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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jacob Lewis" data-source="post: 9814452" data-attributes="member: 6667921">When I look at the reaction to ads or products framing GMing as “hard,” I see something deeper than a disagreement about difficulty. The way people enter the hobby today isn’t the way many of us entered it decades ago, and that difference creates tension in how GMing gets talked about.Earlier generations learned in an environment that was quiet, narrow, and consistent. There was one ruleset, far fewer supplements, and very little public play to compare yourself to. Most groups were isolated pockets figuring things out as they went, and that made experimentation feel normal. A new GM could fumble through a session without any external pressure shaping expectations.The modern hobby is a different ecosystem. New players walk into a landscape filled with multiple editions, third-party expansions, high-production actual plays, and constant streams of advice. That creates a sense of noise and comparison that didn’t exist before. When someone feels uncertain, the market naturally fills that uncertainty with tools that promise to make things easier. The products aren’t inventing the anxiety; they’re responding to it.What often gets lost is that these two environments produce very different assumptions. For many long-time GMs, the idea of “needing help” runs against the culture they grew up with, where the role was something you simply picked up through doing. For newer players, the expectation is almost the opposite—they start from a place where GMing is framed as a skill supported by visible examples and structured guidance.That doesn’t mean one approach is better. It means the center of the hobby has shifted toward the audience that entered through the modern ecosystem. Companies speak to that audience because that’s where most new growth comes from. Someone who learned the role decades ago isn’t the target for those products, not because their experience is invalid, but because the hobby no longer assumes a single shared entry point.The point about “letting new GMs screw up” still matters. People learn best by trying, and the role has always been accessible. But the context surrounding that accessibility has changed, and the messaging around it changed with the context. Understanding that shift helps explain why these ads exist without needing to assume that the hobby is claiming GMing has become inherently difficult.</blockquote>

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