't do that." They can't voice act. They aren't good at improv. They don't know the rules off the top of their heads like this. They don't have a chest full of painted miniatures and high-quality glossy printed battle mats or painted 3D diorama backdrops. They think "this is how you're supposed to DM," see that, and give up. "I can't do that... someone else needs to DM." And every person in the group will say the same. Because nobody (normal, without an internet show and a large budget) could do this.
The potential players are watching professional actors, maybe dressed up in costumes, with hundreds of dollars worth of props like foam or plastic swords, prop glasses and tankards of ale, bags of 100 dice of each type, $100 cherry-wood dice trays, each with their own HeroForge custom-made professionally painted miniatures, stacks of their own copies of the rules, and knowing the ins and outs of their characters like normal people know their own bedroom closet. And those potential players think, "this is how you are supposed to play D&D" and, knowing they can't do that, they give up. Because again, nobody (normal) plays D&D like this.
So watch these professionally done streams (and no, I am not just naming one of them -- many are like this) with experienced webcammers or actors and people who have been playing for years, and you see what they do, and think, first, "That looks like fun!", and then when you start planning to maybe do it, "We can't do that." You look at your own zoom window, with everyone sitting there in sweat pants and cheap headsets, with the bad audio, and the grainy video, and you compare it in your head to the uber-stream, and think, "This isn't what I thought it would be like when I watched it on YouTube..." and are disappointed. And this loses a lot of people back to just being "watchers" of RPGs, rather than players of them.
Thankfully, I have played RPGs since before there was a widely-known internet for people to even stream to, let alone enough bandwidth for the streaming. I have seen D&D played by kids (when we were young), college students (as we grew up), and adults (after college). I've played multiple old-school RPGs that focused more on die rolling than narrative. So I had seen something of what "playing D&D in your spare room" looks like -- which is how it is played by probably 99.9999% of people who actually play it. So when I started watching these streams, I immediately clocked that the expensive looking sets and backdrops behind them, the props on the table, the costumes people were wearing, the thousands of dollars worth of miniatures and dioramas and full-color glossy battle-mats -- those are all great, and make for a good show, but I knew they were not how most people actually play the game. So I was not disappointed when my own Zoom game came together and we were just sitting there in our spare rooms, with our grainy low-FPS transmission, bad audio, and bare-bones gameplay (no props, no miniatures, no battle mats, digital dice, etc). But people who just came into the hobby from watching the streams, are much more liable to be disappointed.
It's like watching NASCAR races before you learn to drive and thinking to yourself that you want to drive because you expect it to be like that. It won't be. EVER. Nobody drives like that except the tiny little fraction of people who manage to get into such a race. 99.9999% of drivers, just try not to get into accidents while they navigate the streets of their town to pick up the groceries.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Yeah, although when I learned about an FLGS running AL “near” me (25 miles), and started going to play, because I only ever DM’d at “home,” I played a grand total of once. After that I ended up as a DM because we had too many players and too few DMs. I was also the only one willing to run a table of mostly jr high boys. While in some respects I was willing to help, and had fun doing so, I really wanted to play. Then COVID hit AND we moved 28 miles further away. Sigh.
Trying to Decide if DDB is for you? A few helpful threads: A Buyer's Guide to DDB; What I/We Bought and Why; How some DMs use DDB; A Newer Thread on Using DDB to Play
Helpful threads on other topics: Homebrew FAQ by IamSposta; Accessing Content by ConalTheGreat;
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This.
It is a story that is replicated around the world by nearly every DM who has ever DMed the game. Yes, we are happy to DM sometimes. But we would also like to play.
And since there are never enough of us, we hardly ever do.
I have been DMing 5e for a year now. Know how many times I have played, rather than DMing, 5e? Zero.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
A lot of forever-DMs actually prefer to run the game instead of play. Might be some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, who knows.
100% agree. And for many many years, I felt the same. I mean, I was hooked early on because a friend of our had the rules... I think I was 8... or had seen the rules or something. We shared a few dice amongst the four of us, and then he had a couple of machetes at his uncle's house that we enacted the scenes with... and that was as much as I knew until I got my first red box set from my parents at Christmas my 8th grade year (I still have no idea how they heard about it or found it). I was a very avid reader, but with D&D I drew maps, I created new characters and I wouldn't play again until I was in my late 30s having bought nearly every book of every edition since.
Then one day a joke was made, some additional comments were had with a co-worker of my wife's and soon we were in a game. It was Classic World of Darkness for the most part (Mage was his favorite, and he was the Storyteller... so...) and we played for 9 years nearly every Saturday. It was a golden age of gaming. We were hard core... we took turns making food, all of the guys at the table had the same birthday... it was... strange and yet beautiful. And then there was a gaping hole when he did not wake up one morning. In the meantime I had started DMing with a group of guys at work for 4th edition... and we had some fun with it but within a year nearly all of us were living in different towns or working at different companies and that game died. And there was a time... a time of stillness where things were forgotten that should not have been forgotten.
In 2017 I had picked up painting miniatures a lot and went to ReaperCon and was excited about it and was talking with some of the grad students at the college I work at and soon enough we started a game up. We've now burned through a few different students that we've added to the mix or friends of friends, but our group migrated online before the pandemic hit and we've continued right on through. Three of us now rotate through different campaigns and while I don't get the deep story that I loved in our CWOD games (that guy was just amazing and creative and had a knack for knowing when to let the roleplay breathe and when to dive into action)... we have progressed a long way from our Adventure League days where I wasn't sure if I was going to keep playing.
So, I very much understand that feeling of not having a game and having all the materials. And even when you have experienced it, there are going to be times in life where you still reach for something that feels unattainable or that can never be recaptured. And sometimes you have to realize that if you're not the one to reach out and share what you know, no one else will be able to experience what you can provide.
We had finally gotten a local game shop before the pandemic came. Of course they didn't focus on D&D... who could? But they seem to be still hanging on with MtG and other things though they had to move locations and downsize for a time. This might help but even though I play nearly every week, I am guilty of not going in and seeing the scene and helping others to find the hobby. And I think that is as much of a contributing factor as anything. When you do find that table that you play at... suddenly you are no longer looking and your actions show it... you go to the place where you play and no one knows where that is and nearly no one will ever find out about it and so they keep going out and searching. I know of at least three other tables (1 is the IT group on campus, which will be my fallback if this ever ends... and 1 is a mix of History and Government faculty and the last one plays at the store... sort of... there's so much homebrew in the store version that it is hard to recognize as D&D) I would argue in our town of nearly 30K there are a dozen games and tables I would never know anything about. So I wear my shirts and hats and will talk about it with anyone that brings it up. 95% of the time when someone does, they already have a table.
Yeah... there is no golden key to D&D... but there are keys... and there are tables... and most likely, the best one is the key in your pocket and the table at your residence.
I will only add this - just like there are enthusiasts who buy cars so that they can take them specifically to a racetrack (and will never race competitively), there are people who are elevating their prop game to incredible levels and they don't stream a thing.
I mean, Wyrmwood's recent kickstarter are close to 9 milion dollars in modular gaming tables and that was DURING the pandemic.
To be honest, a show like Critical Role is pretty tame when it comes to "production flair" - sure, they have minis and Dwarven Forge tiles and they look awesome but this is old school. I have seen on r/DnD posts by enthusiasts with disposable income whose creations are at least as intimidating - hand sculpted original minis, animated tabletops with special effects, mouth watering cosplays, custom ordered artwork, 3D printed fragments of dungeons and so on.
I agree with most of your post but in my specific instance I was more intimidated by what regular groups can do with their time and DIY experience and disposable income than what CR did - at least with CR I had the excuse that they are professionals but with stuff found on r/DnD I know fully well that it's not necessarily a good excuse.
Every now and then I am able to convince husband, who’s been DM’ing for almost 40 years now, to play instead. He capitulates to indulge me because my experience is so different to have him as a player but he does not enjoy himself very much; if he does enjoy it, it’s not for very long at all. DM’ing and playing are very different activities when you get past the fact that they use a shared set of rules.
It’s a shame so many enthusiasts who would rather play feel stuck DM’ing but anyone who does it deserves real props. To run a game is not a simple change of hat—you need a far bigger toolkit, it’s much more involved than being a player and there are people out there depending on you for game.
Sure, there are enthusiasts who do this.
But most people never do. And new kids learning to drive can't. Just like new players shouldn't expect everyone to show up at the table for the FIRST night of D&D with custom-made fully painted minis, Wyrmwood dice trays, $30+ sets of metal dice (I have the latter two myself), and the like.
I'm not arguing that there are no enthusiasts. What I'm saying is that it presents new players, who have never gotten to play in person before, with a vision of something very, extremely, unlikely to happen around their own table or in their own zoom, especially if everyone else is a newbie too.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I will say, in my experience, it's easier to turn friends into D&D players than the other way around—especially friends who have no idea what the hobby is. People who've never seen Critical Role, have no expectations, and probably only know the game because of Stranger Things. You can even just introduce it as a board game night, and then ask who'd be interested in continuing the story once every week or couple of weeks. No big expectations, just some beer-and-pretzels fantasy fun. Then see where it goes from there.
That said, I've been lucky to have friends who are interested enough to get into it. Sometimes things just don't work out, and that frankly sucks. OP, I hope you find your group someday soon!
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Critical Role definitely changed the way I play, and motivated me to start DMing. Though, I went a step further and am incorporating meals into the game. (I'm no voice actor, but I can give stories depth in other ways.)
My party just entered a forest where they were mobbed by a pack of Stirge. The goliath collected the severed chunks after the battle and asked if they were edible. (This was shortly after a conversation about how carefully they would need to track eating/drinking.)
Consequently, I'm researching recipes appropriate for the species and terrain for them to enjoy next session as part of their mid-adventure short rest. (Using a variation on J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's oven-fried chicken wing recipe )
There are plenty of TTRPG streams that are just a bunch of folks on Zoom or Twitch with a VTT or not playing the game (and I'm actually surprised, happily surprised, how well some do via monetization of streams and patreons and such). I'd say my preferred online content comes from the much broader B list (Mann Shorts when they actually play, Seth Sarkowsky, Legal Kimchi) than A listers (Critical Role and Colville). So I'd say, if you look past where the sponsors behind the big influencer want you to look, I'd actually say streams and YouTubers provide actually a very accurate portrayal of gaming.
That said the illusion of "overhead" can be intimidating. One step down from bespoking your table like Critical Role would be Beedle and Grimm editions. They ain't Wormwood, but they are 5-10X the cost of a module for their prestige formating of the same module. And even below that, there's my pet concern, the notion, often put out here that you have to have all the books to play D&D. I think there are many people who get the core books, or maybe the PHB or an Essential or Basic kit, they start playing, and they enter into a broader community space like here and they find entrenched arguments over Tasha's when they don't even own Xanthar's. There was a thread on here around the same time as this one that was speaking to that about managing the ever expanding content when the OP wanted to run a game from a smaller set of sourcebooks. While I disagreed on the OP's position and proposed solution in some ways, I wonder where the true basic entry spaces for the game really are. We all say "you don't need all that" to play, but it does seem most community discussion is generally centered on either a. the latest or forthcoming product or b. conversations that center on the perspective of the completionists. I don't think there's an easy solution to it, and I'm more talking out loud and calling out myself than calling out anyone or any faction on this forum, but this last issue is something I try to keep in mind when I'm on here and other D&D spaces.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.