D&D General Are you a DM?

[Charlaquin]

The stresses of the world these days have been a big drain on my concentration, drive to create, and desire to commit to the responsibility of running a thing regularly. But I'm starting to come around to figure out what format of game I want to run now, and what I want to do in it.

Same here. When the place I work initially closed, I thought I would get a ton of prep work done since I suddenly had so much free time, but with all the stress I was under, I just had no creative energy. I’m back to work now and I got next to zero prep done the whole time I was staying at home. And weirdly enough I’m actually getting a lot done now that I’m working again. Funny the way things work out sometimes.

 

[Charlaquin]

Interesting to see how this forum have changed. Back in 4th edition it was a lot of players in here asking for advice on how to improve/optimize their characters. They are almost gone now, and I must say I miss them. It is a little bit too "DM heavy" these days.

YMMV, but I found 4e very DM-unfriendly. I loved it as a player, but trying to DM it, I felt a lot of pressure to stay within very rigidly prescribed guidelines. It’s probably partly because I was new to DMing at the time - I’m sure if I DMed a 4e game now I would feel a lot more confident running it and probably do a better job. But by comparison, 5e made me as a DM feel much more empowered. I say this as someone who still has a lot of love for 4e.

 

[der_kluge]

Maybe you should have put a few more options like

"I ALWAYS DM"
"I DM most of the time"
"I've DM'd, but I mostly Play"
"I've never DM'd"

The poll would have been more nuanced? It's 100% one-sided!

For myself, I DM about 3/4 of the time. While I run PBP games here on ENWorld, I can't quite bring myself to DM zoom games, so I've stepped back with my regular F2F group to be a player, while we're not meeting up. This is the longest I've spent as a player in 35 years.

Morrus should start a poll asking if people at any point in their entire lives, had accidentally pooped their pants, even just a little bit. Would be interesting to see the poll results on that one.

 

[Myrhdraak]

It seemed to be a transition time following the shut down of the WOTC forums - just spit-balling.

My players do not interact in online media with the game much at all, except for youtube videos and streaming.

Maybe the players in 5th Edition is more looking at how others play on youtube and other media, rather than discussing character optimization as was the case in 4th Edition. Would be interesting to see how many are players in the Paizo discussion boards, might be more players there based on its focus on providing more player choice per level.

 

[Myrhdraak]

By which I mean have you ever run a game, not whether you are doing so right now.

I suspect this community is DM heavy, but I’m
curious to find out.

How is has the number of active users changed on this site over the years? I have a feeling it is less people now than what it used to be during the 4th Edition years, when there were more players on this site. But I might very well be wrong.

 

[Ace]

Not playing or DMing right now do to the Covid 19 issue but I'm looking forward to getting back in the proverbial saddle. Now I have not DM'd 5E just yet as players and groups are limited in my area and the group seems to prefer Monster of the Week or other games to D&D . DM/GM a bunch of other stuff though.

Now this being a forum for fairly serious D&D players I'm not that surprised that nearly every response was yes although in the past, it was far more common for only a person or two in any group to ever DM. We see this eluded to in Knights of the Dinner Table where there was a kind of firewall in the two roles. It was never quite that intense IRL but many people did not wish to DM as they didn't want the hassle and responsibility and there did seem to be a hail fellow DM well met subculture, I kind of miss it as somewhere along the way, this changed.

I've no idea why , maybe the Internet or software but since the 2000's there have been a lot more DM's. The good side of this is variety and fewer people have to be "forever the DM/never the player" but downside there are a lot more mediocre DM's and more importantly people who lack the patience to enjoy someone else's campaign narrative for any length of time.

This even correcting for real life/ work/adulthood and so on has lead to shorter less rich campaigns in my opinion at least. Now this might be my area or groups but this has made for a lot more low tier D&D games, never leveling up much, hardly getting to use cool items and powers which frankly sucks.

Why bother with D&D if you can't kick monster butt and take on the high level baddies?

 

[Maxperson]

I find it interesting that given how 5e is supposed to be the edition that has brought in gobs and gobs of new players to the game, that none of them have managed to find their way online to this forum, or those who have found there way here have DM'd games. It seems like if there really are as many new players as WotC has indicated, a decent number of them should have made their way here, some of whom saw this poll, and some of those never having DM'd before and indicated that.

 

[Ace]

I find it interesting that given how 5e is supposed to be the edition that has brought in gobs and gobs of new players to the game, that none of them have managed to find their way online to this forum, or those who have found there way here have DM'd games. It seems like if there really are as many new players as WotC has indicated, a decent number of them should have made their way here, some of whom saw this poll, and some of those never having DM'd before and indicated that.

Most gamers don't use forums and I suspect many use more conventional social media like Facebook. In my own group ranging age 18-50+ with up to 12 in the entire phone tree think i am the only poster here on a regular basis and there is at least one other who was here for some time.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Most gamers don't use forums and I suspect many use more conventional social media like Facebook. In my own group ranging age 18-50+ with up to 12 in the entire phone tree think i am the only poster here on a regular basis and there is at least one other who was here for some time.

Yeah, none of the other people I know as players bother with forums. The only other one I know who does get on is a lurker who just likes to read the debates. Everyone else sees it as a waste of time and a cauldron of pointless debating.

They might google a build, or a Sage Advice, but that's it. Otherwise they don't feel a need to talk about the game online.

 

[Myrhdraak]

Yeah, none of the other people I know as players bother with forums. The only other one I know who does get on is a lurker who just likes to read the debates. Everyone else sees it as a waste of time and a cauldron of pointless debating.

They might google a build, or a Sage Advice, but that's it. Otherwise they don't feel a need to talk about the game online.

This is obviously the fact these days, but it did not use to be like that. In the 4th Edition days there was a lot of players in here discussing how to interpret a specific power, and if it could be combined with that other power or not. If their DM had interpret the rules right, or if they were wrong. Then you had the build/optimizers who discussed how to build the best X, or how to create the best Defender/Striker/Leader, etc. I do not see this anymore, because it is not needed in 5th Edition. Maybe it is for the better? I do not know, but personally I miss that player interaction that existed in the 4th Edition version of the game. However, I guess it could have an impact on enword.org as they potentially get less visitors, and less ad revenues from this shift?