D&D General The DM Shortage

[overgeeked]

A couple years ago I took a job teaching 12 years olds how to play D&D over the course of a couple sessions. By the end of the second session, one solid GM had emerged from the group of 6 kids.

A year later they weren't playing D&D anymore because it was "too much work" compared to just playing video games together. I did not follow up beyond that but my guess is it was the GM kid's opinion on the matter that resulted in them dropping tabletop, since the work involved isn't high for players and these kids were already tech savvy enough to play online.

Too bad. But good for you for doing that. Sounds like a fun job.

Running 5E is realwork,especially for new GMs. It needs to be less work. It was less work in 1985. Find out why and fix it.

The two glaringly obvious things to look at are the rules themselves and the expectations of players.

In AD&D, the entire character creation, ability scores, races, classes, alignment, languages, weapons, armor, etc sections took 30 1/2 pages. In 5E, that same info takes 160 pages. More than five times the rules to read.

In AD&D, the rules for magic and all the spells in the PHB take 60 pages. In 5E, the rules for magic and all the spells take 90 pages. Exactly one-and-a-half times the rules to read.

If you want to talk about B/X it's even worse. Basic was 64 pages in total. Expert was 64 pages in total. So B/X in total was 128 pages long...about the same length as the AD&D PHB...and the 5E PHB is two-and-a-half times as long.

In short, too many rules, too many options, too much stuff to read through before you can actually play.

As for the players' expectations, I've already touched on that before and was yelled at for it so I'm not interested in doing that again. It's still true. The article is still spot on and so is Ben's video. The player expectations are beyond what most mere mortals are capable of. Most referees are not professional storytellers. Players expecting them to be is unfair. Referees expecting themselves to be professional storytellers is unfair. And yet...here we are.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You mean Tomb of Horrors. A tournament module specifically designed to kill off PCs to see which player was smart and lucky enough to survive the longest. Written in 1975 and published in 1978. Do you have an example from this century that wasn't specifically written to be a murder fun house?

One module from 47 years ago. I'm guessing you weren't actually around back then. Did you play AD&D? Did you run AD&D? Because if you had, you'd have a slightly more recent and a much better example of adversarial refereeing at your fingertips. Oh, but you're also the poster saying that your AD&D games and 5E games are equally deadly. Right.

Mod Note:

This post features several kinds of “making it personal”. Knock it off.

 

[Aldarc]

In AD&D, the entire character creation, ability scores, races, classes, alignment, languages, weapons, armor, etc sections took 30 1/2 pages. In 5E, that same info takes 160 pages. More than five times the rules to read.

In AD&D, the rules for magic and all the spells in the PHB take 60 pages. In 5E, the rules for magic and all the spells take 90 pages. Exactly one-and-a-half times the rules to read.

If you want to talk about B/X it's even worse. Basic was 64 pages in total. Expert was 64 pages in total. So B/X in total was 128 pages long...about the same length as the AD&D PHB...and the 5E PHB is two-and-a-half times as long.

In short, too many rules, too many options, too much stuff to read through before you can actually play.

I know it would be heretical, but I think that D&D 5e would be easier if it reduced the initial amount of spells in the PHB or made them less verbose. It's not as if WotC couldn't add the spells back in later. I have seen firsthand numerous times - and I understand that other people's experience differ - the sheer amount of spells in the PHB overwhelm new players or even experienced casual players.

Black Hack 2E: guidelines for spells and magic is half a page, while the list of spells and prayers respectively take one page each.

Through Sunken Lands: the whole magic section is thirty pages.

Worlds Without Number: the whole magic section is thirty-four pages, including the mage full class and mage partial classes. Add maybe fourteen pages for the bonus mage partial classes at the back of the book.

Index Card RPG: the basic magic rules are maybe a page, with one page for INT spells and one page for WIS spells. The advanced magic rules are fifty pages total.

Shadow of the Demon Lord: the whole magic and spells section is less than forty pages.

Forbidden Lands: less than forty pages.

Dragonbane BETA: fifteen pages total!

Blue Rose AGE: the Arcana section is twenty-six pages total.

Dungeon World: all the spells and magic you need is already on your playbook.

Page count does not tell the whole story,* but it does amaze me how some games can do more with less page count while also making spellcasting easier for players to play and DMs to adjudicate. 5e D&D is a fun game - I will not deny that - but the sheer amount of spells can be daunting IME when compared to other TTRPG systems out there.

* Many of these games, for example, forgo having spells to 9th level or flatter character progression power curves and levels.

 

[Art Waring]

A year later they weren't playing D&D anymore because it was "too much work" compared to just playing video games together. I did not follow up beyond that but my guess is it was the GM kid's opinion on the matter that resulted in them dropping tabletop, since the work involved isn't high for players and these kids were already tech savvy enough to play online.

I remember getting together to play video games with friends was a whole entire process:

LAN Parties.

Hours and potentially hours for everyone to show up with their PC's, then to hook everything up. Then starcraft and counterstrike until the sun went up. Then crash till the sun went down, then get up again and do some multiplayer Diablo 2.

These days you just don't need to do that, its too easy now to play with other people anywhere in the world. I think since LAN parties actually required a lot of effort, D&D games were seen as an easier alternative back then, for our group anyway.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I remember getting together to play video games with friends was a whole entire process:

LAN Parties.

Hours and potentially hours for everyone to show up with their PC's, then to hook everything up. Then starcraft and counterstrike until the sun went up. Then crash till the sun went down, then get up again and do some multiplayer Diablo 2.

These days you just don't need to do that, its too easy now to play with other people anywhere in the world. I think since LAN parties actually required a lot of effort, D&D games were seen as an easier alternative back then, for our group anyway.

LAN parties were involved. But it's not like there were no viable alternatives. My friends would often bring over their game consoles (I wasn't allowed to have any, except Game Boy for whatever reason) and we'd play games like Goldeneye until the wee hours. Took 5 minutes of setup, if that.

 

[Velderan]

I don't play D&D anymore but this seems to be the answer. When I started playing we switched off who was the DM, if no one was the DM we couldn't play. Pretty simple. Over time some gravitated more towards the role and were better at it and now, 40 years later I DM more than I play.

I started with the D&D Basic set (Moldvay, I think) which gave some rules, dice and Keep on the Borderlands. This was everything we needed, it started getting our imaginations going and we were creating our own adventures in pretty short order. We moved onto the Expert Set and bought more adventures and then moved onto AD&D. Based on prior posts is sounds like 5E doesn't have anything like that (rules and an adventure of reasonable length in one reasonably priced package). That seems like a real failure on WotC's part and a really easy thing to fix.

The Starter Set would fill that role today. It even comes with pregen PCs if the new DM doesn't want to stray too far from a very basic experience to get a feel for the game. That or the Essentials Kit is typically what I recommend for new DMs because it even has a basic DM screen in the box so for $20 (or less if it's on sale) you can get an idea of if you'd enjoy running the game.

 

[Art Waring]

LAN parties were involved. But it's not like there were no viable alternatives. My friends would often bring over their game consoles (I wasn't allowed to have any, except Game Boy for whatever reason) and we'd play games like Goldeneye until the wee hours. Took 5 minutes of setup, if that.

There's a big difference between n64 goldeneye and starcraft or counterstrike multiplayer before high speed internet was a thing.

 

[LordEntrails]

There aren't really "combat encounters" in old school D&D. I mean, there can be, but the presumption is that for most encounters you are going to be rolling reaction. "Immediate attack" was a low probability event. Which is a good thing, because old D&D is a meat grinder if you go into every room looking for a fight.

We never played with the roll for reaction rule. Just like we didn't use a lot of the rules. Even the ones that actually were coherent and made sense. We played those adventures as meat grinders.

I'm not saying we were right, I'm saying the original products did a horrible job of teaching myself and all the DMs I played with in how to DM. They should not be held up as some sort of beacon of light "If only we taught DMs how we did back in my day".

Walking uphill both ways to and from school is a stupid way to teach a generation how to get to & from school.

 

[Reynard]

I'm not saying we were right, I'm saying the original products did a horrible job of teaching myself and all the DMs I played with in how to DM. They should not be held up as some sort of beacon of light "If only we taught DMs how we did back in my day".

Again, I am talking about a specific product that I think would be good to emulate for today's new GMs because it taught a whole generation how to GM, reaction rolls and all.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Page count isn't a useful metric as the font size is different, significantly so in the case of the DMG. You would have to estimate word count.