D&D General The Hidden Stress of D&D

[DMrichard]

I imagine I'm not alone. Without fail, D&D night excites me. Oftentimes I'll think about the upcoming session days beforehand, meandering through my mind about the possibilities, but never putting pen to paper until the night before or the day of. In these winding paths in my head, I'll explore where the party might go, what might excite the players, and why their characters will be challenged and tested.

Ideas flow freely.

The demon the party released and partially defeated? It ravaged a nearby city, creating its lair in the temple of a lawful, good, but absent deity. Might they venture there, or the collapsed cove layered with mysterious treasures they heard about from their talkative tabaxi friend?

Natalie really enjoys love stories, and she's built a great one into her character! When will Mia be reunited or have the chance to meet her lost love? Will he be the same person she remembers, or forever changed by the war he was forced to fight in?

The Bannerless is beginning to make a name for itself, a dangerous idea in this dark land. As a budding organization, others see it as a threat, though some may seek to ally with it. Who will try to take out the party and their faction before it grows too large, and how might that excite the players? Who will reach out and try to build an alliance, calling out enemies before they show themselves?

While I think about what might be fun for my players, I become excited.

I write these ideas down, I weave a loose narrative for the session almost assured it will go off the rails immediately. That's how most of my sessions go, but I love it.

Yet, when the day arrives and the hours pass by, I start to panic.

Read the rest of the article here: The Hidden Stress of D&D

 

[GMMichael]

Yet, when the day arrives and the hours pass by, I start to panic.

Look into tequila.

It's worth stating that dreaming up the game and running the game are two very different things, even if they could involve the same story. It's also worth stating that some RPGs are more likely to cause you stress than others, if those games don't take the same approach to role-playing as you do.

 

[Shiroiken]

IME most DMs torment themselves needlessly. We always expect perfection from ourselves, never quite achieving an acceptable level... no matter how awesome the game actually goes. I've been a DM/GM for over 30 years, with dozens of successful campaigns to my name, yet I still feel dread and anxiety. I think it's just part of being a DM.

 

[Oofta]

I imagine I'm not alone. Without fail, D&D night excites me. Oftentimes I'll think about the upcoming session days beforehand, meandering through my mind about the possibilities, but never putting pen to paper until the night before or the day of. In these winding paths in my head, I'll explore where the party might go, what might excite the players, and why their characters will be challenged and tested.

Ideas flow freely.

The demon the party released and partially defeated? It ravaged a nearby city, creating its lair in the temple of a lawful, good, but absent deity. Might they venture there, or the collapsed cove layered with mysterious treasures they heard about from their talkative tabaxi friend?

Natalie really enjoys love stories, and she's built a great one into her character! When will Mia be reunited or have the chance to meet her lost love? Will he be the same person she remembers, or forever changed by the war he was forced to fight in?

The Bannerless is beginning to make a name for itself, a dangerous idea in this dark land. As a budding organization, others see it as a threat, though some may seek to ally with it. Who will try to take out the party and their faction before it grows too large, and how might that excite the players? Who will reach out and try to build an alliance, calling out enemies before they show themselves?

While I think about what might be fun for my players, I become excited.

I write these ideas down, I weave a loose narrative for the session almost assured it will go off the rails immediately. That's how most of my sessions go, but I love it.

Yet, when the day arrives and the hours pass by, I start to panic.

Read the rest of the article here: The Hidden Stress of D&D

I've been DMing for decades, I still get performance anxiety before the game. I never feel prepared. Probably partly because my notes for the session are two paragraphs and a handful of possible encounter and I am frequently woefully underprepared, or at least it feels like it. But I'm familiar with the actors, I know who's doing what and why, I've given thought to the general locale. Then when the game starts I just kind of improvise. The party turns right at Albuquerque instead of left like I had expected? Well I can change the descriptions of these monsters and base this new NPC on someone else I was going to introduce and it all just kind of works.

I have a serious case of imposter syndrome and keep thinking someone is going to just stop in the middle of the game and tell me I have no clue what I'm doing. But so far, so good.

 

[Mad_Jack]

I have a serious case of imposter syndrome and keep thinking someone is going to just stop in the middle of the game and tell me I have no clue what I'm doing. But so far, so good.

I often wonder who the hell ever decided I was qualified to be considered a rational adult and allowed to run around unsupervised with scissors, nevermind being handed a pair of scissors and told that people like what I make with them.

 

[payn]

I tend to thrive on stress and ambiguity so I welcome it. I'm also insane I've been told.

 

[J-H]

"Ok, it's 3 hours before. Who's about to cancel on me unexpectedly?"
"It starts at 7:30. It's 7:35. Nobody's here. Are they coming?"

 

[Hussar]

Or my favourite- second guessing twenty seconds after session ends.

There are many reasons why there aren’t more dms but I think these hit a lot of them.

 

[Richards]

Maybe it's because I used to submit adventures to Dungeon back in the day, but I write all of my adventures out ahead of time as if they were going to be printed in a magazine, and whatever's next, that's the adventure we're going to go through for that session. So, had I have been in the situation described by the original poster (as far as where the campaign was at at that point), I would have already decided the next adventure would deal with the fallout from the escaped demon, so I'd have prepped an adventure where the PCs track him down to the lawful good deity's temple. And in the meantime, the players would be feeding me ideas about where they'd like the campaign to go in the future, so in the back of my mind I'd be coming up with other future adventures involving Mia's lost love and how I was going to next involve the Bannerless organization.

Part of the reason we use this approach is because it allows me to "polish" up the stats for the monsters, room descriptions, and so on and prepare detailed battle maps ahead of time. (We play D&D 3.5, so the monster stats do take a bit of time to whip into shape.) It's the best of both worlds for us: I get the extra prep time needed because I know exactly what the session will entail, and the players still get inputs about what they'd like to see in future sessions. And it maximizes our limited game time, so I'm not wasting valuable time crafting up game stats on the spur of the moment. Plus, every DM needs to play to his or her own strengths, and I'm well aware the level of improvisation needed to run a completely open "sandbox" campaign is outside my own competencies.

I'm not saying this approach is right for every game table, but it's proven to work for my group - and we've been gaming together now for about 17 years.

Johnathan

 

[MichaelSomething]

DMs don't plan; they improvise.