D&D (2024) Not enough DMs / new edition

[Quickleaf]

If D&D took a page from Shadowdark and presented a bunch of adventures that literally fit on two sides of a 3x5 card, that would go 75% to making new GMs' lives easier.

Then, tell GMs that the PC stuff is the responsibility of the players. Tell GMs that it isn't their job to explain the basic rules or how to play. Tell players they have responsibilities too. Learn how to roll to hit. Learn how your spells work.

I think your first idea is very sorely needed. Shawn Merwin did something like that in the recently released educator adventure for kids in grade school.

I appreciate the sentiment of your second idea. It’s also just not reflected in how some folks acquire new info - there will always be a substantial subset of players who learn by doing / peer-to-peer rather than reading a book or watching a video.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They have stated that the 2024 DMG is much more beginner friendly.

I think this is a mistake. Make a starter/basic set that does what BECMI did, walking both players and GMs through the process and multiple escalating levels of detail, and any 10 year old could do it.

Agreed. The "B" in BECMI is what I started with, and it covered playing and DMing better than anything I've seen since.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I totally feel that.

I also belong to a few discords where the community skews younger than EN world, and there are a ton of questions along the lines of how do I start being a GM? Or how do I do some very foundational thing for GMing?

I think the Internet videos are not 100% a good thing but more a mixed bag. I think there are best practices, a sort of cultural transmission, that used to happen when we were learning from our friend Mike’s older brother or whomever.

I believe that transmission gets lost in translation, listening to YouTube videos or watching live plays. It’s not that the advice is terrible - well ok rarely it’s IS terrible - rather it’s that the advice doesn’t take into account the needs of that GM, and it’s not being given in a conditional “if you’ve got this sort of group / if you’re this sort of person, here’s what you can try” way. And that can feed misconceptions.

Often with new GMs I’ve mentored their game prep priorities are skewed (eg. thinking they need to do all this worldbuilding before running the game) or they think of things that are obviously a bad idea to those of us who have experience… but they don’t know any better. They don’t know the questions to ask to interrogate their own design ideas involving taking the party captive. They don’t realize that relying on a chase scene as the exciting opening scene might not work when the druid has the entangle spell. They don’t know what will really help them feel prepared (eg one GM needing a list of names but another rattling off fantasy names with ease).

Many new GMs don’t know how to conduct a productive session zero - they wonder what to ask, how to facilitate conversation about what everyone wants, what even the list of “here’s what we might choose from to describe what we want in D&D” looks like!

Thats why we need to convert to a master/disciple system. Every Enworlder could take a newer DM under their wing and teach'em how it's done.

 

[Yaarel]

Then, tell GMs that the PC stuff is the responsibility of the players. Tell GMs that it isn't their job to explain the basic rules or how to play. Tell players they have responsibilities too. Learn how to roll to hit. Learn how your spells work.

Along these lines, the UA "Glossary" seems to consolidate all of the gaming rules in one place, in the Players Handbook.

The players will be able to become familiar with how the game works, and contribute to the heavy lifting, such as social encounter checks, athletic checks, and so on.


@Micah Sweet

For the 2024 DMs Guide (2025), the focus seems to be on organization and clarity. Elsewhere in Xanathars and Mordenkainen, there is an attempt to stabilize the math which will probably make it into the DMs Guide, for the DM to make use of. Hopefully the encounter building math will be transparent and simple, and reliable.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What is "OC play"?

Everyone plays entitled jerks from the Beach Cities in Southern California.

 

[el-remmen]

Here’s my dead horse: building encounters is already easy.

Using CR as a broad gauge of difficulty, just pick the monsters that make sense for the situation, play them with the intelligence/instinct/goals/attention to environment that is commensurate to the info about the creature and then let the players figure out what to do about it.

Absolutely no math necessary.

 

[Reynard]

Here’s my dead horse: building encounters is already easy.

Using CR as a broad gauge of difficulty, just pick the monsters that make sense for the situation, play them with the intelligence/instinct/goals/attention to environment that is commensurate to the info about the creature and then let the players figure out what to do about it.

Absolutely no math necessary.

None of it is hard. It just feels daunting going in, like starting the spring cleaning of the garage. We can alleviate that by breaking tasks down and teaching the steps. Lost Mines is a really good starter adventure, but it lacks the kind of step by step development of skill that that 1983 Basic set provided, and then later the Expert set with Threshold and Isle of Dread. We know how to teach this stuff. We taught it to hundreds of thousands of 10-12 year Olds in the 80s.

I still think some people overstate the difficulty of GMing for their own inflated self image, and that's damaging to potential and new GMs watching from the sidelines.

It isn't hard. You can do it. And even when you screw up, it is still fun.

 

[overgeeked]

None of it is hard. It just feels daunting going in, like starting the spring cleaning of the garage. We can alleviate that by breaking tasks down and teaching the steps. Lost Mines is a really good starter adventure, but it lacks the kind of step by step development of skill that that 1983 Basic set provided, and then later the Expert set with Threshold and Isle of Dread. We know how to teach this stuff. We taught it to hundreds of thousands of 10-12 year Olds in the 80s.

I still think some people overstate the difficulty of GMing for their own inflated self image, and that's damaging to potential and new GMs watching from the sidelines.

It isn't hard. You can do it. And even when you screw up, it is still fun.

There’s a lot to be said for the downsides of modern culture and education, too. Having live plays to learn the game is great. Having live plays as the measuring stick is terrible.

 

[Shiroiken]

Thats why we need to convert to a master/disciple system. Every Enworlder could take a newer DM under their wing and teach'em how it's done.

Not sure if you realized it, but that's actually how it used to be done. I was apprenticed for 6 months learning to DM 1E, and I've always been on the lookout for prospective DMs to tutor. While I don't think it should be required, I do see advantages in it.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Not sure if you realized it, but that's actually how it used to be done. I was apprenticed for 6 months learning to DM 1E, and I've always been on the lookout for prospective DMs to tutor. While I don't think it should be required, I do see advantages in it.

I totally feel that.

I also belong to a few discords where the community skews younger than EN world, and there are a ton of questions along the lines of how do I start being a GM? Or how do I do some very foundational thing for GMing?

I'm sensing the opportunity for synergy here.