D&D General A Rant: DMing is not hard.

[Reynard]

Yes. I was just responding the suggestion that getting paid as a DM contributes to it.

That's not what I said. I said the existence of paid GMs exacerbates the perception that GMing is hard and only pros can do it well.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The existence of taxi drivers doesn’t discourage folks from learning to drive. I’m not sure why a DM being willing to run your game for a small charge should discourage folks from learning to DM. If anything it should be an incentive.

Excellent analogy. The existence of restaurants doesn't mean everyone dines out, but you do need to actually learn to cook, and doing more than "it's basic and filling" requires effort, practice, and learning--good cooking is hard, but passable cooking is pretty easy. The existence of laundromats and dry cleaning services doesn't mean everyone takes all of their clothes there--but doing dry cleaning at home is, to put it simply, pretty difficult and requires at least a little starting knowledge and some kit.

These analogies are all imperfect, as analogies always are, but they capture the core, the gist. GMing is a skill. That skill takes time to learn, and is difficult to do well. It's very easy to just throw yourself at it...and the results may be decent, impressive, or disappointing. Getting help to become good-to-great is very useful--but you absolutely 100% do not need to pay money for such things. There are scads of free resources, many of which are very good. (Again, I recommend the GMing rules for Dungeon World as a starting point--they won't apply perfectly to every game ever, but they are very good as a starting point for D&D GMing.)

Further, some games are easier to GM than others. Game design matters, but it isn't perfectly determinative. Just like how genetics isn't perfectly determinative, but absolutely can influence and affect things. My family has a predisposition to colon cancer--but relatives of mine lived long, full lives without ever developing that kind of cancer. System design can help or hinder.

(And on the subject of system design--early-edition D&D was not at all easy to GM if you actually used the rules. The difference is that people were so cavalier about using the rules that few people actually did "play D&D" in the strict sense. Instead, they played "what parts of D&D I remember", which was often far simpler, easier, and relied more or less totally on "can the GM invent crap from whole cloth, on the fly, that manages to stay both consistent and worthwhile/challenging?" Which is, you guessed it, yet another skill! A very difficult one to learn at that, because the books were so goddamn opaque and poorly-organized. It's frankly a miracle anyone learned how to GM given the books available at the time.)

 

[schneeland]

There seems to be this idea that if people just tried it, they'd like it. That's very much not my experience. The overwhelming majority of people try it, play for a bit, then move on. Which means the number who try it, like it enough to try running it, and then stick with running it, is a very, very small minority.

My experience wasn't quite as bad, but indeed the number of people still playing started to drop off slowly after we all had our degrees from university, and then quite steeply once people either started to get married and have kids or stumbled up the corporate ladder. And for a lot of these people, it seemed perfectly fine that TTRPGs were something you did in high school and university and then "grew out of it".

And even back then, only about half of the people tried to run a game at least once.

 

[bedir than]

I think it's harder to DM now because I'm old with a half dozen systems still percolating in my head. Some don't work together well.

While when I first learned not only did I have a lot of time, I had one version of D&D in my head.

 

[TheSword]

That's not what I said. I said the existence of paid GMs exacerbates the perception that GMing is hard and only pros can do it well.

I really don’t see how. Unless individuals are making that claim in order to sell themselves.

 

[Reynard]

I really don’t see how. Unless individuals are making that claim in order to sell themselves.

You are free to disagree, of course, I just wanted to clarify my statement.

 

[HatWearingFool]

I think it's harder to DM now because I'm old with a half dozen systems still percolating in my head. Some don't work together well.

While when I first learned not only did I have a lot of time, I had one version of D&D in my head.

I do think it’s harder today. Way back when I started in the 80’s I played a pretty simple style of game. Some people still play and enjoy that style, but some (many?) expect more from their games now and that definitely raises the bar in some ways.

 

[SableWyvern]

Some types of GMing involve more work and effort than others.

The methods that involve less work tend to rely on specific game styles (that you might not want to play) and skill-sets (that generally need to be trained and practiced if you want get good at them).

All things are harder if they're things that you don't enjoy. Conversely, more labour-intensive GM styles may involve plenty of work, but not feel "hard" to someone who enjoys the type of labour involved.

I often see people say there's no excuse to not play different games when there are games out there that you can pick up and play in minutes -- but that's only true if you're actually interested in those sorts games in the first place. The same is true of GMing.

I do agree that if someone actually wants to GM, then it's generally not that hard and you can muddle through problems until you get better. As the OP says, lots of us managed this as kids. However, if you're genuinely not interested in GMing in the first place then, yes, it's going to look and feel hard, and it's valid to say it is too hard to bother trying.

I agree with any statement along the lines of, "GMing is easy enough that no one who wants to try their hand at it should feel afraid to, and anyone can get good at it." I disagree with any statement along the lines of, "GMing is easy, so everyone should try it and there's no excuse or reason not to."

 

[Greg K]

Why do you think that is? Are new players less tolerant of new DMs?

I can't speak for new players, but I have seen experienced players/DMs less tolerant of experienced players taking up the mantle of DM for the first time and making new DM mistakes.

In one instance, I witnessed 2/3 of a table refuse to play after the first session. After the third session, the rest (including myself) gave up, because the DM refused to take experienced advice and kept the characters trapped in an inn being swarmed by waves of orcs for a single encounter that lasted three sessions (edit: and the encounter had nothing to do with the main adventure).

 

[Seramus]

I think it is medium. The amount of soft skills necessary to become good at DM'ing is far higher than a wide variety of other games. And I cannot count the number of GM's I've met who struggle to improvise, struggle to resolve disputes, are intensely inflexible, or treat the gaming session like an arena for social power.

I literally had a friend try to GM, and he was so bad four out of five of us mutally agreed we couldn't keep enduring it. Which ended our friendship painfully, since he was a great guy outside the gane.

Golf from earlier was a great example. So is Chess, or Go, or any other low entrance / high mastery game.