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

Reynard · Dec 6, 2025

Zardnaar said:
Its harder than playing.

Playing requires minimal effort. I put 20-30 hours or more into a new campaign.

I dont chatge but current batch have agreed to chip on some cash to cover expenses.

What expenses, out of curiosity?

Zardnaar · Dec 6, 2025

Reynard said:
What expenses, out of curiosity?

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.

TiQuinn · Dec 6, 2025

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 · Dec 6, 2025

Reese Witherspoon What Like Its Hard GIF

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 · Dec 6, 2025

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.

Charlaquin · Dec 6, 2025

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

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.

bloodtide · Dec 6, 2025

Reynard said:
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.

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.

Reynard said:
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."

It's marketing. And it's not new......

Reynard said:
DMing is not that hard.

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.

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

This is true of all players.

Reynard · Dec 6, 2025

bloodtide said:
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.

No, it isn't. It just takes practice. It takes being allowed to fail.

Whizbang Dustyboots · Dec 6, 2025

bloodtide said:
Of course, it IS hard to be an average or good or great DM.

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 · Dec 6, 2025

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.