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.