Reynard
aka Ian Eller
What expenses, out of curiosity?
D&D General A Rant: DMing is not hard.
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
Zardnaar
Legend
I bought 3 PDFs and printing costs.
PDFs $11 usd
Printing $11
Travel $7
Approx.
Things went wrong. Couple of places have closed down, one relocated and weren't to happy about printing due to new setup.
I don’t know that I agree, primarily because while you name the positive examples, I’m not sure what are the examples that tripped the trigger for your rant. For example, I read a book like Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and see a book that is trying to teach people how achieve a particular result in their DMing, particularly over the course of a campaign. And that’s the thing: yes, anyone can DM but oftentimes people are looking to get a particular type of campaign or adventure and that’s what they’re focused on - it’s not that they can’t DM, period. But again, maybe you saw something that was more egregious.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Grifters gonna grift and "you can't do this thing without giving me money" is a core precept of grifting. But the ratio of players to DMs has always been way too high. That said, I think the most prominent voices -- including WotC itself -- are arguing that DMing isn't a daunting challenge.
I suspect, after this holiday season sees a lot of Heroes of the Borderlands boxes opened and played with, that we will start 2026 with a lot of fresh-faced DMs who know that it's not nearly as challenging as the grifters and gatekeepers argue.
overgeeked
Open-World Sandbox
A few things.
Work vs hard work. No, running games isn’t that hard. But it is work. A lot more work than most players realize. A lot of referees also make things harder on themselves by prepping the wrong stuff, making assumptions about what the PCs will do, etc.
Skill level. Just because anyone can, and yes anyone can, does not mean everyone’s equally good at it. Take any sport as an example. There’s usually a massive difference between amateurs and pros. Not that paid referees are closer to pro athletes in skill level. But the perception is there. “This person must be good since they’re charging.” That is not always, and often not, the case. My one experience with a paid referee was middling at best. The group had four longtime referees as players and any one of us could have done just as good if not better. In this case the “pros” are regular referees putting out their shingle.
Shifting baseline. When most gamers came into the hobby prior to the 2014 D&D boom, we were introduced by a friend, older sibling, uncle, teacher, etc. They had experience with the game, sure. But they were not “pros” at running games. The people coming in with the 2014 D&D boom mostly discovered or rediscovered D&D while watching professional actors run and play in games. Whether Stranger Things or Critical Role. Your cousin who ran Keep on the Borderlands for you back in 1984 just does not compare.
So you have kitchen-table referees being compared to professional actors and most people are noticing the vast gulf between those two groups. And surprise, people come along to fill that gap. For money of course.
Thankfully a lot of other people came along and put their advice out there for free with the option to buy it collected in a nice book. Matt Colville. Mike Shea. Kevin Crawford. Justin Alexander. The majority of referees in the OSR/NSR scenes.
Work vs hard work. No, running games isn’t that hard. But it is work. A lot more work than most players realize. A lot of referees also make things harder on themselves by prepping the wrong stuff, making assumptions about what the PCs will do, etc.
Skill level. Just because anyone can, and yes anyone can, does not mean everyone’s equally good at it. Take any sport as an example. There’s usually a massive difference between amateurs and pros. Not that paid referees are closer to pro athletes in skill level. But the perception is there. “This person must be good since they’re charging.” That is not always, and often not, the case. My one experience with a paid referee was middling at best. The group had four longtime referees as players and any one of us could have done just as good if not better. In this case the “pros” are regular referees putting out their shingle.
Shifting baseline. When most gamers came into the hobby prior to the 2014 D&D boom, we were introduced by a friend, older sibling, uncle, teacher, etc. They had experience with the game, sure. But they were not “pros” at running games. The people coming in with the 2014 D&D boom mostly discovered or rediscovered D&D while watching professional actors run and play in games. Whether Stranger Things or Critical Role. Your cousin who ran Keep on the Borderlands for you back in 1984 just does not compare.
So you have kitchen-table referees being compared to professional actors and most people are noticing the vast gulf between those two groups. And surprise, people come along to fill that gap. For money of course.
Thankfully a lot of other people came along and put their advice out there for free with the option to buy it collected in a nice book. Matt Colville. Mike Shea. Kevin Crawford. Justin Alexander. The majority of referees in the OSR/NSR scenes.
Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
More like adults are less tolerant of the learning process. DMing is a skill, and you can’t pick up any skill and immediately be good at it. There is always a growth period. But, as adults, our free time is more limited, so we feel more frustrated by that growth period. We don’t want to have to struggle through being bad at a skill. I mean, this is also true of children, but as adults the sting of feeling like you’re wasting time on something that isn’t providing an immediate result hits harder. So, we latch onto anything that promises “one easy trick” to skip the growth period and get right to the being good at the skill stage.
Of course, it’s always a lie. The only way to learn a skill is to practice it, and you’re always going to be bad at it at first. But, it might get a learner to keep trying the skill, which is what they actually need to get better at it. If people need “life hacks” to feel comfortable practicing something they want to get better at, at least it accomplishes the goal of getting them to practice.
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Well, just "being" a DM is not overly hard. Nearly anyone can do the basic DM actions of "just say stuff" at random. Of course, it IS hard to be an average or good or great DM.
It's marketing. And it's not new......
Sure anyone can just "do it", the same way anyone can write a book. Of course doing it even 'average' is hard.
A LOT of people need help. That was why there is so much "help for DMs" out there.
This is true of all players.
Reynard
aka Ian Eller
No, it isn't. It just takes practice. It takes being allowed to fail.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
What about being an average DM is difficult? Understand enough of the rules, understand enough of the adventure, have enough social skills to make sure everyone is mostly engaged.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
I mean, those ads are wrong....but GMing is still hard.
That a bunch of 10-year-olds have attempted a thing is not the same as saying that doing it is easy. 10-year-olds paint. 10-year-olds play violin. 10-year-olds write stories. Does that mean that it is easy to paint like Dali, Michaelangelo, or Picasso? Does that mean it's easy to play Mozart, Bizet, or Rachmaninoff? Does that mean it's easy to write like Joyce, Woolf, or Frost?
Writing a novel is hard; NaNoWriMo exists. These are simultaneously true things.
The thing the ads are wrong about is that you cannot learn to do a hard thing entirely on your own. You absolutely can. Well, they're also wrong that you have to pay to learn anything. There are tons of 100% free sources which can help guide you on the road to GMing success. The rules for Dungeon World, for example, are an excellent starting point for new GMs needing guidance on how to begin GMing from an effective and focused starting point.
That a bunch of 10-year-olds have attempted a thing is not the same as saying that doing it is easy. 10-year-olds paint. 10-year-olds play violin. 10-year-olds write stories. Does that mean that it is easy to paint like Dali, Michaelangelo, or Picasso? Does that mean it's easy to play Mozart, Bizet, or Rachmaninoff? Does that mean it's easy to write like Joyce, Woolf, or Frost?
Writing a novel is hard; NaNoWriMo exists. These are simultaneously true things.
The thing the ads are wrong about is that you cannot learn to do a hard thing entirely on your own. You absolutely can. Well, they're also wrong that you have to pay to learn anything. There are tons of 100% free sources which can help guide you on the road to GMing success. The rules for Dungeon World, for example, are an excellent starting point for new GMs needing guidance on how to begin GMing from an effective and focused starting point.
