D&D General The DM Shortage

[Malmuria]

1) That's only if your goal is to leave a standard strength party close to empty on resources on a particular given day, and that's not a omnipresent goal of the game.

2) If play culture is being included in 5e's GM responsibilities, than it should be included on the other side as well.

Well, the basic rules has three chapters for the "Dm Toolset": Monsters (mostly just statblocks), Building Encounters, and Magic Items. If we're talking about the "expectations of the ruleset," that should give you a pretty good idea of what the designers think the DM's job will be. The DMG has six pages on creating different types of scenarios (location, mystery, intrigue), and then six pages on creating balanced combat encounters...again, it tells you what kind of game the designers had in mind.

In terms of play culture, I'm referring to the article QB referenced that has this passage

Playing the role of Dungeon Master can be a rewarding job but it is sometimes thankless, and always taxing. D&D can be overwhelming to any new player; this is especially true for a DM, who needs to know all the rules, adjudicate them, create or manage the story, plan logistics for their group, and cater the experience to what each player wants. The amount of effort involved makes it inaccessible for new players and difficult for experienced ones to sustain long-term.

 

[Xamnam]

Well, the basic rules has three chapters for the "Dm Toolset": Monsters (mostly just statblocks), Building Encounters, and Magic Items. If we're talking about the "expectations of the ruleset," that should give you a pretty good idea of what the designers think the DM's job will be. The DMG has six pages on creating different types of scenarios (location, mystery, intrigue), and then six pages on creating balanced combat encounters...again, it tells you what kind of game the designers had in mind.

Building satisfying encounters is a very different concern, though not mutually exclusive, than creating a "full" adventuring day.

In terms of play culture, I'm referring to the article QB referenced that has this passage

Sure, and I would balk at accepting that as anything near universal, given that I've never encountered it, as many others here have similarly said. I don't find DMing 5e taxing, and my players don't demand anything of me, they're excited for what I bring to the table. Regardless, my point was that different play cultures with different expectations exists for all games, so if we're listing that as a downside to 5e, it's only fair to list play culture driven expectations for those other games. That's why I called it an unbalanced framing.

I'm all for arguments for the ways that 5e could improve, I just prefer when they're steel-manned.

 

[Minigiant]

Like I said pages ago: the style of play popular today is different from what was popular before. But the DM centric material is still written for old school play,

So much of the DMG is dedicated to old school play and a single setting.

It's basically like putting the instruction manual for checker in a chess box. Only people who already know how to play chess can use the box's contents

 

[overgeeked]

Since people like word count, too...here goes.

Full basic rules. 129,428 words.

For reference: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen – 126,194 words. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – 106,821 words. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince – 169,441 words. The Hobbit – 95,022 words. The Two Towers – 143,436 words. The Return of the King – 134,462 words.

Average page of this kind of text is between 500-1000 words per page. Being overly generous at 1000 words per page, at 15 1/2 pages, that's about 15,500 words saved by cutting it down to 3rd level. Which would bring the total word count down to 113,928.

So a 3rd level version of these would make it go from being slightly longer than Sense and Sensibility to slightly shorter than Sense and Sensibility.

For reference: the entire text of the Moldvay Basic, including the Haunted Keep, comes to about 60,000 words.

And just for comparison...OSE Classic Fantasy, the retroclone of B/X with more verbose descriptions of the rules, optional rules, etc all told comes in at about 85,000 words.

 

[Redwizard007]

I think the main question for me here is: what is the GMs job? What is the GM supposed to be doing before and during games? This is a bit pithy, but:
OSR: design an interesting location, use procedures, allow for player creativity
PBTA/FITD: don't prep anything, ask interesting questions and use the answers, introduce complications, play to see what happens

5e: Be able to constantly reference and parse an extensive ruleset, read a 300 page module and then direct the PCs through it, create 6-8 balanced encounters per adventuring day, understand or create world's full of lore, improvise and act like Matt Mercer, buy all the books, set up fancy battlemaps on a vtt, or some combination of the above.

An integrated online ruleset + vtt would help with all those things, and for that, you'll have to pay...

Apparently, I am an absolutely atrocious 5e DM.

Anecdotally, one of the better DMs I play with has an incredibly poor grasp of the rules. Our post session report is usually some commentary on the strength of his role playing and story telling and then me asking how he came up with on the spot rulings that are way off RAW, but always play to the rule of cool. We usually hash out the actual rules in downtime so he has them for next session. It's never been an issue. That may have something to do with 2 serious DMs as players who tend to go with the flow and have the restraint to not rules lawyer, but it could also be that the pace and tone of his adventures don't really need us butting in.

 

[Malmuria]

Building satisfying encounters is a very different concern, though not mutually exclusive, than creating a "full" adventuring day.

Sure, and I would balk at accepting that as anything near universal, given that I've never encountered it, as many others here have similarly said. I don't find DMing 5e taxing, and my players don't demand anything of me, they're excited for what I bring to the table. Regardless, my point was that different play cultures with different expectations exists for all games, so if we're listing that as a downside to 5e, it's only fair to list play culture driven expectations for those other games. That's why I called it an unbalanced framing.

I'm all for arguments for the ways that 5e could improve, I just prefer when they're steel-manned.

I can DM (or play) 5e if the other players understand the rules, but if they don't it becomes very taxing very quickly. It's a huge bonus if a player knows what they want to do on their turn, has a clear idea of what their ability/spell does, and knows what to roll.

Different play cultures do exist for other games. OSR games place a lot of weight in DM adjudication and player creativity, and has a play culture that leans into that expectation. Many of the newer games are very minimalist, so rules can be summarized in 1-3 pages (for example, Mausritter, (which is free), where how to play is a 2 page spread and how to gm is a two page spread). Most of the stuff produced in the OSR is DM-facing: short scenarios or mini-settings with factions. A downside to OSR play culture are adversarial DMs (and, um...reactionary types...).

Indie games have come up with things like safety tools and session 0 guidelines, which have thankfully made their way to 5e spaces, so that the task of managing social relations at the table is not just on the GM, and not just in a vague "make sure everyone has fun" sort of way.

In both cases the financial buy-in is much less, all the way to zero.

 

[Xamnam]

I can DM (or play) 5e if the other players understand the rules, but if they don't it becomes very taxing very quickly. It's a huge bonus if a player knows what they want to do on their turn, has a clear idea of what their ability/spell does, and knows what to roll.

Different play cultures do exist for other games. OSR games place a lot of weight in DM adjudication and player creativity, and has a play culture that leans into that expectation. Many of the newer games are very minimalist, so rules can be summarized in 1-3 pages (for example, Mausritter, (which is free), where how to play is a 2 page spread and how to gm is a two page spread). Most of the stuff produced in the OSR is DM-facing: short scenarios or mini-settings with factions. A downside to OSR play culture are adversarial DMs (and, um...reactionary types...).

Indie games have come up with things like safety tools and session 0 guidelines, which have thankfully made their way to 5e spaces, so that the task of managing social relations at the table is not just on the GM, and not just in a vague "make sure everyone has fun" sort of way.

Excellent, I appreciate you laying all this out.

 

[Maxperson]

I remember the starter and essentials there. I'll have to look next time to see if they had the PHB and DMG.

Barnes and Noble also carries D&D books, usually near the sci-fi/fantasy section.

 

[Oofta]

Apparently, I am an absolutely atrocious 5e DM.

Anecdotally, one of the better DMs I play with has an incredibly poor grasp of the rules. Our post session report is usually some commentary on the strength of his role playing and story telling and then me asking how he came up with on the spot rulings that are way off RAW, but always play to the rule of cool. We usually hash out the actual rules in downtime so he has them for next session. It's never been an issue. That may have something to do with 2 serious DMs as players who tend to go with the flow and have the restraint to not rules lawyer, but it could also be that the pace and tone of his adventures don't really need us butting in.

Most of the article referred to sets up completely unrealistic criteria for DMs that nobody I know of actually requires or expects, then says that those criteria don't apply to OSR because they say so. Then they claim things about what kind of games you "have to" run in 5E even though we're wrapping up a 5E campaign I'm playing in that was completely location based with only minimal story. We still had a lot of fun.

About the only thing they do get right is that OSR doesn't have very many rules and then claims that it's inherently better for everyone that way. Having played old school games when they were new, all I can say is we didn't always follow the rules because they were so poorly done we had to come up with house rules to make things work. I'd rather have consistent and logical rules with straightforward assumptions about how the math works.

 

[Reynard]

Like I said pages ago: the style of play popular today is different from what was popular before. But the DM centric material is still written for old school play,

So much of the DMG is dedicated to old school play and a single setting.

It's basically like putting the instruction manual for checker in a chess box. Only people who already know how to play chess can use the box's contents

How do you mean? What DM advice is designed for old school play that contradicts the game design?