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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6453512" data-attributes="member: 5143">Your environment is very different than mine.  Nobody wants to DM.  It takes work.  Right now all the players have to do is show up, roll some dice and pretend to be an elf reacting to what the DM says once a week for a couple of hours.The couple of times I've suggested that I'm getting overwhelmed and needed a break, people begged me not to stop because none of them wanted to take up the mantle.  The couple of times in my history of playing D&D when I pushed back and said "No, I really don't feel like DMing", one or two of my friends have stepped up to DM.  However, when they DM they also just purchase an adventure and run whatever is written in there.Recently, I convinced one of my friends to DM for Adventurer's League.  All he has to do is study a fairly structured adventure given to him each week that only lasts a couple of hours and he often shows up having not read the entire thing and then forgets half of what is written in there.  He's said that his experience running those adventures means his respect for me as a DM has grown immensely since he had no idea how hard it was to prepare an adventure someone else wrote and to handle everything that happens during the game.  He thinks he does it very poorly but he keeps doing it because we need 2 DMs during our Tuesday night D&D Expeditions sessions based on the number of people coming.  Sometimes we need 3.  We are right on the edge of needing 3 DMs constantly.Meanwhile, I know almost all the gaming stores in the city.  In total they didn't sell more than 25 DMGs today.  There aren't that many DMs in our entire city who run regular games in 5e.I think my table is plenty engaged.  They enjoy their characters and love roleplaying them in various situations.  For us, it's more about the characters than it is the plot.  The plot of an adventure is sometimes good, sometimes bad.  Some adventures are better than others.  However, we have our fun because we are playing Punie Gringlesteen the Gnome Bard who likes to use insult humor and make puns all the time or Jack Tradesman, the Half-Elf chronic multiclasser who likes to hit on women and walk around being superior to other people or the dwarf whose name I can't remember now who brews his own beer and considers it holy water.  He requires it to be drunk as a sign of solidarity to each adventuring party he joins in order to get Moradin's blessing.  We engage the world through our characters.  The world doesn't have to revolve around us to be engaged.  It doesn't have to be a quest that Punie is personally interested in.  He wants to be famous and saving people increases his reputation so he'll take any chance to do that regardless of what the mission is.  I've never once felt less than "fully engaged" simply because the adventure didn't involve Punie's background.I also think it's extremely insulting to say that my players aren't "fully engaged" simply because we play differently than you.  I kind of resent the implication that the only reason my players haven't left yet is because they haven't been tempted by a better DM.I think this thread is filled with DMs whoses ego are getting a little too large and are likely used to being in an echo chamber of a small number of players who really love their DMing style and therefore they've gotten the opinion that it's the BEST DMing style.However, I can tell you that Mike Mearls's DMing style in the live stream I was referencing was nearly identical to the DMing style I've seen over 95% of DMs use.  I can say this having played under hundreds of DMs.  These posts seem to be implying that it is not "proper" D&D.</blockquote>

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