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

[Reynard]

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.

The advice in the 2024 DMG is very good for beginners.

The organization of the information is atrocious.

 

[HatWearingFool]

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!

It is tough though. I know a few people that wouldn’t be able to create and manage characters without it.

But I agree the answer should be fixing character creation not just making tools to automate the process. I suspect a big issue here is that WOTC is incentivized to find a way to monetize play and tools/software is just such an obvious way to do that. Where making the core game easier to run actual runs counter to monetizing play.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Original Post

I share the frustration with the constant deluge of third party gaming marketing, which included framing that you are not gaming right without their product or that their product will cure all your gaming ills (many of which you didn't know you had/were problems until their ad made it clear). That said, I'm frustrated with all the unbelievable amount of gaming-associated... chaff, I'll call it... that pervades this hobby. It isn't like we didn't have heartbreakers and novelty dice and dungeon tiles you know you'll never use and everything else bitd, but at least there was a notion that the person making it was indeed a gamer and thought they were providing a product someone needed. Now when I go to (for instance) the roleplaying Reddit pages, I'll see multiple adds for punch out monster tiles or inlaid mahogany gaming tables or dice that holographically give you the finger when you roll a 1 or whatever before I even get to things like 3rd party modules or DM advice guides or the like. The internet + monetization sucks all around. Thus I'm a little surprised that this one aspect of it has risen to being not just noteworthy but thread-starting-worthy. Was there something particularly egregious about the messaging?

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 started to touch on it in this thread, but I've always wondered about survivorship bias in this. We wouldn't be having this discussion if we hadn't put up with negative experiences x, y, and z and gotten to whatever level of gaming we have as adults. I think many-to-most of us knew one kid or another who tried D&D or RQ or something, but didn't stick with it (or else we know some adult in the Star Trek/Wars or WoW or Warhammer fandom, etc. who undoubtedly was exposed to D&D, etc. and isn't an active gamer). Would they have stuck with it 'if' -- whatever that 'if' is, but including things like better GMing advice?

But, how many tried gaming and then bounced off/quit after a fairly short time?

IME, LOTS. Of the gamers I played with into high school, I'm the only one who stayed in the hobby. I don't know anyone in person that I gamed with who is still gaming. None of my friend/acquaintances from back in the day are still in the hobby.

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.

I'm sure we've almost all heard a smattering of anecdotal tales (although the real kicker is the people to which you never get to pose the question). This player wanted to play Robin Hood meets Indiana Jones but their DM wanted to play dungeons threats and treasure acquisition. This DM had an epic narrative quest planned, but his players just wanted something to do until their turn on the Atari. This player got made fun of because they didn't know what a glaive was (they weren't allowed to watch Krull on TBS) and didn't come back. This DM discovered being into model rockets meant they didn't need to find a way over to Jimmy's house after school. There always seemed to be 2-3 times as many kids in the 'seems like they would play RPGs' camp as there were those actively playing. By the time you get to high school and half those kids are doing math league or debate or a job (or just actually have to do homework for the first time) and that number grows precipitously.

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

Despite having just written a 'we've all had that experience' kind of paragraph above, I think it is important to recognize that we really don't know what things are like for everyone else. Particularly those just starting out at gaming (or DMing). Do they feel the need for GM-aid products? Do only a few, but those that do have real trouble because the good ones are lost in a sea of grifter products? Would I even know (short answer: no)?

 

[Belen]

It’s not hard. It is and can be a lot of work to do it well.

IMO, lots of people try to make is sound difficult because they do not want to do the work.

I find that a lot of professionals or advice givers try to make it look hard in order to sell you on their way of doing things.

DMing is a skill and it does require a type of person willing to spend more time to create fun for others.

 

[HatWearingFool]

Another thing to remember is that something being “Hard” isn’t inherently a negative thing. In fact I’d say most things I enjoy are “Hard”.

Things that are “easy” often don’t have staying power. Look at the cup stacking fad versus chess for example. Nobody thinks chess is easy, but that’s where the fun comes from.

The trick is being hard and fun at the same time. And having a way to onboard people reasonably.

Almost any game/hobby with staying power is hard/difficult to master.

It’s constantly having ways to improve, and things to learn that keep a hobby interesting.

 

[AlViking]

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.

And I'm saying that we have absolutely no clue how many people would be playing if we had more GMs. On the other hand, I think 1 in 6 people being capable of and willing to GM is not that big of an ask. Running games is not for everyone but it's also not rocket science. Meanwhile the odds of being struck by lightning are incredibly small but some people have been struck by lightning multiple time. In my opinion - opinions are all we have on this topic - there is no "massive" shortage of GMs.

 

[AlViking]

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.

The survey (which who knows how accurate it was or how it was worded) was in 1999, which means it was still the TSR era of books. The game was quite different back then. I think a major design concern with 5e was to make the game easier to run and grasp, how well they succeeded will of course depend on who you ask. But that's the problem I have with the survey - it's so old I don't think it's particularly relevant any more.

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.

Some people drop out because it's not for them, for a lot of people it's just other demands on their time take precedence or people move and so on.

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.

Not familiar with Nimble but when people say the best way to "fix" D&D is to make it into a completely different game I gotta disagree.

 

[Reynard]

And I'm saying that we have absolutely no clue how many people would be playing if we had more GMs. On the other hand, I think 1 in 6 people being capable of and willing to GM is not that big of an ask. Running games is not for everyone but it's also not rocket science. Meanwhile the odds of being struck by lightning are incredibly small but some people have been struck by lightning multiple time. In my opinion - which opinions are all we have on this topic - there is no "massive" shortage of GMs.

This is another thing that a dedicated TTRPG advocacy group could help figure out. Is there a shortage of GMs? If so, with regards to what games? What demographics? Why? Etc.

 

[definiteFreakyFishGuy]

I am reading @Reynard differently. To me, it comes across as: "if you find DMing hard, don't sweat it. You're doing great. All the people out there selling products and saying you must do X or Y are wrong and you don't need to compare yourself to them. Believe in yourself, just by showing up and trying you're doing a great job".

Which is a positive and encouraging approach.

The rewrite is definitely more digestible to me than the original post. The original post made me feel like I was defective for finding DMing difficult. I mean, the title says "DMing is not hard," and there is a paragraph whose first sentence is "DMing is not that hard."

Unfortunately, even this positive spin feels hollow. As someone who has hard time DMing, I don't want a pep-talk. What I want is specific advice—which is probably why a market for these products exist.

 

[AlViking]

This is another thing that a dedicated TTRPG advocacy group could help figure out. Is there a shortage of GMs? If so, with regards to what games? What demographics? Why? Etc.

When I win that billion dollar multi-state lottery I'll happily set up such a group. Of course I'd have to actually play the lottery in the first place in order for that to happen. While I'm at it I'll also have them figure out a way to better match players and GMs and a dozen other asks/questions I have.

There are a handful of people that post here that have either had horrendous luck, cause their own bad luck without realizing it, or represent a subset of people far larger than any I've ever encountered or chatted with over decades of play. Unfortunately, much like me never winning that lottery I don't play, I don't think we'll ever really know the answers.