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

[AlViking]

With respect, your personal experiences are not data, and should not be treated as such to counter arguments.

A major problem we have is that nobody does regular surveys of RPG players to maintain reliable data. But, I'll turn back to the 1999 WotC market research for some idea.

In that research, the questioned folks about how many sessions of play they went through before "reset" - starting over with new characters. The results:

If you've been playing for
less than a year - average sessions before reset 8.8
between 1 and 5 years - average sessions before reset 12.9
over 5 years - average sessions before reset 19.6

So, for what we can call "new" gamers, the average number of sessions before reset was not high - 8.8.
While we don't know the distribution, the basic assumption would be that about half of all campaigns for those new players then lasted for fewer than 8.8 sessions.

For folks in the 1-5 year range, if they were playing weekly, the game lasted - on average, about three months. Maybe six months if they played once every other week.

Thus, games falling apart quickly, for whatever reason, was common. While this was a quarter-century ago (!) I think you'd need to make a pretty compelling argument to push the idea that this still isn't the case.

I don't think any individual's experiences - one way or another - tell us much of anything. Do some games fall apart quickly? Of course. Do we know how many? No.

 

[Umbran]

If 10% of all games fall apart quickly then some people are rarely going to experience it and for others it will be common. It is impossible to have millions of people playing the game if there are no GMs.

So, nobody is saying there are literally no GMs.

They are saying that, from the player point of view, there is a shortage of GMs. You can have a million people playing if you have, say 200,00 GMs. But that doesn't mean that there isn't another million players out there that could be served with another 200,000 GMs.

 

[Maxperson]

One of the things I really dislike that has come out of the rise of popularity of D&D (and to some degree other RPGs; but let's be honest, it is mostly D&D) is the monetization of convinging people that being a Dungeon master is hard.

Early on as 5E gained steam, we had people like Matt Coville and Matt Mercer conving people that yes, you can be a DM. Coville in particular built a following around explaining how to DM, but never telling his viewers that they could not do it. Others have followed, such as Ginni D, who offer similar advice.

But something I see a lot more of now is an endless stream of products aimed at DMs trying to convince them that Dming is hard and the only way to manage it is to buy this book. There are tons of books of super simplified adventures and advice on how to be a better DM and ways to cut corners, and the marketing is all "DMing is super hard, buy this to make it easier."

DMing is not that hard. We learned to do it when we were 10. We fumbled around and made weird calls and built bad adventures and still had a blast -- enough to still be doing it decades later. We need fewer products marketed as ways to make DMing easier, and more people advocating for letting new DMs screw up.

And part of this, IMO, is the professional DM cottage industry. I get why people would want a paid GM, especially as it relates to scheduling, but pro DMing amplifies the attitude that DMing is some sort of elite skill set that only someone with expertise can do. And that is nonsense. Anyone can DM.

Anyway, I saw an ad that really turned my crank. Had to get that out. Everyone can go back to their regularly scheduled Best of 2025 lists or whatever.

/rant

I think for the most part you are correct. However...

1) Being a DM takes creativity and at least some skill at improvisation. Most, but not everyone can do this. I've met people who don't think well off the cuff and/or have different creativity than D&D uses.

2a) DMing is a skill, and it takes practice to be good at it. A lot of new DMs bite off more than they can chew and get overwhelmed, which can be a turn off and cause them to quit. I think suggesting to new DMs that they start small is a good idea.

2b) Good DMs have built up that skill, and some people who haven't DM'd look at that and are again often overwhelmed, thinking that they couldn't possibly do it, even when the DMs tell them otherwise.

3) If the new DM has to find players that aren't friends, making mistakes and/or not being good right off the bat can lead to negative experiences due to "feedback" from the players, causing DMs to quit.

Those reasons are in large part why I think DMs tend to be far fewer in number than players.

 

[Maxperson]

Would you want anyone to DM for you?

I'd give just about anyone a shot at it.

 

[AlViking]

There is some fascinating stuff in this thread/discussion.

It’s interesting to see that a lot of people do drop out of the hobby as time goes on. Which is interesting given the number of groups I know that have been playing since the 80’s.

But I guess I know a lot of groups and people that have also left the hobby. I wonder how much of the loss is due to bad GMing?

Edit: It would also be great to get some post pandemic numbers. I’d love to see how things have changed. I love data.

I've seen a fair number of people drop out simply because of demands on their time. Career changes, having kids, moving, not to mention just having fun playing with friends for a while and then realizing that other activities are more worth their while. It would be kind of terrifying if everyone that tried the game continued to play it like an addict. I mean, my dice are extremely precious and they demand to be taken out on a regular basis but I'm not addicted. I can quit anytime I want. Honest.

 

[prabe]

I'd give just about anyone a shot at it.

I would be especially quick to give someone I'd GMed for a shot.

 

[The Firebird]

Telling her "naw don't sweat it, it's easy!" is dismissing her challenges. Inadvertently, perhaps. But to her it IS a big deal, it IS hard, despite the platitudes.

I do find the message that we should not note that GMing can be hard to be, honestly, a little glib. Students don't generally do better if you are forbidden from acknowledging their challenges, and help them find help with those challenges. If we can't say, "This can be hard, and here's where you can find help," you are getting in the way of people improving.

I think it is worth reupping this from the OP:

We fumbled around and made weird calls and built bad adventures and still had a blast -- enough to still be doing it decades later. We need fewer products marketed as ways to make DMing easier, and more people advocating for letting new DMs screw up.

The claim is not that a new DM shouldn't encounter any challenges. It's that the game will be fun even with those challenges and they shouldn't let those challenges stop them from DMing.

 

[CleverNickName]

This whole thread reminds me of those advertising campaigns from the 50s and 60s. Canned and frozen food companies were going into OVERDRIVE trying to convince people that cooking was a difficult and time-consuming endeavor that only housewives and retirees had time for. Nobody has time to cook! Cooking is so hard! What you need is to just buy this prepackaged Whatever and save yourself All That Trouble!

Consequently, many of the people I grew up with (in rural America) didn't how to cook. Hell, most of my generation doesn't even know how to make biscuits without a boxed mix, and that's a crime in the South.

But yeah, that's the vibe: DMing is too hard, you don't have time for that, only a highly-skilled person should attempt it...so buy this new thing instead, and let it do all that "hard" "work" for you! Of course the analogy isn't perfect; food is a necessity and gaming is a luxury, etc., but the marketing strategy seems to match.

 

[The Firebird]

This whole thread reminds me of those advertising campaigns from the 50s and 60s. Canned and frozen food companies were going into OVERDRIVE trying to convince people that cooking was a difficult and time-consuming endeavor that only housewives and retirees had time for. Nobody has time to cook! Cooking is so hard! What you need is to just buy this prepackaged Whatever and save yourself All That Trouble!

Consequently, many of the people I grew up with (in rural America) didn't how to cook. Hell, most of my generation doesn't even know how to make biscuits without a boxed mix, and that's a crime in the South.

But yeah, that's the vibe: DMing is hard, you don't have time for that, only a highly-skilled person should attempt it...so buy this new thing instead, and let it do all that "hard" "work" for you! Of course the analogy isn't perfect; food is a necessity and gaming is a luxury, etc., but the marketing strategy seems to match.

I remember seeing the same point made about D&D Beyond. The pitch is: "Character creation can take forever. D&D Beyond’s free character builder makes it quick and easy."

Folks...you designed character creation!

 

[HatWearingFool]

Seeing the numbers for how many games die out so quickly I’m surprised WOTC and other companies don’t focus more on tools to make running games easier. I saw before that was what Mearls wanted to do and he left WOTC because of it.

I mean it seems like an obvious place to focus efforts. The only reason not to would be if you can’t think of anything to produce to make games easier to run/help out new GMs.

Or I suppose if you know people drop out so quickly just because they try it and TTRPGs aren’t for them.

Anyways I find running games to be difficult (even after… oh god… ~40 years?!?) and am always on the lookout for better tools, methods, and info on how to improve. So I’d like to see more focus in this area.

On a related note I’m just starting to use Nimble and I think it’s exactly what wizards should have done for a new edition (except hit point bloat and resting, that was kept for compatibility reasons). D&D is just a lot for new players and DM’s, although 2024 core books are the best (IMHO) version for people to pick up so far.