Hello there! Pardon me, for this going to be a long one. I'm rather new to DMing (2 one shots, and a short term campaign that fell flat)
Our group consists of long-term friends, and the dynamic is great! As players they are 1. Very intuitive 2. Great Rollplayers 3. Seasoned Players who know mechanics. This is every DM’s dream. HOWEVER, they are more advanced players than me…. And some are FAR MORE advanced DM’s than me. I'm new, I'm learning.
My concern is is thus: I've been sticking to the books, and the players are bored. If I break away from the books, and make a world laid like a lovingly-stitched quilt... I might not sew it together well, and could just hand them a pile of gross old rags.
We all agreed that we wanted a low-stake and high-fantasy setting during the first campaign. Session zero brought the party together flawlessly, and the 1st session was delightful...
Annnnnnd the second I made an "insighting" incident to KEEP the band together, I failed to keep it reined in plot wise. I almost immediately started losing my grip as a DM. I felt like I was dangling the bad guy like a carrot on a stick in front of my players, getting them to move from one part of the map to another.
Here's the sich: the reason they didn't want to explore the map, is because it was boring. They're sticking to the main quest, sure... but they're all bored, and I'm miserable.
I had checked in a bunch, about how they felt as players. They'd acted plenty enough intrigued, but we all knew I was doing a bad job. We'd stuck it out long enough that the boring world got too fleshed out to save, though. Without retconning, there was no way to spice up the bag of flour I'd made. It fell flat, no one was having a good time.
We took that campaign off the burner last week, to clean the metaphorical kitchen out, and start new with what we learned. I'm pretty quick to pick myself up and try again.
But I was told to hold off, and wait by the DM who'd gotten us all into DnD in the first place. He was also the DM who had asked me to fill in every-other Sunday with said deflated campaign. He was really quick, however, to take back the time-slot... and now he wants to fill it with his own one shots, or the other DM's ideas.
And I totally understand taking a break after we've all logged so many hours in the first campaign, and doing a few "quickies" for the sake of cleansing the pallet. I even understand taking turns with what available time slots that we do have. Schedules are the true monsters we slay in DND.
But he's making it sound indefinite, and he's not letting other players give feedback on my ideas in the mean time?
I ask a question about what theoretical type of worlds people loved to see, on my own DnD discord channel mind you, and he shuts it down: "Let's just hold off. I've got one shots to hold us over until we decide what to do next."
I asked what the players thought about campaigns with a home-base-of-operations, to create a more stable environments for down-time? Again, this is all happening on a private channel I'd made for my own DMing purposes on Discord. A channel I'd made a while ago, while I had been first planning the one-shots.
I got a "We're going to talk this Sunday about the next several weeks, and what we want to do with them. Let's take a break for now."
I feel sort of upset about this? Am I suppose to research how to be a better DM in secret for a month? Am I suppose to avoid going to my OWN friends for tips and pointers? Am I wrong to ask general questions about DMing on my own channel in the mean time? "Hold off, go take a break."
And because everyone else is staying quiet, I'm not sure how the GROUP feels. I'm just getting bossed around by this one guy. Does being "The Grand-Daddy DM" give him the right to pull rank on a my own channel, of all places? Does that give him permission to swipe the time-slot and the players out from under other DM's? Just because he got the ball rolling in the first place? It's been two years that we've all been playing together. I feel like this is unfair.
I would feel different if I'd been asking these questions on HIS DnD discord chat, but that's not the case. And I'm not asking anyone to prepare for a new campaign, I'm just asking these seasoned players for tips and pointers on how to do better WHEN or IF it's time.
Maybe this is simply a part of DM etiquette that I don't understand. Am I the one out of bounds?
I think it might be helpful if we had a chronological description of what has been happening, because you're bouncing around a lot and it is hard to figure out what happened 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.
Here's what I gathered from what you wrote. Correct me if I am wrong.
To start with, you had a D&D group that played every Sunday, run by a vet DM. Some others in the group have also DMed a fair bit. You have only played.
At some point, Vet DM said, I can't run every Sunday, can you take every other one instead? You then played 2 campaigns (?), yours and his. (This part is not clear to me.)
Yours didn't go so well, and recently you decided to stop playing it and start over.
Before you got a chance to do that, Vet DM said, "I'll go back to DMing every week. We'll do my regular campaign half the time and some one-shots the other half. Maybe some of the other DMs" (but not you) will also do some one-shots."
You went into your group discord, owned by you, and asked 'What kind of world do you want me to make up when I start up again?" and the DM said, in your discord, "Let's just hold off for now."
You are upset that you seem to have been pushed out of any DMing and they are also doing the pushing out in part by using the discord you own. Have I got the right of it? Or did I misunderstand the story?
If I've got the story right, I think that the DM's plan to talk as a group the next Sunday meeting is probably the right call. At that meeting you can ask the other players what they want to do and see what their opinions are.
By your own admission your sessions didn't go well and you thought people were bored. By your own admission you wanted to reboot everything. Maybe the rest of the group wants to get back to playing with a GM who is better at running the game.
Now, your point is, how can you learn if they don't let you try? And that is true. But it sounds like maybe you bit off more than you could chew as a newbie DM. Maybe you should have tried using one of the published adventures, unless they have already played in them. You could look online for which ones are best to use for a starting GM. Waterdeep: Dragon Heist gets a lot of praise, although you'd have to make sure they have not played it already. Or you could take one of the adventures out of Candlekeep or Tales of the Yawning Portal. Try to start small rather than with a big sweeping campaign in a homebrew world.
If it turns out that your experienced players thing Forgotten Realms itself is boring (they'd get no argument from me) and demand homebrew worlds, you might want to see if you can find a small group willing to let you learn. Don't try to DM for the first time with a bunch of unforgiving people who are intolerant of the mistakes any new DM will inevitably make.
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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.
Don't try to DM for the first time with a bunch of unforgiving people who are intolerant of the mistakes any new DM will inevitably make.
This.
Honestly it sounds like you had an uphill battle from the start. People who have not DM'ed don't have an appreciation of all that goes into it, both on the prep side and keeping all the plates spinning during a session. If they are used to an experienced DM who has honed a bunch of these abilities for years, and are expecting that level of skill, that is an unrealistic expectation. And, based on your post I am inferring that during the sessions, when it started to go poorly or if you messed something up or forgot to do something, you maybe got inside your own head a little, lost some confidence, and that is when the tailspin can really start.
I think it's fair to ask for another shot with this group, but maybe do a series of one shots just so you can gain experience, and move to a longer adventure/campaign later. Using a published adventure as BioWizard recommended is also a good idea.
Yep! You've got the things all in order, though I'm sorry it was a bit scrabbly to follow. Thank you so much for replying, this is an awesome and in depth answer you've given.
I think the unfortunate bit is that I psyched myself out. I saw all the awesome things they were doing with their own homebrews, and wanted to give it a whirl. But you are absolutely right, I should have started with something I could handle first. I'm not sure what sort of pre-published adventures they've already done, or if they've looked into modules enough that they're bored of them. I should ask, after we've had a cool-off period.
If they're not interested in that, totally cool! We continue with the awesome stuff they've been doing. And maybe I could do some sessions with fellow Newbies on the side, for learning sakes.
They're not intolerant, this group I've been with. They're really great!
I wouldn't be surprised, though... if I'd come off as jumping the gun, and getting overly excited for a new idea. While I thought I was asking innocent enough questions for exploration sake as a new DM, they very well might have thought I was actively asking them to prepare, and help me prepare a new campaign.
I should let them know that I'm only asking questions as one DM, to other DM's. I just want to learn, and like a wee toddler, I do that by asking a lot of questions.
A good group would give you the chance to do some DMing.
But yes... it's very hard to do homebrew this and custom that and a giant mega-campaign. This is one of the problems with the D&D "TV shows" out there, too... like your game, these TV shows are run by experienced DMs, and those folks usually homebrew everything and do all this awesome custom stuff and these long, involved campaigns, and people watch those shows and think "that's how I am supposed to do it." But it's not the only way to GM, and it's definitely not the best way to *start* GMing.
Heck, I have many years of GMing before starting to DM 5e last year and even I am starting to think I should have gone for a less ambitious first campaign. And I am no newbie.
Your best bet is to run a few short adventures. Make it an after-the-fact campaign rather than before. That is, start an adventure that lasts a few session with a group of low level characters and when it's done, that's it. Then later ask if they want to revisit those characters and do another adventure. And so on. Less pressure on you that way. If it works, great -- years later you will look back on it as a campaign. Rather than trying to forward-plan it from day 1.
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.
First of all, I want to tell you to stop being so hard on yourself and stop taking all the blame for the campaign not working out. Players who want to play can make any setup interesting, and that goes double for DMs who know what kind of player behaviors DMs love to see. D&D is a collaborative game, and as such everyone is responsible for the fun, not just you.
My whole group rotates DMing as well. Some of us are seasoned and confident and some of us are newer and still get nervous. But instead of holding every game to super high expectations, we just sit back and have fun. I mean that's the point of the game. An inciting incident with a clear meta-goal can still be super fun. A completely on-rails story can still be fun. A module run to the letter can be fun. These kinds of things are absolutely what I'd expect from a new DM (and some really experienced, really good ones as well for that matter).
You don't need to be Matt Mercer to run a fun game, you just need players that can put down their egos and do some roleplaying.
And because everyone else is staying quiet, I'm not sure how the GROUP feels.
Sometimes silence speaks volumes unfortunately. If they are all in the discord and they're just letting one guy answer you, it's likely they've talked it over and bossy guy was just nominated the one to speak up. At the least, no one is stopping the others from speaking up so I would expect them to step up if they didn't agree.
I know it's a lot to ask, but you should consider DMing for another group. You can still stay in the old one as a player, but you might be surprised how running the game feels when you don't have the expectations and the high standards you're used to. Another group would at the least be a bit more appreciative and likely provide more constructive criticism as well. You also may find you're better than you think - imposter's syndrome is rampant in new DMs.
Hello there! Pardon me, for this going to be a long one. I'm rather new to DMing (2 one shots, and a short term campaign that fell flat)
Our group consists of long-term friends, and the dynamic is great! As players they are 1. Very intuitive 2. Great Rollplayers 3. Seasoned Players who know mechanics. This is every DM’s dream. HOWEVER, they are more advanced players than me…. And some are FAR MORE advanced DM’s than me. I'm new, I'm learning.
My concern is is thus: I've been sticking to the books, and the players are bored. If I break away from the books, and make a world laid like a lovingly-stitched quilt... I might not sew it together well, and could just hand them a pile of gross old rags.
We all agreed that we wanted a low-stake and high-fantasy setting during the first campaign. Session zero brought the party together flawlessly, and the 1st session was delightful...
Annnnnnd the second I made an "insighting" incident to KEEP the band together, I failed to keep it reined in plot wise. I almost immediately started losing my grip as a DM. I felt like I was dangling the bad guy like a carrot on a stick in front of my players, getting them to move from one part of the map to another.
Here's the sich: the reason they didn't want to explore the map, is because it was boring. They're sticking to the main quest, sure... but they're all bored, and I'm miserable.
I had checked in a bunch, about how they felt as players. They'd acted plenty enough intrigued, but we all knew I was doing a bad job. We'd stuck it out long enough that the boring world got too fleshed out to save, though. Without retconning, there was no way to spice up the bag of flour I'd made. It fell flat, no one was having a good time.
We took that campaign off the burner last week, to clean the metaphorical kitchen out, and start new with what we learned. I'm pretty quick to pick myself up and try again.
But I was told to hold off, and wait by the DM who'd gotten us all into DnD in the first place. He was also the DM who had asked me to fill in every-other Sunday with said deflated campaign. He was really quick, however, to take back the time-slot... and now he wants to fill it with his own one shots, or the other DM's ideas.
And I totally understand taking a break after we've all logged so many hours in the first campaign, and doing a few "quickies" for the sake of cleansing the pallet. I even understand taking turns with what available time slots that we do have. Schedules are the true monsters we slay in DND.
But he's making it sound indefinite, and he's not letting other players give feedback on my ideas in the mean time?
I ask a question about what theoretical type of worlds people loved to see, on my own DnD discord channel mind you, and he shuts it down: "Let's just hold off. I've got one shots to hold us over until we decide what to do next."
I asked what the players thought about campaigns with a home-base-of-operations, to create a more stable environments for down-time? Again, this is all happening on a private channel I'd made for my own DMing purposes on Discord. A channel I'd made a while ago, while I had been first planning the one-shots.
I got a "We're going to talk this Sunday about the next several weeks, and what we want to do with them. Let's take a break for now."
I feel sort of upset about this? Am I suppose to research how to be a better DM in secret for a month? Am I suppose to avoid going to my OWN friends for tips and pointers? Am I wrong to ask general questions about DMing on my own channel in the mean time? "Hold off, go take a break."
And because everyone else is staying quiet, I'm not sure how the GROUP feels. I'm just getting bossed around by this one guy. Does being "The Grand-Daddy DM" give him the right to pull rank on a my own channel, of all places? Does that give him permission to swipe the time-slot and the players out from under other DM's? Just because he got the ball rolling in the first place? It's been two years that we've all been playing together. I feel like this is unfair.
I would feel different if I'd been asking these questions on HIS DnD discord chat, but that's not the case. And I'm not asking anyone to prepare for a new campaign, I'm just asking these seasoned players for tips and pointers on how to do better WHEN or IF it's time.
Maybe this is simply a part of DM etiquette that I don't understand. Am I the one out of bounds?
I think it might be helpful if we had a chronological description of what has been happening, because you're bouncing around a lot and it is hard to figure out what happened 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.
Here's what I gathered from what you wrote. Correct me if I am wrong.
You are upset that you seem to have been pushed out of any DMing and they are also doing the pushing out in part by using the discord you own. Have I got the right of it? Or did I misunderstand the story?
If I've got the story right, I think that the DM's plan to talk as a group the next Sunday meeting is probably the right call. At that meeting you can ask the other players what they want to do and see what their opinions are.
By your own admission your sessions didn't go well and you thought people were bored. By your own admission you wanted to reboot everything. Maybe the rest of the group wants to get back to playing with a GM who is better at running the game.
Now, your point is, how can you learn if they don't let you try? And that is true. But it sounds like maybe you bit off more than you could chew as a newbie DM. Maybe you should have tried using one of the published adventures, unless they have already played in them. You could look online for which ones are best to use for a starting GM. Waterdeep: Dragon Heist gets a lot of praise, although you'd have to make sure they have not played it already. Or you could take one of the adventures out of Candlekeep or Tales of the Yawning Portal. Try to start small rather than with a big sweeping campaign in a homebrew world.
If it turns out that your experienced players thing Forgotten Realms itself is boring (they'd get no argument from me) and demand homebrew worlds, you might want to see if you can find a small group willing to let you learn. Don't try to DM for the first time with a bunch of unforgiving people who are intolerant of the mistakes any new DM will inevitably make.
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.
This.
Honestly it sounds like you had an uphill battle from the start. People who have not DM'ed don't have an appreciation of all that goes into it, both on the prep side and keeping all the plates spinning during a session. If they are used to an experienced DM who has honed a bunch of these abilities for years, and are expecting that level of skill, that is an unrealistic expectation. And, based on your post I am inferring that during the sessions, when it started to go poorly or if you messed something up or forgot to do something, you maybe got inside your own head a little, lost some confidence, and that is when the tailspin can really start.
I think it's fair to ask for another shot with this group, but maybe do a series of one shots just so you can gain experience, and move to a longer adventure/campaign later. Using a published adventure as BioWizard recommended is also a good idea.
Yep! You've got the things all in order, though I'm sorry it was a bit scrabbly to follow. Thank you so much for replying, this is an awesome and in depth answer you've given.
I think the unfortunate bit is that I psyched myself out. I saw all the awesome things they were doing with their own homebrews, and wanted to give it a whirl. But you are absolutely right, I should have started with something I could handle first. I'm not sure what sort of pre-published adventures they've already done, or if they've looked into modules enough that they're bored of them. I should ask, after we've had a cool-off period.
If they're not interested in that, totally cool! We continue with the awesome stuff they've been doing. And maybe I could do some sessions with fellow Newbies on the side, for learning sakes.
They're not intolerant, this group I've been with. They're really great!
I wouldn't be surprised, though... if I'd come off as jumping the gun, and getting overly excited for a new idea. While I thought I was asking innocent enough questions for exploration sake as a new DM, they very well might have thought I was actively asking them to prepare, and help me prepare a new campaign.
I should let them know that I'm only asking questions as one DM, to other DM's. I just want to learn, and like a wee toddler, I do that by asking a lot of questions.
A good group would give you the chance to do some DMing.
But yes... it's very hard to do homebrew this and custom that and a giant mega-campaign. This is one of the problems with the D&D "TV shows" out there, too... like your game, these TV shows are run by experienced DMs, and those folks usually homebrew everything and do all this awesome custom stuff and these long, involved campaigns, and people watch those shows and think "that's how I am supposed to do it." But it's not the only way to GM, and it's definitely not the best way to *start* GMing.
Heck, I have many years of GMing before starting to DM 5e last year and even I am starting to think I should have gone for a less ambitious first campaign. And I am no newbie.
Your best bet is to run a few short adventures. Make it an after-the-fact campaign rather than before. That is, start an adventure that lasts a few session with a group of low level characters and when it's done, that's it. Then later ask if they want to revisit those characters and do another adventure. And so on. Less pressure on you that way. If it works, great -- years later you will look back on it as a campaign. Rather than trying to forward-plan it from day 1.
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.
First of all, I want to tell you to stop being so hard on yourself and stop taking all the blame for the campaign not working out. Players who want to play can make any setup interesting, and that goes double for DMs who know what kind of player behaviors DMs love to see. D&D is a collaborative game, and as such everyone is responsible for the fun, not just you.
My whole group rotates DMing as well. Some of us are seasoned and confident and some of us are newer and still get nervous. But instead of holding every game to super high expectations, we just sit back and have fun. I mean that's the point of the game. An inciting incident with a clear meta-goal can still be super fun. A completely on-rails story can still be fun. A module run to the letter can be fun. These kinds of things are absolutely what I'd expect from a new DM (and some really experienced, really good ones as well for that matter).
You don't need to be Matt Mercer to run a fun game, you just need players that can put down their egos and do some roleplaying.
Sometimes silence speaks volumes unfortunately. If they are all in the discord and they're just letting one guy answer you, it's likely they've talked it over and bossy guy was just nominated the one to speak up. At the least, no one is stopping the others from speaking up so I would expect them to step up if they didn't agree.
I know it's a lot to ask, but you should consider DMing for another group. You can still stay in the old one as a player, but you might be surprised how running the game feels when you don't have the expectations and the high standards you're used to. Another group would at the least be a bit more appreciative and likely provide more constructive criticism as well. You also may find you're better than you think - imposter's syndrome is rampant in new DMs.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm