So, in a word: No.
We are not responsible for marketing gaming the way you see fit. You do not get to lay that burden on others.
D&D General A Rant: DMing is not hard.
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
So, in a word: No.
We are not responsible for marketing gaming the way you see fit. You do not get to lay that burden on others.
Hussar
Legend
Whereas in my experience, that DM will drop the campaign six weeks in after realizing the amount of effort it will take to actually run a campaign that's longer than a 16 page module.
I mean good grief, there's a reason that players outnumber DM's by a HUGE margin. And that's always been true.
Hussar
Legend
See, that? That right there? A year "hardly seems to qualify"? We know that most campaigns, even by experienced DM's rarely last more than a year. Most campaigns fizzle after about 3 months due to all sorts of reasons. But, think for a second, what you're asking of a new DM. A campaign that lasts for more than a year? No wonder most people have no interest in trying.
Well, most conventional TRPGs call for multiple players and one GM. That probably has at least as much to do with there being so many more players than GMs. And I've seen far more GMs run entire campaigns than I have drop them prematurely; the only non-anxiety-related one in my experience was a guy who just had a brain that was fizzing with things he wanted to run (and the rest of us at the table were mostly content to let him run what he wanted).
HatWearingFool
Explorer
Wait how do we know this? It’s definitely not my experience that campaigns from experienced DM’s fizzle after 3 months.
I’m not saying it’s not true it just runs so counter to my experience that I’m curious where this stat comes from. In my experience even bad GM’s usually manage to last a 2-3 months.
Hussar
Legend
Huh. What's that like? I had been playing for nearly 30 years before I actually played a campaign that came to a conclusion. Every other campaign fizzled. Either real life steps in and squashes it, or the DM burns out. I've been gaming since the early 80's and it wasn't until a 5th edition campaign that we actually completed a full campaign.
Heck, even with me DMing, it was extremely rare to have a campaign more than a year. School, work, real life, and various other things conspire to squash campaigns.
Hussar
Legend
Going all the way back to the WotC market research they did in the 90's, showed that the average campaign has a half life of under a year. That's why 3e was designed so that you could go from 1st to 20th in a year of sessions.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Three reasons, one already mentioned: adults are overwhelmingly more likely to be the target audience of the ads that inspired you.
The second is that, in general, a child attempting a difficult thing is almost certainly going to do so with some kind of mentor. It's not absolutely guaranteed, but it's far more likely that a mentor would be coaching them than that the child would, totally of their own accord, launch into this activity with zero prior connection to someone who already knows that activity. Or, if you prefer? The child nearly 100% surely had to have been brought into the hobby by someone else, and that person, or someone connected to that person, would almost surely act as a mentor if the child expressed interest. An adult, on the other hand, could quite plausibly hear about D&D from any of a zillion sources without having that connection; I still think mentorship is likely, but it's not nearly as strongly implied.
The third is, quite simply, that most people who play D&D are adults, and most people who choose to GM do so only after having played for several years first. Hence, even if a particular prospective GM started as a teenager--say, 14 or 15--then it is unlikely that they would have become a GM prior to becoming an adult. You'd need to be considering the select few players who started very young and moved very quickly from being a player to attempting to be a GM.
Or, in brief, most players-that-become-GMs who would see the ads you saw, are going to be adults.
SableWyvern
Cruel Despot
This seems likely.
I'm not sure that's true. It certainly wasn't true for me and my friends growing up.
It wasn't true for my niece, who heard about D&D via Stranger Things (I was ready to assist, but was never in a position to do so before the interest faded).
I'm not sure what leads you to assume all the sources you allude to aren't available to young people. Stranger Things, Youtube, BG3, the D&D movie and general D&D merch are all ways that young people can become interested in RPGs without needing to be introduced by a knowledgeable mentor.
This might be true, but you haven't provided a shred of evidence for either of these claims and I'm not ready to just accept them because you assert that they're true.
Hussar
Legend
Well, we're pretty sure that the majority of players are 18 years old or older. Most evidence points to this. While there are significant numbers of teens playing, that demographic is dwarfed by older demographics.
From: this thread: WotC - Comparing EN World's Demographics to the D&D Community's
So, assuming that new DM's would be adults isn't too much of a stretch. Again, sure, there are new DM's under 18. After all, according to the above, a quarter of players are under 18. But, again, we're talking about a minority of players. While @EzekielRaiden didn't bring receipts to say that the majority of gamers are adults, I wouldn't have really thought that he had to. It's hardly controversial.
Now, as far as people choosing to DM after playing for some time, again, I don't think that's terribly controversial. That's how things have worked in the hobby for a very long time. New player gets introduced to the game through existing gamers, tries it, likes it, and then goes on to try running games.
Do you honestly believe that most people who DM D&D have never played before they try running games? Or even a majority or people?
