D&D General The DM Shortage

[Sacrosanct]

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.

A lot of comments in this thread are exactly why I put out Bugbears&Borderlands. 5e technically has a basic version, but it's all of the rules and none of the customization. IMO, that's backwards for a Basic set. The starter sets are easier, but you have no customization or chargen with those. I grew up on Moldvay's B/X, and experienced first hand during that time how it was easier than 1e and drew in a lot of new players. I don't know why WotC didn't take that similar approach, but here we are, with people making (valid) comments about how 5e isn't really new DM/Player friends, even their basic sets.

The Player's Guide to B&B is large font, 6x9" in size, and comes in at 84 pages (not counting appendices, 54 pages not counting spells). For up to level 10 of play. At "standard" font size WotC uses, it would probably be less than 50 pages. The GM's Guide is 140 pages, but if you don't count monsters and magic items, it's 17. 17 pages of rules. Again, in large easy to read font, only 6x9" size. So when you remove the lists (spells, monsters, magic items), there are roughly 70 pages of rules for players and GM in total.

To your point about spells, unnecessary text was removed. Rules are stripped to their very basic core. Compare the same spell in 5e with B&B:

Bugbears&Borderlands:

5e:

 

[LordEntrails]

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.

Ok, and though I was playing at that time, I don't remember that specific product. What I do remember, and which is only anecdotal, is that no DM I knew in that time period learned to "DM well" from any product. Maybe that one product we all missed and it was awesome, but I only have (anecdotal) evidence to the contrary.

That and as I've said, I don't think new DMs need more content to learn how to DM well. Their is already so much content to learn how to be a DM that more would probably just confuse the market. What might help though, is a way to encourage more people/players to take the leap. To overcome their anxiety/fear/uncertainty holding them back. Maybe a red box style product would do that, but I don't think so. Instead I think more exposure and statements by professionals like Mercer et al say something like ":Hey, you don't, and probably shouldn't, expect to DM like we do, we are professionals. But you should do this at home! Jump in, don't worry. Have fun, and figure it out together!"

 

[Malmuria]

A lot of comments in this thread are exactly why I put out Bugbears&Borderlands. 5e technically has a basic version, but it's all of the rules and none of the customization. IMO, that's backwards for a Basic set. The starter sets are easier, but you have no customization or chargen with those. I grew up on Moldvay's B/X, and experienced first hand during that time how it was easier than 1e and drew in a lot of new players. I don't know why WotC didn't take that similar approach, but here we are, with people making (valid) comments about how 5e isn't really new DM/Player friends, even their basic sets.

The Player's Guide to B&B is large font, 6x9" in size, and comes in at 84 pages (not counting appendices, 54 pages not counting spells). For up to level 10 of play. At "standard" font size WotC uses, it would probably be less than 50 pages. The GM's Guide is 140 pages, but if you don't count monsters and magic items, it's 17. 17 pages of rules. Again, in large easy to read font, only 6x9" size. So when you remove the lists (spells, monsters, magic items), there are roughly 70 pages of rules for players and GM in total.

To your point about spells, unnecessary text was removed. Rules are stripped to their very basic core. Compare the same spell in 5e with B&B:

Bugbears&Borderlands:
View attachment 269304

5e:

View attachment 269305

Part of the difference is that official 5e material is written defensively, that is with the rules lawyers in mind. The assumption is that if something is not spelled out the table will not know what to do. The DM will be unable to make a ruling and the players will be unable to accept a ruling.

edit

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

Same thing here: these games are able to cut down on the word count of spells because they assume that the table will be able to figure out how they work. Whitehack takes this farther: a spell does what it says, and costs a variable amount of hit points to use depending on DM ruling. Insofar as this requires conversation between DM and player, as well as adjudication by the DM, this is regarded as "mother may I" mechanics.

 

[Sacrosanct]

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.

This is valid. To continue my post above, B&B has 31,438 words. 5e's 2018 Basic rules has 102,044.

 

[Malmuria]

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.

I'm running OSE right now, and noticing how many things are in b/x that allow for avoiding fights. First of all, 1 in 6 chance of an encounter every other turn ends up being quite low. Second, encounter distance might produce a situation that is easily avoided by the PCs. Thrid, as you note, the creatures are most likely to be neutral and amenable to parlay, if not indifferent or friendly.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Part of the difference is that official 5e material is written defensively, that is with the rules lawyers in mind. The assumption is that if something is not spelled out the table will not know what to do. The DM will be unable to make a ruling and the players will be unable to accept a ruling.

And that's a flawed approach, IMO. We already saw how people were more than able to play the game just fine without every scenario spelled out when B/X came out. Bloating the rules, turning off potential DMs, because a small % of players are rules lawyers is the wrong approach, IMO. Players will figure out what to do. Especially if you give guidance at the start along the lines of:

 

[Faolyn]

Uh...

I'm not calling you a liar...

Because RAW AD&D is far deadlier than RAW 5E. That's a fact that's evident by reading the rules of both games. If you played both RAW that would be evident to you.

The only way to square that circle is that there were house rules in play. That's great. I just want to know what those house rules were.

It's my understanding that, in the times when you got XP for treasure, it would be more logical to avoid combat and try to sneak in to steal the treasure instead of fighting through it. Since Oofta said they started with Chainmail, it makes sense that their group could have played that way.
Plus, if you have players who use tactics, builds traps, or missile weapons instead of just fighting toe-to-toe, and are very careful about checking for traps, that also helps avoid player death. And of course, Oofta's table could have had a Monty Haul DM and so the PCs were at little risk of dying because they were decked out in magic items.

So I'm willing to believe that it's very easy to run even a basic or AD&D game with few or no character deaths even without any house rules at all.

 

[Reynard]

Ok, and though I was playing at that time, I don't remember that specific product. What I do remember, and which is only anecdotal, is that no DM I knew in that time period learned to "DM well" from any product. Maybe that one product we all missed and it was awesome, but I only have (anecdotal) evidence to the contrary.

That and as I've said, I don't think new DMs need more content to learn how to DM well. Their is already so much content to learn how to be a DM that more would probably just confuse the market. What might help though, is a way to encourage more people/players to take the leap. To overcome their anxiety/fear/uncertainty holding them back. Maybe a red box style product would do that, but I don't think so. Instead I think more exposure and statements by professionals like Mercer et al say something like ":Hey, you don't, and probably shouldn't, expect to DM like we do, we are professionals. But you should do this at home! Jump in, don't worry. Have fun, and figure it out together!"

I wasn't calling for a new product. I was calling for the existing starting products to actually teach GMs how to run the game in full. Preferably, you would actually put that starter adventure in the DMG itself, but that's neither here nor there.

If you came into the hobby before the 1983 basic set came out, and especially if you came in before the 1981 set, you got shortchanged on being taught the game, no question about it. But your anecdotal experience doesn't erase the hundreds of thousands (millions? where's that thread) of Basic sets sold and new GMs created by way of it.

And I think the last thing we need and will help is yet more talking heads on YouTube telling new GMs that they can do whatever they want with their goblins. That's not helpful to someone who doesn't know what an adventure is supposed to look like and how it is supposed to run. And watching streams in even worse, for any number of reasons already listed but.

 

[Stalker0]

I’m curious if the “critical roll” effect has either lessened or worsened the issue.

People see critical roll and get inspired to run a game…more dms.

People see a professional running games and get discouraged that they can never run that “well”…less dms.

 

[Faolyn]

"You have to understand", I said, "the idea of Ravenloft is great. In practice, however, your basic premise revolves around trying to make the players apprehensive and nervous, right? So how do you do that, really? Historically, you do this by taking away player agency, trapping them in a scenario they have to escape from, giving them as little information as possible, making their abilities not work right, trying to corrupt their characters with weird cursed powers, and using overpowered monsters. In the hands of your average DM, a Ravenloft campaign can devolve into a power trip that's not fun for the players- so I'll bet just about anyone you talk to has had a bad experience with the setting."

I was still fully on board with trying his campaign, but that reaction totally demoralized him, apparently, and he quietly left our group a few weeks later.

Well, I can tell you right off the bat that I have never had a bad time running the setting, and my players keep saying that they love my Ravenloft games, so this is entirely wrong.

I don't use overpowered monsters (seriously; most of the monsters I love the most are the weaker ones). I don't take away abilities or corrupt them or take away agency. If I'm going to "corrupt" a PC, I have always fully gotten the player's permission first and discussed the details with them. Currently, one PC is a blind hexblade who gains some limited blindsight when wielding his blade and since the PC already decided that part of his pact involves licking the blood off their blade, I've discussed it with them about the possibility to slowly being corrupted and eventually transforming into a werebat.

What I do for the horror is describe everything in as creepy and visceral a way as I can. I don't even go into gorn territory, by the way, since I believe less is more when it comes to things like that. But describing the scents and tactile sensations of an area automatically makes it that much scarier.