Is the DM the most important person at the table

[Sadras]

The question, in my mind anyway, is how can we reduce the workload on DM's in order to entice more people to DM. One possible solution is to involve players more and dump some of the workload off on them. The reaction is generally that doing so will impinge on DM authority and we cannot possibly do that.

Are there players who are reluctant/resistant? I'm sure there are. But, we'll generally never know how much reluctance/resistance there is, because any suggestion that we change the current paradigm is immediately dismissed out of hand.

I'm not offering a panacea solution here. I'm offering ONE solution. No one else seems to be willing to do even that.

I never commented on this earlier as I never had issue with the funload (since I enjoy it) but given that you brought me into this part of the conversation - I actually really like your idea of players designing some NPCs and I can definitely incorporate some of that into my game - I even know how to in my current campaign*. I'm not a fan of the dungeon design sharing, perhaps in a different game I could see myself doing that.

*PCs have spent some time in the city, it is their 4th visit - essentially instead of using 'downtime activities' or whatever, I'm going to ask them to draw up to 5 NPCs that they have had dealings/relationships with, positive, negative or indifferent. They are welcome to draw up 1 NPC, 5 being the maximum.

But here is where you and me Hussar (and perhaps @haweyefan) disagree. For me to incorporate these NPCs into the story will require more work (fun) because I'm running an AP, the usual suspects are all there already. This would likely be in addition to what is already planned. But do not get me wrong, I'm not complaining - I like this player investment into the setting. Some players might enjoy this process and give me a full 5 NPCs, others might only give me 1 or 2. Whatever I get will be good, just means a richer story.

@hawkeyefan apologies I did not reply to your post specifically, but I just wanted to mention that my player's backstories are very rich and have only but grown over the course of the campaign - so I constantly have fertile ground. I have never enjoyed D&D more as I'm doing these last few years.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I never commented on this earlier since I never had issue with the funload (since I enjoy it) but given that you brought me into this part of the conversation - I actually really like your idea of players designing some NPCs and I can definitely incorporate some of that into my game - I even known how in my current campaign*. I'm not a fan of the dungeon design sharing, perhaps in a different game I could see myself doing that.

*PCs have spent some time in the city, it is there 4th visit - essentially instead of using 'downtime activities' or whatever, I'm going to ask them to draw up to 5 NPCs that they have had dealings/relationships with, positive, negative or indifferent. They are welcome to draw up 1 NPC, 5 being the maximum.

But here is where you and me Hussar (and perhaps @haweyefan) disagree. For me to incorporate these NPCs into the story will require more work (fun) because I'm running an AP, the usual suspects are all there already. This would likely be in addition to what is already planned. But do not get me wrong, I'm not complaining - I like this player investment into the setting. Some players might enjoy this process and give me a full 5 NPCs, others might only give me 1 or 2. Whatever I get will be good, just means a richer story.

@hawkeyefan apologies I did not reply to your post specifically, but I just wanted to mention that my player's backstories are very rich and have only but grown over the course of the campaign - so I constantly have fertile ground. I have never enjoyed D&D more as I'm doing these last few years.

That’s awesome. I honestly have found 5E to really click for me, and I’m loving it overall, too.

I like your idea about introducing player crafted NPCs as contacts or resources for the PCs. Incorporating that may wind up being more work, but you’re obviously cool with it, so that’s not a problem.

Who knows, though? Maybe it works out so well that you start off doing it right from the start of your next campaign and maybe it lessens the load a bit there. Or if not, then it at least means you and your players are enjoying it.

 

[Maxperson]

Fair enough.

But what about Thor, huh? He’s an honorary Guardian at this point!

Gotta get ur Asgard on!

Meh. He's a Thor loser. Worse than a wookie.

 

[Maxperson]

That’s awesome. I honestly have found 5E to really click for me, and I’m loving it overall, too.

I like your idea about introducing player crafted NPCs as contacts or resources for the PCs. Incorporating that may wind up being more work, but you’re obviously cool with it, so that’s not a problem.

Who knows, though? Maybe it works out so well that you start off doing it right from the start of your next campaign and maybe it lessens the load a bit there. Or if not, then it at least means you and your players are enjoying it.

My players create backgrounds for their PCs before the first session. I encourage them to create NPCs and even small villages as part of their background creation. Which reminds me. It's about time for that hermit one of the players created to crawl out of the background.

 

[Hussar]

Anecdotes abound of tables refusing to pursue other games and DMs capitulating. Heck, I can't get my tables to consider BitD despite my enthusiasm. Luckily for my players, my current campaign is still of interest to me or they'd be facing a stark choice.

I saw similar bias towards d20 game engines in the 3.X era. Some people want the comfort of a familiar engine even if a different engine offers better* game play.





* by some set of arbitrary measures.

I think it's a mistake to paint this in terms of "better" or "worse". That's a pretty nebulous rabbit hole. OTOH, I do think that it's rather telling that there is virtually no advice given to DM's on how to reduce their workload in D&D. The majority of gamers only know D&D. And, in D&D, it's always presented, since pretty much day 1, that the DM will do the majority of the work on the campaign, and the players will only be responsible for their own characters.

I think that if we started seeing advice in D&D books on how to spread the workload out, you actually wouldn't get as much push back as it seems. If you build it, they will come.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

But here is where you and me Hussar (and perhaps @haweyefan) disagree. For me to incorporate these NPCs into the story will require more work (fun) because I'm running an AP, the usual suspects are all there already. This would likely be in addition to what is already planned. But do not get me wrong, I'm not complaining - I like this player investment into the setting. Some players might enjoy this process and give me a full 5 NPCs, others might only give me 1 or 2. Whatever I get will be good, just means a richer story.
/snip

Honestly? I think this is the direction that the producers of D&D have taken to take the workload (or funload ) off the DM's shoulders for the most part. The VAST library of adventures for D&D means that there is pretty much someone for everyone. And, once you do use an AP (I'm running Ghosts of Saltmarsh myself), so much of the yeoman's work is done for you. It does make running a campaign a lot easier.

The massive popularity of the 5e adventure path's, IMO, speak to this. It's never been easier to sit down and run D&D. I mean, good grief, how many hundreds of hours of play could you get out of the 5e AP's right now without a whole lot of work needed from the DM.

 

[Lanefan]

If the players' role is to show up and play and nothing else, how is my 99% of the workload on the DM hyperbole? If the DM is in charge of tracking all the information both before and after play, designing every single thing that the players will play through, and everything else, how is that not 99%? What per cent would you call it?

In terms of both time and effort, considerably less than 99%.

I have 4 players in my game plus me; we play for more or less 4 hours each week, that's 20 total hours. I might spend maybe on average* 4 hours a week between sessions working on game-related stuff (the only thing I guaranteed do every week is the game log, which often doesn't take long). So, we're on 24 total hours of which I spend roughly 8 - that's 33%.

* - widely variable; often less than 1 but occasionally a lot which brings the average up.

I'll grant the ratio of actual effort expended is higher, maybe more like 50%. Still a far cry from 99.

And, well, you have to remember, my entire group, for a long time, consists of multiple DM's. Exploiting rules loopholes and whatnot is the sign of bad play and, well, since we've all been DM's, no one wants to do it to another DM.

First off, I'm both a DM and a player and as a player I'll happily look for any loophole or advantage I can find! It's all just part of advocating for my character, which after all is my main role - right?

One of the benefits of playing with folks with DMing experience. Any and all problems can be traced almost exclusively to the pure players who refuse to invest the time to run a game.

That's more than a bit harsh, I think.

Some people - of whom I'd doubtless be one if I wasn't also a DM - actively don't want to see what's "under the hood" as it ruins their enjoyment of the game.

Same thing with me and cars. I don't want to know what's under the hood or how any of it works, I just want the damn thing to start when I turn the key and take me where I want to go. By your definitions that makes me a problem driver because I neither build nor fix cars, I only drive them.

If your group is nothing but pure players, I can see why your DM workload is so heavy and why trust is so hard to come by.

My current players are four long-time veterans. One is the guy who largely taught me how to DM (and is still DMing today); two are almost-pure players who between them have DMed a total of maybe 11 sessions in their very long gaming careers; and the fourth is a 25-year player who has never DMed and has - as far as I know* - absolutely no interest in doing so.

* - and were there any interest I rather think I'd be the first to hear about it, as this player is also my wife.

 

[Lanefan]

In this sense it is more than just the GM tying backstories into an adventure that s/he plans. That's how it reduces GM prep requirements.

I'm honestly not sure it does, though.

It changes GM prep requirements, no question there, but the effort level is similar*. Instead of working on designing the adventure etc. from scratch, the effort now goes in to tying the PCs' backstories together into something coherent that still fits with the setting.

* - remember, you're used to doing it this way, so what's limited-effort for you might not be to someone else. Conversely, I'm used to designing adventures from scratch and so find it less effort than would someone who's not done much of it.

An analogy might be the use of published modules. For some GMs they cut the prep time down to nearly 0 - just open the book and go. But for others they don't cut the prep time by much at all, they just change the manner of work that needs to be done: instead of mapping and doing up stat blocks while having the backstory already done for you as part of your campaign, you're instead stripping out backstory and editing stuff to make it fit in your campaign while having the mapping and stat blocks already done.

If the parameters for discussion are how can GM prep and demands on GM time and energy be reduced in a game where the main orientation of play is towards the players working through material provided by the GM from his/her prepared notes, then the answer is obvious: it can't be. I mean, there might be some efficiencies like using already-prepared stat blocks (as @hawkeyefan has suggested) and cribbing exising maps (as someone elase suggested). But most people are probably already doing that as much as they happily can.

There's some other things one can do also, but they don't so much reduce overall work as move a lot of it to a more convenient time - that being, before play ever begins.

My favourite among such things these days is to, long before session 0, have your setting's history (ancient and recent), pantheons, and local geography pretty much nailed down. That way, once you start running the game you can in effect riff off yourself, in full confidence that everything will remain consistent. The best part once play begins: the hard work is already done!

Similar to Tolkein largely nailing down Middle Earth's history etc. before ever putting his authoring pen to paper.

Of course, much depends on how much mileage one intends to get out of a setting. If you're looking at running a 10-month single-linear-party quick-hitter of a campaign you can 99.9% likely get away with tons less setting prep than if you're looking to run a 10-year multi-party behemoth.

 

[Lanefan]

*PCs have spent some time in the city, it is their 4th visit - essentially instead of using 'downtime activities' or whatever, I'm going to ask them to draw up to 5 NPCs that they have had dealings/relationships with, positive, negative or indifferent. They are welcome to draw up 1 NPC, 5 being the maximum.

You know, I can see a situation in my current campaign where this could work out quite well; I could have them do this for the city where they seem to have ended up basing themselves.

The only thing is, I'd have to specify the NPCs be "minor" - merchants, innkeepers, commoners, minor guild functionaries, etc. and nobody of any significant class level - as most of the major ones are already done and quite a few have already entered play as NPCs. I'd also have to specify or at least strongly encourage Human-only as it's a mostly-Human place.

Like @Sadras , I'd likely also have trouble working them in to play on any regular basis; not because I'm running an AP but because they're pretty much only ever in town during downtime. But even if I didn't work them in, posting write-ups on each in the online town gazetteer would add to the 'depth'.

(of my four players, I'm ironclad sure two would be all over this but the other two might not touch it with a barge pole)

 

[pemerton]

Dozens, possibly more. It depends a lot on the game engine, campaign type (common environment, level of continuity between missions, expected PC power level, expected amount and power of extraordinary abilities aka magic), , and specific GM (what does the GM find difficult during a session and what costs time outside of it).

Everything you say in your post is sensible enough. I'm not 100% sure how it is consistent with widespread GM-driven approaches in a way that the ideas you've criticised are not.

Many newer GMs have confessed they get overwhelmed during a session by adjudicating consequence.

I think this is correct. It's why in this and some other recent threads I have posted and re-posted that managing the fiction, particularly in relation to framing and consequences, is fundamental to successful GMing.

In my view D&D rulebooks have far too few examples of this. (Moldvay Basic is probably the best. I think Gygax's DMG is weak on it, especially as it has so many admonitions not to let players "get away with" stuff. That might have made sense in Gygax's hardcore wargaming crowd, but I don't think works well for more general consumption. The 4e books have few examples of resolution and consequence-narration. The contrast here with the Classic Traveller rules - 30 years older and hundreds of pages shorter but with lots of good advice on this - is marked in my view.

I think one source of reluctance in this respect is a desire not to be prescriptive - to rely on general principles like "players can have their PCs try anything" and "the GM will manage the balance of the campaign". But those are unhelpful for a new GM.

AP if the PCs wander off script, let them founder a little, but find ways to keep offering them back onto the path. If the players refuse to take the ramps, talk to the players about expectations.

This is another area where I think GMing advice could be presented more plainly and helpfully. If the goal of play is for the players to work through the AP, then the GM needs to have techniques ready-to-hand that will bring this about. It's counterproductive to this sort of play, for instance, to have advice sections that say "The players can try and have their PCs attempt anything."