Things you don’t like about DMing

[TheSword]

So I recently saw the discord discussion that I’ve clipped some comments from because I found it very interesting. There was clearly one DM who felt if you don’t enjoy every aspect of DMing then why are you doing it. Others felt that labors of love are still labors.

What do you think? Are there elements of DMing you really don’t enjoy but have to do anyway? This isn’t so much about DMing things that you don’t bother with or find alternatives. But rather things you don’t like but have to go through anyway.

One thing I don’t like about DMing is the moment precisely before. An hour or so. I get a kind of stage anxiety or maybe performance anxiety/imposter syndrome. How am I going to entertain these people for the next three to six hours. It’s not every time but I would say more often than not. Particularly with weekly games, that have momentum and a certain amount of expectation. Even if it’s just on my part. The thing is, it bears absolutely no relation to whether I later enjoy the session or not. I could be particularly anxious about starting and have the best time in months, and I’ve DM’d well over 5,000 hours of games so it isn’t an experience thing. I just don’t let it stop me. But it’s definitely something I don’t like about DMing and would gladly do without:

I’m interested in your thoughts.

 

[zakael19]

Doing encounter map/digital busywork.

 

[Reynard]

I get you on immediate anxiety. Still.happens at cons for me sometimes (not so much "home games").

If there is a part about GMing -- which i love, snd far prefer to playing -- that i force myself to deal with, rather than do out of joy, it is learning rules. Even when I want you try a new game, what i really want is to watch a couple YT videos and download a couple cheat sheets, but I know that's not REALLY learning a new game. So I force myself to try and understand the nuances, for the benefit of my players, even though I honestly do not give a single solitary crap.

 

[aco175]

I tend to run campaigns in arcs of a few levels and find that after a while I start to burn out on ideas to keep going with the current campaign. When we are looking at starting a new campaign I tend to get excited and plan several things and make maps and tie in things, but after all of those are done I'm a bit meh. If the players want to continue with the campaign I can, but it begins to drag for me.

 

[Velderan]

One thing I don’t like about DMing is the moment precisely before. An hour or so. I get a kind of stage anxiety or maybe performance anxiety/imposter syndrome. How am I going to entertain these people for the next three to six hours.

New games do that for me. The most recent new game I ran for my friends was Pirate Borg over the holiday break for a somewhat rare in-person get together. When we game in-person, we usually shoot for 6 hours so it always causes a bit of anxiety running a new game for the first time where I am not sure how much material to have prepped.

 

[cbwjm]

One thing I don’t like about DMing is the moment precisely before. An hour or so. I get a kind of stage anxiety or maybe performance anxiety/imposter syndrome. How am I going to entertain these people for the next three to six hours. It’s not every time but I would say more often than not.

I'll get like this before a game. I'm often second guessing myself and wondering if my players are having fun. I don't think I ever really need to worry, but I can't help it.

 

[sevenbastard]

Pre game nerves, I also get them. Even after I had ran the same group through over 100 sessions I would still be worried maybe what I had prepared wasn't going to hit this session.

 

[zarionofarabel]

For a very short time in the mid 90s when my players insisted that I run games using per written plotlines. I go off on too many tangents when trying to prepare plotlines in advance and it stresses me right out to the point of not being able to make headway. Lucky for me my players realized quite quickly that my pre written plotline games were way worse than my make it up on the fly games so they told me to go back to making everything up on the fly. I have been doing that ever since and I can say that I love everything about being a GM.

 

[bsss]

For me, it's a bit of the anxiety as above. It's less about my content and more just committing to being "on" rather than playing a board game. There's a lot of energy that gets spent being the one running the game. But the rest of it is worth it, so I do it.

On the high level question, I disagree with the premise expressed there that if you don't like every element of GMing, you should stop. It's unrealistic to expect that of hobbies and, frankly, of life. You should enjoy your hobbies more than not, of course, but you can't get through life resenting anything you do or care about because it's imperfect. How do you build lasting relationships? How do you challenge yourself? If that person loves it all, all more good for them, but I wouldn't suggest that people working to get net enjoyment are doing themselves a disservice. No one would do 95% of the things they do.

 

[Deset Gled]

IMNSHO, being a social referee can become more exhausting than being a game referee. Making sure quieter people don't get steamrolled by loud people. Scheduling. Stopping someone from becoming too much of a main character. Getting real feedback from people that didn't like something but don't want to complain. Meta-meta-gaming to stop people from meta-gaming too much while also trying to promote rules mastery. It's not that I hate it, per se, but my social battery for that kind of stuff generally doesn't last as long as my gaming battery.

My current group is a pretty good mix and not too hard to manage. But you can say that about most groups ... until you can't. The unravelling can be slow. And the frog-in-boiling-water problem is real.

Like prep work, this is also something that a DM can struggle with outside of actual game time, while players only deal with it in session. Prep can be hard sometimes, too. But I've found using a VTT and things like prefab maps and other content goes a long long way with that.