D&D General The DM Shortage

[Ralif Redhammer]

Same. As someone that works in IT, I try to uncouple my D&D as much as I can from using a computer (while using a computer to play it, mind you). Using a fancier platform than Discord isn't something I would likely enjoy, and would absolutely add an extra burden to running the game.

As someone's who is almost terminally online and tech heavy, I find these platforms endlessly tedious.

It's funny, when I think about my two gaming groups, including myself there's three people that DM in both of them. But then when I remember when I was playing at an open table some years back, the DM at one point said that the table was getting too big for him to manage and it was crickets when he asked if someone could splinter off and run a game until I volunteered. Then, both tables continued to grow and then later on when I floated that I was looking for someone else to DM a third table to take pressure off of me, not one person volunteered.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

We are talking, in largest part, about designing and playtesting the game to be easy to learn.

That means people who already know the ropes are not valid playtesters. You need a large playtesting population that doesn't already play RPGs to do "actual playtesting" for this design goal.

That is not a small order.

Certainly. And it's even more of a challenge because portions of TTRPGs, snippets and chunks and sometimes entire subsystems--have found nearly universal acceptance in video games, which makes it extremely difficult to find robust playtester groups that truly don't know anything RPG-like. It's a difficult thing.

Yet, by that same token, many are quite keen to note that D&D is and remain a niche within an niche, and any other game is a niche within that niche-in-a-niche. The Nintendo Wii sold over 100 million units. Even if we give a favorable exaggeration of D&D's playerbase, that's larger by an order of magnitude (the most optimistic estimates of D&D 5e's playerbase are at 8 million, IIRC.) Even if we only consider the North American sales, and even if 100% of D&D players are Unitedstatesians, you'd still be looking at roughly 4x-5x difference. If the Nintendo Wii could be tested on, and marketed for, an audience that had little to no intersection with gaming, one of its famous and extremely successful design goals, then it does not seem that unreasonable that one could achieve something similar in other contexts.

It would, of course, likely require a very different approach to playtesting. But I'm actually pretty confident that it could be done. Further, it's not even strictly necessary to perform such testing "live," as it were; one can leverage knowledge from academic research on education, human reasoning processes, etc. Such theory-based resources are not the end-all, be-all (e.g., it's mostly theory that drives the "Target 20" design, without concern for the practical limitations, hence my skepticism of that particular approach), but they provide useful starting points so that we don't have to begin from first principles. We can tune the initial approach based on independent research, and then iterate on the resulting structures.

If any game can achieve it, that game is D&D. And if it succeeds, well, other systems can build on such concepts from there, because most of the ground work will have been done already, and the rules themselves cannot be copyrighted.

 

[nevin]

I think you are missing my point: WotC needs to reproduce the techniques of the 1983 Basic Set if they want to solve the "DM crisis."

There has been a DM shortage since the game launched. DM s do more work get more stressed and as someone else said people are afraid of dissapointing other people.

Only time i can think of that anyone seriously tried to address this issue was in the 80's with the RPGA but it died before the 90s

 

[Reynard]

Same. As someone that works in IT, I try to uncouple my D&D as much as I can from using a computer (while using a computer to play it, mind you). Using a fancier platform than Discord isn't something I would likely enjoy, and would absolutely add an extra burden to running the game.



It's funny, when I think about my two gaming groups, including myself there's three people that DM in both of them. But then when I remember when I was playing at an open table some years back, the DM at one point said that the table was getting too big for him to manage and it was crickets when he asked if someone could splinter off and run a game until I volunteered. Then, both tables continued to grow and then later on when I floated that I was looking for someone else to DM a third table to take pressure off of me, not one person volunteered.

If there are too many players it is likely because it is a great game and so it's weird to expect people to volunteer to leave a great game.

 

[LordEntrails]

The 1983 Basic Set taught you to DM with an adversarial attitude?

That's how I learned to DM. Can't say my memory of 1978 is flawless. But I learned from the Basic set and the adventure available at that time, and then the AD&D books and adventures that followed. I didn't learn to break that behavior until the mid-80's, and did not develop a ... my current style until the mid 00's.

 

[Reynard]

There has been a DM shortage since the game launched. DM s do more work get more stressed and as someone else said people are afraid of dissapointing other people.

Only time i can think of that anyone seriously tried to address this issue was in the 80's with the RPGA but it died before the 90s

People keep repeating this as if we are in the same gaming landscape we were in 30 years ago. We're not. At all.

 

[overgeeked]

There has been a DM shortage since the game launched. DM s do more work get more stressed and as someone else said people are afraid of dissapointing other people.

Only time i can think of that anyone seriously tried to address this issue was in the 80's with the RPGA but it died before the 90s

There were a few comments about how 4E didn't need a DM in the books themselves. The suggestion amounted to running a skirmish with the party against a player-designed encounter. No DM necessary.

 

[Reynard]

That's how I learned to DM. Can't say my memory of 1978 is flawless. But I learned from the Basic set and the adventure available at that time, and then the AD&D books and adventures that followed. I didn't learn to break that behavior until the mid-80's, and did not develop a ... my current style until the mid 00's.

You are completely missing the point.

 

[LordEntrails]

You are completely missing the point.

I'm answering the question you asked with when you quoted me.

If you are debating the point of the OP, what about it do I not understand? I don't believe their is anymore of a DM shortage today than their was in 1980. And I believe it is easier to learn to be a good DM today than anytime previously.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

In my experience, new DMs are created when players are exposed to lackluster games. "I can do this better!" and off they go. In my gaming circles, we call this "rage prepping" because you've just experienced a boring game of shopping or whatever and you're fired up to make a better game. When someone is suffering from writer's block, we just watch a couple of low-viewer Twitch streams and, hoo boy, the fires are lit again.

So, following that, if we just all agreed to run crappier games, the DM shortage would go away. WHO'S WITH ME?!

I was sort of this...by proxy?

I'd considered running a game for several years. I actually did run a game that fizzled out after less than six sessions (I don't remember exactly how many, more than two but less than six.) And then...a friend of mine, call them Chris, was in a bad game. A really, really bad game. A game where one player had the DM wrapped around their little finger (IIRC, everyone suspected the DM was sweet on this player, but they weren't officially in a relationship.) Chris was going through a very rough patch of their life at the time, and gaming was one of their main sources of solace. It was painful to hear Chris go through such a bad experience with their first D&D game.

Then, at one point, upon hearing exactly how awful this game was, I realized...I could do better than that. Even my imposter syndrome couldn't make me believe otherwise. I knew, in my bones, it was physically impossible for me to do that badly. By running a game, I could help Chris feel better. And I did! In fact, Chris gave me one of the greatest compliments I've received, when they had to cut short their TTRPG play for IRL reasons: of the several games they were playing, mine was the only one they struggled with leaving.

But I wouldn't wish that catalyst on anyone. I know your point was tongue-in-cheek, but I think we should take it quite seriously.

 

[Umbran]

If the Nintendo Wii could be tested on, and marketed for, an audience that had little to no intersection with gaming

I am not aware that it was - to my knowledge, Nintendo didn't specifically search for people unfamiliar with videogames for the Wii. I do not recall marketing positioned as, "This is for folks who don't play videogames to play". If you have evidence otherwise, please cite it.

But I'm actually pretty confident that it could be done.

"Could be done," in a theoretical sense, and "is practical in the bounds of budget and expected return on investment for the effort" is not the same thing.

I mean, we've seen this argument before, about how much more WotC should do for people to learn the game. But, the game's growth has been explosive without that effort. It is not at all established that "difficult to learn" is really the issue when considering the DM population.

Being a GM is a fundamentally different experience than playing is. If that different experience is simply appealing to a smaller audience than playing, what you're doing is making it easier to learn a thing they won't find fun to do!

Further, it's not even strictly necessary to perform such testing "live," as it were; one can leverage knowledge from academic research on education, human reasoning processes, etc.

While there's something there, I was responding to a thig about "real playtesting". In respect to that, this constitutes a movement of goalposts.

 

[Oofta]

In one of those state of Roll20 reports there was a graph that showed older editions of D&D were more popular than many recent games, even the other "big dogs" in the industry like Call of Cthulhu and whatever the new licensed hotness was.

Why intentionally ignore the one concrete thing we can look at when making a comparison? Assuming everything else is equal, the only thing we can look at is the games themselves. 5E compared to AD&D and B/X and other old-school favorites. There's no comparison in complexity and ease of use, AD&D and B/X are just easier to use, easier to play, easier to learn, easier to pick up, etc. From either side of the screen. Yes, there's a silly PDF floating around about how impossible it was to play AD&D because of all the contradictory rules compiled over the decade plus it existed, but that ignores that most people didn't bother with every new bit of rules that Gygax published. They didn't even bother with everything in the PHB or DMG. And B/X or BECMI? Even easier.

I mean...other than asking them. They are here, now, in this conversation with you. For me it's the freedom, lighter rules, more lethal combat, challenge of the game, and ease of use from every side of the screen. It's also the players' attitude toward the game. It's easier to hack and mod AD&D or B/X than 5E. It's also easier to get players onboard with hacking and modding old-school games than 5E. Players of those games are already aware of the preferred play style of those games and are onboard with it. The only benefit that 5E has over the old-school games is the player base being larger. But the majority of those players are new to the hobby and don't have the same attitude towards the hobby that older, more experienced players have, and a lot (re: almost all) the institutional knowledge is skipped over.

I don't. I've run and played both for both player groups. The article about a lack of DMs in New York nailed it. Ben from Questing Beast nailed it.

My experiences with both groups are as follows:

The old-school players show up and are ready to game, have fun exploring, freewheel things, hack the system, mod the mechanics, go with the flow, understand tactical infinity, and generally bash or sneak by some monsters, RP with some NPCs, and just play the game. These players are fine with losing characters and they understand it's part of the game. This also generally applies to winning and losing. Winning is preferable, but losing is something to accept.

I've had old-school players laugh off a character dying 5 minutes into the game. Slap "Jr" at the end of their character's name and keep playing with a smile.

The new-with-5E players show up and are ready to be told a professional-level story, complete with professional-level voice work, smash the buttons on their character sheet, and follow the RAW if it kills every last one of them...but then it's almost impossible to kill PCs in 5E. These players are not fine with losing characters and don't seem to understand it's part of the game. This also generally applies to winning and losing. Winning is expected, losing is verbotten.

I've had new players tell me that unless we followed every rule exactly as printed in the books we weren't playing "real" D&D. This player only wanted "real" D&D and quit. I've had new players rage quite over taking 1 point of damage. One. Singular.

I'm fully aware this is my personal experience and not indicative of every new or old-school player. I get it. But it is my experience.

Personally I find 5E to be one of the easier versions of the game to run. In 3.x, casters had way too many spells to choose from in 4E it was understanding all the powers because every monster could be unique. Is it "better" that OSR games are deadlier? Not across the board, that's personal preference.

OSR players are less likely to be casual players, more likely to have significant experience or be playing alongside people with significant experience. That makes a huge difference, as much or more than the actual rules of the game. Where you get this idea that all 5E players have grand expectations is beyond me, or that PCs are impossible to kill. The lethality of the game is, and always has been, up to the DM and the group. I've had people quit (or at least sulking) over taking damage in other editions as well. My games back in the day (1E) were no more or less lethal than they are now.

So my experience is that killing PCs does not make the game any more enjoyable, but if I want to kill a PC in 5E it's easy enough to focus fire and double tap. Very few people expect or need professional level DMing and the vast majority of players are not prima donnas but there have always been people that will take offense if you dare damage their precious PC. People have always come to the table with different levels of understanding how their PC works.

I just don't see that much of a difference caused by the rules of the game.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

2) If you fill a bag with 80 white marbles, and 20 red marbles, there are enough red marbles to go around in theory, but in practice if you grab any five marbles, there's a goodly chance they'll all be white.

#2 there is a problem - because you'll frequently have local GM shortage, but not an overall shortage. But, raising the number of GMs may not actually help - because then you'll tend to have areas where GMs who go underutilized, and drop out of GMing, and you end up back where you started.

yeah, I assume there is also a "I don't want to try 3 DMs looking for a good one" that may be handled by "If they charge they must be good"

For the record I do NOT believe that charging means you must be good, but some will

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I am not aware that it was - to my knowledge, Nintendo didn't specifically search for people unfamiliar with videogames for the Wii. I do not recall marketing positioned as, "This is for folks who don't play videogames to play". If you have evidence otherwise, please cite it.

User Experience Magazine, March 2007: "The designers focused on simplicity and user friendliness of both the hardware and the games. Mr. Iwata insisted to his developers that, “These [games] will be the titles which can be played by anybody even if they do not have past game-play[ing] experiences, knowledge, and techniques. As soon as people see the software and are given the Wii Remote, they feel that they can do it…We did not include some functions but it is not because we couldn‘t do so. It was just that we eliminated them to make Wii a better proposal.”"
A less formal example, a blogpost from November 18, 2006: "Nintendo Wii is product strategy executed right. Rather than getting beaten in the ultra-cool-graphics pissing contest, they have focused on getting non-gamers into the market. From the first appearances, they have succeeded admirably. Great show, Nintendo."
Reuters, April 1, 2007: "“We’ve seen Nintendo expand the marketplace and grow it beyond the traditional gamer,” says Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research. “They really redefined the videogame experience by creating something new and different.” That innovation is the Wii controller, a motion-sensitive wand that allows gamers to control the action onscreen by waving the device about rather than jostling a joystick and pushing buttons. That controller and the games developed for it have captured the imagination of both the core gamer demographic and their parents, wives and other family members."
Ars Technica, October 2, 2006 (second page): "The Nintendo engineers and managers seemed very excited about the Wii and the potential it has to make gaming more accessible to a wider audience." The first page of the same article explicitly talks about how they chose not to do what most gamers expected, chasing glitz and glamour, and instead built for other focuses.

Hopefully those are adequate to support the assertion.

"Could be done," in a theoretical sense, and "is practical in the bounds of budget and expected return on investment for the effort" is not the same thing.

I don't have any reason to believe it is that impractical.

I mean, we've seen this argument before, about how much more WotC should do for people to learn the game. But, the game's growth has been explosive without that effort. It is not at all established that "difficult to learn" is really the issue when considering the DM population.

Being a GM is a fundamentally different experience than playing is. If that different experience is simply appealing to a smaller audience than playing, what you're doing is making it easier to learn a thing they won't find fun to do!

And if that is in fact the bottleneck, there is nothing that can be done. I don't find the assumption "there is nothing, at all, that can be done" particularly useful. I would rather focus efforts on trying to do something until we have good reason to believe such efforts are futile than presuming that such efforts are futile and never finding out either way.

While there's something there, I was responding to a thig about "real playtesting". In respect to that, this constitutes a movement of goalposts.

Why? That seems incredibly harsh. I haven't changed one iota of what I've said. Why is doing a literature search and becoming familiar with the academic background moving goalposts?

 

[iserith]

I was sort of this...by proxy?

I'd considered running a game for several years. I actually did run a game that fizzled out after less than six sessions (I don't remember exactly how many, more than two but less than six.) And then...a friend of mine, call them Chris, was in a bad game. A really, really bad game. A game where one player had the DM wrapped around their little finger (IIRC, everyone suspected the DM was sweet on this player, but they weren't officially in a relationship.) Chris was going through a very rough patch of their life at the time, and gaming was one of their main sources of solace. It was painful to hear Chris go through such a bad experience with their first D&D game.

Then, at one point, upon hearing exactly how awful this game was, I realized...I could do better than that. Even my imposter syndrome couldn't make me believe otherwise. I knew, in my bones, it was physically impossible for me to do that badly. By running a game, I could help Chris feel better. And I did! In fact, Chris gave me one of the greatest compliments I've received, when they had to cut short their TTRPG play for IRL reasons: of the several games they were playing, mine was the only one they struggled with leaving.

But I wouldn't wish that catalyst on anyone. I know your point was tongue-in-cheek, but I think we should take it quite seriously.

Yeah, mostly I'm referring to groups that are not dysfunctional due to the people but because the content the DM is serving up could be better. The DM's well-meaning but they have some bad habits or focus on the wrong stuff relative to the group's interests.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I was certainly enjoying that campaign before I started DMing the second table. But one of the things I learned from DMing for 10-13 people on any given session is that having too many players is a surefire way to make the game less enjoyable for everyone.

If there are too many players it is likely because it is a great game and so it's weird to expect people to volunteer to leave a great game.

 

[overgeeked]

Personally I find 5E to be one of the easier versions of the game to run.

It's the second easiest WotC version of the game, that's for sure.

In 3.x, casters had way too many spells to choose from in 4E it was understanding all the powers because every monster could be unique.

I skipped 3X so I'll take your word for it. 4E was dead simple to run. The DMGs were amazing. Still worth picking up for the advice and tips and pointers. Print out the monster. When it's that monster's turn, do the biggest thing they could that was available. You didn't need understand much, that was mostly on the players' side. PCs working together was the design intent, if the PC's did not, bad things happened.

Is it "better" that OSR games are deadlier? Not across the board, that's personal preference.

It's absolutely a personal preference.

OSR players are less likely to be casual players, more likely to have significant experience or be playing alongside people with significant experience.

That's not true. Unless you define "less casual" as being DMs. A lot of people in the OSR are the same age as the bulk of the new-to-5E players. They just gravitated to the older, deadlier, and more challenging versions of the game. Entire OSR groups and discords are filled with people with less than 5-years experience with RPGs. Not all the old timers are in the OSR. There is a significant overlap in the Venn diagram, but they're not one perfectly overlapping circle.

Where you get this idea that all 5E players have grand expectations is beyond me

From being told by a few hundred 5E players that is exactly what they expected.

or that PCs are impossible to kill. The lethality of the game is, and always has been, up to the DM and the group.

You skipped the important word "almost" in that sentence. And I got the idea from running and playing 5E since the Next play test. The PCs are absolutely dirty with healing even from 1st level. The only way a PC dies is if the referee drops infinite dragons on them or the players simply let their friend's character die. After 5th level and you have access to raise dead, it's literally only a question of if the players will let the character stay dead.

I've had people quit (or at least sulking) over taking damage in other editions as well. My games back in the day (1E) were no more or less lethal than they are now.

Wow. That's either the easiest AD&D game ever or the hardest 5E game ever.

So my experience is that killing PCs does not make the game any more enjoyable, but if I want to kill a PC in 5E it's easy enough to focus fire and double tap.

And that works...up until 5th level. Then it's a speed bump at worst.

Very few people expect or need professional level DMing and the vast majority of players are not prima donnas

If we're talking about old-school players and the OSR crowd, then I'd agree with you. If we're talking about the 5E crowd, then I'd disagree with you.

but there have always been people that will take offense if you dare damage their precious PC.

I've never seen it until 5E. I've played AD&D with people who would literally throw the video game controller against the wall across the room when they lose and even they gleefully tossed AD&D characters into the meatgrinder.

People have always come to the table with different levels of understanding how their PC works.

Yes. And when there's less rules for those characters there's less chance for misunderstanding. More rules means more misunderstandings.

I just don't see that much of a difference caused by the rules of the game.

It's not just the rules but the players' expectations and play style. But if you don't see how AD&D is more deadly than 5E, our points-of-view are so wildly divergent that there's essentially no common ground.

 

[pemerton]

Here's the thing:

Do I want WotC to release a product that actually teaches DMing?

Absolutely.

Do I actually know what that product should look like?

No.

Because from what I've seen, all the Tabletop RPGs I've played, I've never seen one. Pretty much every game's GMing advice is like 'here's some scripts, here's bunch of tools to use once you're good enough, here's how to do game design'. If you're lucky, there's some 'here's how to deal with personal dynamics at the table' and 'here's how not to let it go to your head', but the baseline, nuts and bolts of how to build an adventure and tell a story with other people' ?

Torchbearer 2e, Prince Valiant and In A Wicked Age are three RPGs I think of that meet your requirements.

 

[Xamnam]

That's not true. Unless you define "less casual" as being DMs. A lot of people in the OSR are the same age as the bulk of the new-to-5E players. They just gravitated to the older, deadlier, and more challenging versions of the game. Entire OSR groups and discords are filled with people with less than 5-years experience with RPGs. Not all the old timers are in the OSR. There is a significant overlap in the Venn diagram, but they're not one perfectly overlapping circle.

I don't think they're pointing to age at all. I think all they're saying here is that someone is more likely to fall into the OSR scene if they've played 5e (or other D&D edition) and gotten tired/frustrated with it, or they have a friend who feels that way, as opposed to coming across OSR as their introduction to the hobby at large.

 

[Reynard]

I'm answering the question you asked with when you quoted me.

If you are debating the point of the OP, what about it do I not understand? I don't believe their is anymore of a DM shortage today than their was in 1980. And I believe it is easier to learn to be a good DM today than anytime previously.

We are talking about a teaching tool that came out in 1983 and you are arguing against it based on your 1978 experience. I mean...