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

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

There's also the familiarity factor.

When you literally have no idea how the rules work, it looks--and feels--like magic, a black box where ideas go in and fun times come out. Once that particular illusion is dispelled and players do, in fact, know how the rules work, they can start seeing all the places where the rules...maybe aren't so great. That awareness catches. It makes older rules harder to work with, not because they are actually any different, but because wide-eyed wonder has given way to pragmatic awareness. You can never recapture that feeling of "OMG this is a MAGIC BOX OF JOY", because that's inherently an illusion. You can still feel joy using the rules! But they'll never have precisely the same joy they offered when it was an enchanting field of unknown wonders.

It's one of the reasons why I have never been particularly copacetic to maxims like "Make magic feel magical again!" or the like. Because that's trying to recapture an inherently ephemeral feeling. You will always feel less enchanted by a rules system that you understand. That's the nature of learning. That doesn't mean there's NO enchantment; but it does mean we are doing ourselves a disservice trying to chase that illusive high, like trying to find the end of the rainbow.

 

[Shiroiken]

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

DMing is easy. As you point out, even 10 year olds can do it. Being a good DM, however, is actually hard. It takes a lot of work to become good. It's a skill that one refines over time, and one that can degrade without practice. If you disagree with this notion, then you either have a low opinion of your DMs or you have a low expectation of quality.

I think your real issue is advertising. Marketing to people's fears and inadequacy is as old as time, and it's not limited to RPGs. People try to sell DMing advice because most DMs suffer from imposter syndrome. Hell, I've been DMing for over 2 decades, and I still feel crappy when I deliver a less than stellar session. Don't denegrate the efforts of DMs everywhere because you have a problem with advertising.

 

[overgeeked]

In order to be good at something, you have to be ok with being bad at it for a while. I usually make this comment in the context of art, but it’s true here as well.

Exactly. And if the prevailing attitude is “no gaming is better than bad gaming,” then new referees never get the time they need to suck before they get good. You’re not going to improve if you only ever get 1-4 sessions to become a rock star. And we wonder why there’s a referee shortage.

 

[Cadence]

Exactly. And if the prevailing attitude is “no gaming is better than bad gaming,” then new referees never get the time they need to suck before they get good. You’re not going to improve if you only ever get 1-4 sessions to become a rock star. And we wonder why there’s a referee shortage.

It feels like there is a lot of space between rock star and not sucking with signs of a positive trajectory.

I certainly believe that too many groups don't have nearly enough patience for this process. But I also don't know if I believe there are folks with limited time and a choice of games who will spend all of their gaming for months on end to help someone stop sucking as a DM. (Of course there is also a lot of space between months on end and 0-4 sessions too. But that would dodge the spirit of a rant ).

In any case, I will certainly root for patience and openness to new experiences from players and courage and openness to advice from prospective DMs.

 

[Lanefan]

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

I wonder if it's more that existing players are less tolerant of new DMs.

If everyone at the table is new, including the DM, then they all learn together. But if some of the players have played before, it's on them to put up with the rookie DM's mistakes; and some people maybe aren't as willing to do that as they should be.

 

[Lanefan]

Disregarding for a moment that this is a rant, I'd say: yes and no. It's not hard in the sense that DMing is a skill like any other and it can be learnt. But on the other that, it is hard because for some people it might be a new skill, which is harder to acquire as an adult than it is as a teenager. And, at least as long as we talk about games with traditional GM and player roles, the GM role does come with more time investment than the player role (which is also trickier to manage as an adult).

This touches on perhaps a key element: DMing isn't necessarily hard as in difficult to learn or do but aspects of it - mapping a setting or adventure, referencing and writing out statblocks, maintaining a decent game journal or log, etc. - can certainly be or become tedious and boring and a slog to do (or do right).

And sure, you can elide these elements by using a canned setting and-or canned adventure modules and not bothering to keep a game log, but at very best this will have a neutral influence on the enjoyment of your game and at worst will make it less enjoyable for the players.

 

[Reynard]

I wonder if it's more that existing players are less tolerant of new DMs.

If everyone at the table is new, including the DM, then they all learn together. But if some of the players have played before, it's on them to put up with the rookie DM's mistakes; and some people maybe aren't as willing to do that as they should be.

That is a good point. And EN World definitely has an older lean, as well as people that have been playing for a long time. It is actually a little concerning how many folks have expressed misgivings about giving a friend a chance as a DM.

 

[SableWyvern]

I wonder if it's more that existing players are less tolerant of new DMs.

I don't see how you can meaningfully assess this. As with so many things in this hobby, experiences are likely to vary greatly.

 

[Pamphylian]

I do think a few styles of play that seem prominent these days are legitimately pretty hard to DM for. There is a lot of discussion about crafting story beats and managing character arcs for each of your players and building perfectly balanced set piece fights that give everyone a spotlight and keeping a plot on track so that you have a satisfying and emotionally compelling story, beginning, middle and end. I think there is no way around this sort of stuff being pretty hard to run. At least without some combination of very high amounts of prep and dramatic skill. DM as storyteller asks a lot of the DM! The thought of herding mercurial players from prepared plot point to prepared plot point seems like a massive headache to me.

This is no shade on groups that enjoy this style of play, there are clearly people who have a lot of fun with it. But I feel lucky that it is not really how I or my players want to play, and that there are other options for playstyle that I think suit the medium a little better, and there's good advice out there for these approaches. But I think a lot of the popular on-ramps to the hobby (including official sources) put a lot of weight on this style, so a lot of beginner DMs think they are saddled with being an entertainer, a writer, an actor, and a group social coordinator all in one.

At the same time, a lot of the mechanisms that have historically been there for DMs to fall back on when players do something unexpected, or even just to feel like they are playing the game along with players, seem to increasingly have fallen out of favor. Various dungeon procedures, random tables, small modules that you can plug in anywhere seem increasingly out of fashion (looking at, say, the 2024 DMG). You see frequently see DMs worry about what to do if their players don't pick up on a plot point (I've even seen memes even from official sources to this effect), or go in a random direction, to the point of ending a session early if it happens! IMO, this should almost never be a point of worry - roll on a random table for the appropriate terrain, whip out a mini dungeon, etc. - play to find out! There are easy tools in the tool box for this! But they perhaps require a loosening of expectations of perfectly crafted cinematic plots. I think there's something better waiting for everyone once this expectation falls away, but this is seldom communicated in many sources.

 

[Reynard]

small modules that you can plug in anywhere seem increasingly out of fashion (looking at, say, the 2024 DMG).

I am not a fan of 2024, but it is literally the first DMG to provide short adventures you can plug in anywhere.