D&D 5E Are DMs getting lazy?

[Wepwawet]

No. Like many others very well said, DMs have lots of things to do with their time, we're not in college anymore.

And that might be the reason...
Is there any analysis of the demographics of D&D? How's it doing under 30 years old? Because D&D has serious competition there from video games that offer amazing fantasy worlds without the need to do any kind of work...
I'm guessing that most of the current players started playing back in 2e, and now they have jobs, families and all that.

Don't know really. What do you think?

 

[delericho]

A lot of pre-gen adventures get bought to be read, not necessarily played/run. Often, they're used as a spur to the DM's own imagination.

That's certainly the case for me: due to our schedule (no more than one session every two weeks, 3-hours per session), pre-published Adventure Paths don't really work for us - they would take too long end-to-end, and they would move too slowly plot-wise; and yet I still buy and read the Pathfinder AP books every month, have picked up both volumes of ToD, and would happily subscribe to eDungeon if they were to bring it back for 5e.

 

[fjw70]

Op

No. Like many others very well said, DMs have lots of things to do with their time, we're not in college anymore.

And that might be the reason...
Is there any analysis of the demographics of D&D? How's it doing under 30 years old? Because D&D has serious competition there from video games that offer amazing fantasy worlds without the need to do any kind of work...
I'm guessing that most of the current players started playing back in 2e, and now they have jobs, families and all that.

Don't know really. What do you think?

Most of the young adult people I know that play D&D don't DM. They prefer to be players.

It is even worse among teens as far as I can tell. I play D&D with my kids but my 13 year old son says he doesn't know any of his peers that play RPGs and would not even know they existed if it wasn't for me.

 

[Uchawi]

Like anything else in life it is a matter of time and resources. Of course you can dedicate more time, and devote more effort to create your own resources, such as house rules, adventures, etc. It just depends on how important the game is versus anything else you do to earn a wage, take care of kids, etc.

 

[Reynard]

No. Like many others very well said, DMs have lots of things to do with their time, we're not in college anymore.

I get the feeling I was not clear. I did not mean "have the DMs who weren't lazy 20 years ago gotten lazy?" I understand that life is different at different stages. But 20, 30 or 40 years ago, there were still grown ups with grown up responsibilities DMing and creating 90% of the content necessary to do so. This recent launch is the first time I can honestly recall folks saying they think they will run out of stuff to do with D&D and it baffled me. It honestly felt too much like the kinds of complaints I see for video games where people are angry over limited content for the price of a game. But D&D isn't like a video game in that regard. Content creation is part of the experience, one of the features of RPGs that is not easily translated to other media and therefore one of the key elements in the medium's creative power.

And that might be the reason...
Is there any analysis of the demographics of D&D? How's it doing under 30 years old? Because D&D has serious competition there from video games that offer amazing fantasy worlds without the need to do any kind of work...
I'm guessing that most of the current players started playing back in 2e, and now they have jobs, families and all that.

Don't know really. What do you think?

I wonder if [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] has any data.

 

[Minigiant]

I think it is two aspects.
One, the older DMs have less time. Two, the older DMs have higher standards and are burned out on basis traditional fantasy

It's not just that we have less time, we want to do more. We only have an hour but want a Thanksgiving dinner made in it because we're
tired of pb&j.

 

[Iosue]

Here's the thing. Let's say you have 100 DMs who like making their own stuff, and 20 DMs who rely on published product. If you put out a lot of product, those 20 DMs are happy, so they don't say anything. The 100 DMs making up their own stuff are happy making their own stuff, so they don't say anything. If you go to a lighter schedule, those 100 DMs are still happy making their own stuff, while those 20 DMs who rely on published product make their dissatisfaction known.

 

[ExploderWizard]

That a game played primarily in the imaginations of the participants could ever run out of material is a strange concept. Part of the joy of being a DM is creating stuff for your players to experience with you. Out of all the DMs complaining about a lack of published material, I wonder how many of them really enjoy running games vs. being the DM because no one else will do it.

Creating content for a campaign does take time, and people have always had conflicting demands on their time. I enjoy creating content for my games almost as much as running them, so to me the time spent on such things is enjoyable. If the game you are playing makes creating content for it a chore that isn't enjoyable then play a different game.

So the short of it is if you really love doing something then you will find time for it. If you don't then there will never be enough time no matter what.

 

[halberd10]

Op

Most of the young adult people I know that play D&D don't DM. They prefer to be players.

It is even worse among teens as far as I can tell. I play D&D with my kids but my 13 year old son says he doesn't know any of his peers that play RPGs and would not even know they existed if it wasn't for me.

I can relate to this. I'm in my mid 30's, and until I started playing 5 years ago, I had never met anyone who played TTRPG's that I knew of, and I really didn't know what they were. I had heard of D&D of course, but didn't have a clear idea of what it was. It was only after reading the Dresden Files, where the main character plays D&D in his spare time, that I started looking into it and thought it seemed fun.

 

[MarkB]

Our local RPG club has about 35 members ranging from 16 to 60+, but it's almost exclusively the over-40s who run games. We've tried to encourage a wider range of GMs recently, but it's an uphill struggle.