D&D General The DM Shortage

[Ruin Explorer]

I'd make two points:

1) The DM shortage is nothing new. It's just a lot more obvious in the era of social media. It's been discussed as an issue since the 1990s at a minimum. In general fewer people are willing to DM than really are needed.

2) D&D 5E has exacerbated the problem by being designed the way it is. Not as badly as 3.XE did, but far worse than 4E. 4E was significantly easier to DM for a variety of factors not really worth discussing because they can't be replicated with 5E due to design choices.

5E D&D is one of the heaviest "DM-burden" games of the modern era, both in terms of how much you need to know in order to be able to do it, and how much work you need to put in to run D&D at a level acceptable to you/others. And that absolutely impacts who is willing to DM.

As I've mentioned, I used to run a D&D group (now Spire) and I play in three others. In all cases the D&D DMs are experienced and have jobs that aren't particularly horrific hours-wise. I agree with @billd91 and others you can have a full-time job and DM, but it'd better not be one that often demands extra time. I'm a "legal engineer" but that's usually a 9-5, and the others are a primary school teacher, a guy who works with charities (to help them succeed), and a barrister. Only the primary school teacher feels he has enough time to write is his own entire campaigns. I used to, but recently I found I had a lot more free time and we all had just as much fun with Spire (if not more!) so we've switched to that.

I think the real issue isn't jobs though, it's how much free time outside the session DMing can easily eat. People set their own standards, but a lot of people really want to write stuff out, do maps, ensure the encounters are designed right and so on. The players I know who have DM'd and would again, none of them would do D&D, but a lot of them would do stuff like PtbA/FitD, or Spire-type stuff, or other RPGs which can have setup if you want it, but don't inherently require very much.

I'd also like to be honest and say organisation levels play in. Some DMs make much better use of their time than others and are far more organised, and they can get a session totally prepped in perhaps half the time someone else can. But that's not easy to learn, not easy to teach others (in some cases the skills/talents are just not transferrable to others in any meaningful way), and is a special skill, frankly. I respect and admire those people, but they are unusual.

Oh a third point:

3) The very variable quality of pre-written official adventures for 5E does not help. At all. Nor does the fact that many pre-written large-scale adventures are NOT Pathfinder-style APs, but in fact sort of partially-filled-in campaign outlines, which are maybe 7/10ths done. For someone new or under time-pressure or the like, filling in those other 3/10ths can be a huge challenge, and it's just totally unnecessary. Virtually every other gaming company can release genuinely complete campaigns, except WotC. I'm going to blame this one firmly on Chris Perkins personally, because he has to be letting it happen, and has been involved with several of them.

Sure there is. The pressure isn't from some sort of supply/demand economic assumption. The pressure comes from my players (who are all friends and family) and wanting to lay out a good game for them. I don't want to waste their time, effort, and enthusiasm so I do the best I can.

Spot on. Plus it's just embarrassing if you do a bad job! And what "good" is varies widely between groups. Just as not ever DM is Matt Mercer, god bless 'im, not every group is full of highly engaged RPers who have elaborate prepared "bits" for their characters and so on, nor would ever group enjoy that. Some people's "good" is good combats and good rewards. My group's good is really "NPCs we can get in an argument with and a world that makes sense", together with some dramatic situations and no combats that drag on too long, in my experience lol.

 

[Oofta]

That is an interesting take considering how popular the OSR and that style of play is right now.

Honest question: popular compared to what? How do you know? Because I've never heard of a game, which doesn't mean much. Meanwhile we know that millions of people are playing 5E.

On a related note I also think that it's quite possible that the people attracted to and playing OSR D&D are simply more committed and have a different attitude towards the game. Even if we accept that more OSR players are willing to DM than 5E DMs, that doesn't necessarily mean the version of the game has anything to do with it. It could just be that people that play OSR are more invested. Or not. There's really no way to know. I think comparing player types in this case is comparing apples to oranges.

 

[Xamnam]

Honest question: popular compared to what? How do you know? Because I've never heard of a game, which doesn't mean much. Meanwhile we know that millions of people are playing 5E.

On a related note I also think that it's quite possible that the people attracted to and playing OSR D&D are simply more committed and have a different attitude towards the game. Even if we accept that more OSR players are willing to DM than 5E DMs, that doesn't necessarily mean the version of the game has anything to do with it. It could just be that people that play OSR are more invested. Or not. There's really no way to know. I think comparing player types in this case is comparing apples to oranges.

I don't think it's unreasonable to say that just knowing the term OSR implies a level of investment in TTRPGs above average.

 

[Minigiant]

Honest question: popular compared to what? How do you know? Because I've never heard of a game, which doesn't mean much. Meanwhile we know that millions of people are playing 5E.

On a related note I also think that it's quite possible that the people attracted to and playing OSR D&D are simply more committed and have a different attitude towards the game. Even if we accept that more OSR players are willing to DM than 5E DMs, that doesn't necessarily mean the version of the game has anything to do with it. It could just be that people that play OSR are more invested. Or not. There's really no way to know. I think comparing player types in this case is comparing apples to oranges.

That isn't before we all remember that OSR cuts out half the stuff in 5e and adding them back would require more work than 5e DM prepping.

I mean isn't that the whole point why OSR DMs like it that the OSI doesn't do what 5e does.

If you add the stories and the settings and the pillars and races and the classes all back in... you are back to square one with less DM support.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think comparing player types in this case is comparing apples to oranges.

I mean, that's a pretty wild belief given the fact that so many players are happy to play different RPGs. There will be some differences in the profiles, but like, different kinds of orange, not like, different fruit.

Even if we accept that more OSR players are willing to DM than 5E DMs, that doesn't necessarily mean the version of the game has anything to do with it.

It would be incredibly strange and unusual if the perceived effort involved in prepping for and running a game didn't impact the people willing to run it. That would be truly bizarre. So I think we can safely say, based on knowing humans and being a human who lives on planet Earth that the game design is absolutely going to factor into who is willing to DM it. There's never been any product which was magically immune to that kind of thing. It would be unprecedented.

 

[Oofta]

This. I keep making this mistake where I decide to run a mode primarily because I am using Fantasy Grounds and don't want to spend huge amounts of time on data entry, but every time I get burnt out within a couple months because forcing a WotC adventure to not suck is harder than making up everything on the fly -- except that it's not because FG.

Setting up a VTT game is a pain. I used Roll20 and Beyond20 and actually got pretty good at making maps. It was interesting how the game changed when you really limited line of sight and enforced vision. Putting people in an area of darkness and then "pinging" the general direction of sounds was quite fun. But it took a significant effort to learn the tools to do it right and I'm not fond of having to prep every map I could possibly need. I regularly sketch out multiple encounters I may or may not use. For an in person game that just means a couple of lines of notes and setting aside the proper minis. Lots more work for VTT.

As far as prepping mods I've never found any, whether produced by WOTC or anyone else, that made my life easier. Maybe I've just gotten too used to the "make s**t up as you go along" DMing.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Setting up a VTT game is a pain. I used Roll20 and Beyond20 and actually got pretty good at making maps. It was interesting how the game changed when you really limited line of sight and enforced vision. Putting people in an area of darkness and then "pinging" the general direction of sounds was quite fun. But it took a significant effort to learn the tools to do it right and I'm not fond of having to prep every map I could possibly need. I regularly sketch out multiple encounters I may or may not use. For an in person game that just means a couple of lines of notes and setting aside the proper minis. Lots more work for VTT.

As far as prepping mods I've never found any, whether produced by WOTC or anyone else, that made my life easier. Maybe I've just gotten too used to the "make s**t up as you go along" DMing.

Same, frankly.

Some people seem a lot more into it though.

 

[Xamnam]

It would be incredibly strange and unusual if the perceived effort involved in prepping for and running a game didn't impact the people willing to run it. That would be truly bizarre.

For what it's worth, while I absolutely would agree it requires less prep, I find the process of running PbtA more stressful overall. I enjoy them, and have been running a Blades team as they have availability, but if you asked me which I'd be more willing to run without a ton of notice, it'd be 5e. But maybe I just have a lower perception of what 5e prep is.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

So you aren't interested in running an enjoyable game for your players? Then why are you bothering, and why would anyone want to be at your table?

Because if I don't do it there is no one else who is willing or able to put in the work, so I won't get to play at all.

And people are at my table, since it's either that, or do the hard work themselves, or don't play.

It you could come up with a way to teach people to DM that doesn't involve about ten times as much work as just playing, then you might have a solution.

But like every other long standing problem that hasn't already been fixed, there is no easy solution.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

For what it's worth, while I absolutely would agree it requires less prep, I find the process of running PbtA more stressful overall. I enjoy them, and have been running a Blades team as they have availability, but if you asked me which I'd be more willing to run without a ton of notice, it'd be 5e. But maybe I just have a lower perception of what 5e prep is.

Interesting. I generally find PtbA anti-stressful myself, though Resistance is even better. I don't jive well with Blades itself though, it's just not the right game for me as a player or DM.

D&D isn't very stressful to run either, to be fair (any edition), but prepping is a significant task if I want to do it to even my (low) personal standards. 4E was drastically easier for boring non-replicable factors (digital tools, encounter design, monster design, loot approach including the heretical treasure packages etc.) so that saw me get really back into DMing (esp. writing my own stuff as opposed to running pre-written).