D&D General The DM Shortage

[James Gasik]

What I keep seeing is people who are afraid to DM. They feel like there's too much they have to learn how to do, too many plates to spin, and they freeze up at the thought of people not liking their game because they're bad at it, so they just don't DM.

It doesn't help that everyone has a brace of "horrible DM" tales to regale people with, and it's all too easy to become one without meaning to!

A few years back we had a new guy join our group, and after a few sessions, they mentioned they were a DM and were curious if we'd play in a game they ran. I'm always up for new games, so I was like, "sure, let's do it!".

So we have our session zero, where he wants to run options by us, and he asked what we thought of Ravenloft. And he was completely taken aback when we recoiled and groaned.

"What...what's wrong with Ravenloft? I think it's a great setting!"

"You have to understand", I said, "the idea of Ravenloft is great. In practice, however, your basic premise revolves around trying to make the players apprehensive and nervous, right? So how do you do that, really? Historically, you do this by taking away player agency, trapping them in a scenario they have to escape from, giving them as little information as possible, making their abilities not work right, trying to corrupt their characters with weird cursed powers, and using overpowered monsters. In the hands of your average DM, a Ravenloft campaign can devolve into a power trip that's not fun for the players- so I'll bet just about anyone you talk to has had a bad experience with the setting."

I was still fully on board with trying his campaign, but that reaction totally demoralized him, apparently, and he quietly left our group a few weeks later.

 

[Reynard]

A couple years ago I took a job teaching 12 years olds how to play D&D over the course of a couple sessions. By the end of the second session, one solid GM had emerged from the group of 6 kids.

A year later they weren't playing D&D anymore because it was "too much work" compared to just playing video games together. I did not follow up beyond that but my guess is it was the GM kid's opinion on the matter that resulted in them dropping tabletop, since the work involved isn't high for players and these kids were already tech savvy enough to play online.

Running 5E is realwork,especially for new GMs. It needs to be less work. It was less work in 1985. Find out why and fix it.

 

[Oofta]

A couple years ago I took a job teaching 12 years olds how to play D&D over the course of a couple sessions. By the end of the second session, one solid GM had emerged from the group of 6 kids.

A year later they weren't playing D&D anymore because it was "too much work" compared to just playing video games together. I did not follow up beyond that but my guess is it was the GM kid's opinion on the matter that resulted in them dropping tabletop, since the work involved isn't high for players and these kids were already tech savvy enough to play online.

Running 5E is realwork,especially for new GMs. It needs to be less work. It was less work in 1985. Find out why and fix it.

Again, our experiences differ. If you want to run dungeon crawls it's probably easier to run today than it was before because you have access to more tools. I grew tired of dungeon crawls by the 80s so I didn't do them, my prep work was not any worse than it is now.

People have more distractions now than ever, I'm not convinced it has anything to do with the game. It certainly isn't stopping millions of people from playing the game.

 

[Reynard]

Again, our experiences differ. If you want to run dungeon crawls it's probably easier to run today than it was before because you have access to more tools.

While I wasn't talking about dungeon crawls, I am curious what dungeon crawl specific tools you think people have today that they didn't have in 1985.

People have more distractions now than ever, I'm not convinced it has anything to do with the game. It certainly isn't stopping millions of people from playing the game.

There are a quantifiable greater number of moving parts and rules concerns in 5E than there were in TSR editions, in addition to 5E not teaching GMs to GM.

 

[tetrasodium]

A couple years ago I took a job teaching 12 years olds how to play D&D over the course of a couple sessions. By the end of the second session, one solid GM had emerged from the group of 6 kids.

A year later they weren't playing D&D anymore because it was "too much work" compared to just playing video games together. I did not follow up beyond that but my guess is it was the GM kid's opinion on the matter that resulted in them dropping tabletop, since the work involved isn't high for players and these kids were already tech savvy enough to play online.

Running 5E is realwork,especially for new GMs. It needs to be less work. It was less work in 1985. Find out why and fix it.

The prep is less enjoyable too. I didn't play 2e very long but played/ran 3.x & pf for years & years. I might have spent a lot of time building a badass bbeg for the party to stomp in minutes & 1-2+hours per hour of expected play building & describing dungeons to fit that NPC... but doing that mattered to how the session played out & the players cared about it because it mattered to their survival when I wanted it to. In 5e I don't spend all that much less time (I'd guess just as much if not more) but the players are just in "meh whatever..36.." mode.

Another big dofference is that players needed to eke out any edge they could & were excited to engage with or even build things* in the world that might give them an edge. I almost need to pull teeth to get anything out of them now & there's nothing I can give them that they need.

*Political relationships, cities, etc. Patrons were a (less defined) thing in 3.5 eberron but way more important to players to the degree that I had trouble getting 5e players to even read the patrons section in rising & didn't really have anything they could offer to the ones who did.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

There is a part of real work to GM, but also a large amount of perceived work.

1. Player expectations are high

When I first played a RPG it was an objectively awful railroad with a power trip GM (me) being dickishly adversarial to the players. However, we were 12 and everyone had a blast. We were coming from gamebooks and wanted "more options than the pre-made choices at the end of the paragraph". That's low expectation and I was able to beat it. I wouldn't have been able to beat the expectation of a high-quality, thoughtful story caring for the PCs characters arcs and ensuring equal spotlight and detailed worldbuilding. In some way, I feel that I wouldn't have started DM'ing if my group had been exposed to the current crop of high quality CRPG out there or the professional GM broadcasting their games, because my performance would have been lower. Beating a gamebook wasn't that hard, especially the Forest of Doom.

2. Playing with stranger may not help

I read on this board that people are playing with random strangers over the Internet, or random stranger at a convention, or random stranger that want to play RPGs in their city. I have no reason to assume this is a huge conspiracy and this isn't happening. But wow, it must be hard to start GM'ing and say it and watch player flock to you to join your game. They'll be MUCH LESS tolerant to any mistake than a group of established friend will be. They'll be more prone to drop the game (sending a text message if they're polite) than stick to it even if something isn't to their liking. Among a group of friend, it's easier to have discussion about how to improve an activity and generally communicate than with stranger. It puts an additional burden to GMing: if your first attempt fails, you might want to end your aspiring GM carreer.

3. We're work adverse... to the point of not trying

Given the weight of player expectation, even if the aspiring GM realizes that he won't be the greatest of all time, but would seek to be a reasonably-competent GM, he'll assume a lot more prep time than his really needed. And the learning curve make it so that, indeed, it's longer to prep when you're novice. Especially since you'll be falling into the trap of not wanting to improvise and prep every single player idea beforehand. The Alexandrian makes it clear that a lot of prep goes down the drain, and he should be read more by starting GMs... so they wouldn't resign after a few weeks, exhausted.

 

[Oofta]

While I wasn't talking about dungeon crawls, I am curious what dungeon crawl specific tools you think people have today that they didn't have in 1985.

DDB, dungeon generators, online random anything-you-want generators, word and text processing tools to name a few. It's a lot easier to keep track of a campaign even if you just post google docs than it was back in the day when it was a spiral ring notebook and a pencil.

There are a quantifiable greater number of moving parts and rules concerns in 5E than there were in TSR editions, in addition to 5E not teaching GMs to GM.

You can ignore many of the rules if you want. Limit races, limit classes, don't use feats. As I said earlier I think part of the problem for newbie DMs is that a lot of people want the kitchen sink. There are more tools to learn to DM than ever available just a quick search away.

 

[Hex08]

One thing I see a lot of on reddit an similar places is groups of 3 or 4 or even 5 friends unable to find a DM. My first thought for this people is: duh, one of YOU be the DM. That's how this works. Then I think about how I learned to DM way back in 1985 with a Red Box that actually taught the skill, step by step, at the same time it taught the players how to play. D&D had "beginner products" but nothing (I am aware of) that actually handholds a new DM through the process from a to z.

I don't play D&D anymore but this seems to be the answer. When I started playing we switched off who was the DM, if no one was the DM we couldn't play. Pretty simple. Over time some gravitated more towards the role and were better at it and now, 40 years later I DM more than I play.

I started with the D&D Basic set (Moldvay, I think) which gave some rules, dice and Keep on the Borderlands. This was everything we needed, it started getting our imaginations going and we were creating our own adventures in pretty short order. We moved onto the Expert Set and bought more adventures and then moved onto AD&D. Based on prior posts is sounds like 5E doesn't have anything like that (rules and an adventure of reasonable length in one reasonably priced package). That seems like a real failure on WotC's part and a really easy thing to fix.

 

[MichaelSomething]

So has this thread inspired anyone to step up and run more games for people?

 

[Scott Christian]

I am going to approach this from my two local game shops and the years I have running various high school D&D clubs. I will start with the latter:

• Young people watch a lot of online play. A lot! And the DMs watch even more. Of the past two high schools (one with four groups and one with three) - all of them want to create their own world and campaign. All refuse to run anything printed. And all but one dresses like Mercer. Over 50% fail. This leaves a lot of disappointed players. These young players and DMs are not learning together, and in the end, it leads to DMs leaving and players looking for a new DM. But, being they are all young, few are willing to step-up for social reasons most of us can't comprehend anymore.
• Gamestore had D&D every Wednesday (9 tables) and Saturday 4 tables). The DMs grew tired of players wanting to use everything, including third party materials. Several stopped altogether because they also had home campaigns. This left two DMs that were good and a few that most of us wouldn't play with. (Not being mean, but some people just don't have the skill set to run a D&D game, much less a campaign. Some can't read the room, some cross too many boundaries, some are too slow and can't think on their feet, and some show too much bias.) So two DMs won't cut it. So they hired a company to come in and run their games now. The other game store kind of actively discouraged people from running their own games (which would probably lead to DMs accepting new players). They too, hired this same outside company. Which leads me to a point: I have played with a paid DM (for an entire campaign) to see what it was like. It is not the same game. One player whines, and that player gets a magic item. One player wants a dragon, they will eventually get a dragon. People paying $25 a session feel they have certain rights, and if they are new players, they perceive the game from this viewpoint.

So DM delusion? Player delusion? DM burnout? Increase in player base from both DM burnout and new recruits? Players just being more choosy?

I am not sure if it is any of those. But those are my experiences and observations.