SovietDM
Explorer
Most of us know that D&D has had a boom in popularity recently due to the many references to it in modern pop culture, with it's appearance in Stranger Things being the highest contributor to it's rise in popularity. "In 2017 alone, we had more than 7,500 unique broadcasters streaming live play D&D for more than 475 million minutes watched over the course of the entire year." -Greg Tito, senior communications manager for D&D.
While this boom in popularity is welcome by all, a small problem has been noticed. Most of the people that have recently started playing D&D have started playing as the players, not the DM. This makes sense, but what ends up happening is most of the DMs only welcome 4 or 5 in their group, so many players end up without a DM. How can we stop this from happening? Well for starters, I advise DMs to take as many adventurers as you feel comfortable with, then build off of that. If you only feel comfortable DMing 4 adventurers, do 5, 5 adventurers, 6, and so on. It's easiest to use this method when playing D&D online. If you're DMing a pre-made adventure that is only built for 4 or 5 players, just add more monsters. Xanathar's Guide to Everything gives a good encounter-building method that is helpful if you are taking more adventurers than recommended for certain adventures. Also, while it is good to have more adventurers, I wouldn't recommend DMing more than 8 adventurers. This adventure would not only be difficult to DM, but combat would take forever, and the adventurers would lose interest. Another thing I recommend is for DMs to teach on or two of the players they already have how to be a Dungeon master. This is especially recommended if you have too many adventurers. I hope you take my advice, and I wish the best adventures for everyone!
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