Where Are All the Dungeon Masters?

In light of the Labor Day celebrations happening in the U.S., now's a good time to look at the amount of effort tabletop role-playing takes. Is it holding the hobby back from a bigger audience?

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[h=3]Why Oh Why Won't They DM?[/h]Dungeons & Dragons and many tabletop role-playing games that debuted after its release have struggled with an inherent part of its structure: one of its participants has a disproportionate share of the game's work. This isn't to say that players can't help, but the structure of the referee role as envision by co-creators Gary Gygax and Dave Arenson created a very different form of play for one "player." What this means is that there are always more players than Dungeon Masters (DMs) and Game Masters (DMs) -- by necessity, the game is built this way -- and as tabletop RPGs grow in popularity, a GM shortage is a real possibility.

The GM challenge stems from a variety of factors, not the least of which being the level of organizational skills necessary to pull off playing not just one character, but several. In Master of the Game, Gygax outlined the seven principal functions of a DM:

These functions are as Moving Force, Creator, Designer, Arbiter, Overseer, Director, and Umpire/Referee/Judge (a single function with various shades of meaning). The secondary functions of the Game Master are Narrator, Interpreter, Force of Nature, Personification of Non-Participant Characters, All Other Personifications, and Supernatural Power.
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With a list like that, it's no wonder that potential DMs find the role intimidating! Spencer Crittenden, the DM for HarmonQuest, summarizes why it's so challenging to be a Dungeon Master:

Being a DM, like being a ref, means acknowledging you will make mistakes while still demanding respect for the authority you have over the game. It means taking charge and reducing distractions, it means observing everyone to get a sense of their feelings and levels of engagement, and keeping people engaged and interested. This is not easy, especially for beginners. There's a billion things to keep track of on your side of the DM Screen: maps, monsters, rules, dialogue, etc.
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It's a lot, but there's hope.
[h=3]The Best Way to Learn[/h]D&D's style of play was unique: part improvisation, part strategic simulation, with no end game. But the game's popularity has increasingly made the idea of playing D&D less foreign to new players as other forms of gaming have picked up the basic elements of play, from board games to card games to video games. The idea of playing an elf who goes on adventure with her companions is no longer quite so novel.

That familiarity certainly made it easier for the game to be accepted by the general public, but learning to play the game is best experienced first-hand, something not many future DMs have a chance to do. Enter video.

Thanks to the rise of live streaming like Twitch and video channels like YouTube, prospective DMs can watch how the game is actually played. In fact, the sheer volume of video viewers has begun to influence Kickstarters on the topic and even merited mention by the CEO of Hasbro. If the best way to learn is by watching a game, we now have enough instructional videos in spades to satisfy the demand.

And yet, if this thread is any indication, there still aren't enough DMs -- and it's likely there never will be. After all, knowing how to play and having the time, resources, and confidence to do so are two different things, and not everyone wants to put in the effort. That's why there's an International GMs Day, conceived on this very site.

But you don't have to wait until March 4 to say thanks. If you ended up playing a game this weekend, it's worth thanking the people who help make our games possible. To all the GMs and DMs out there, thank you for everything you do!

Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.

 

[jasper]

I have to ask, do you even know what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and I are discussing?
No because [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] Your comparison to school orals vs dm prep is lame.

 

[Sadras]

I have to ask, do you even know what @pemerton and I are discussing?
No because @Sadras Your comparison to school orals vs dm prep is lame.

Care to elaborate or is that all you've prepared?

 

[3catcircus]

Clearly in Tolkien's works, a lot.



Let us ignore the simple room with its tapestries and concentrate on something a little more scene-framey, like witnessing an attack by an adult blue dragon on a town or the arrival of the PCs in Baldur's Gate during a major holiday celebration only to see the city's beloved Duke being murdered viciously by an unnamed assailant during the festive proceedings.

A little prep providing colour or the Duke's opening speech to the gathered crowd would certainly improve the story, not?

I can make up cinematics on the fly. Describe a dragon attacj? Illustrate how soldiers tortured peasants? Can do.

But stuff the PCs are gonna interact with? That takes prep. How tall are the ceilings? Vaulted, flat or arched? Are the walls bricj, stone, or rubble-filled? That is info that Is never consistently presented in published adventures...

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think I've conveyed something different by my phrase "pressure to prep" than I meant to.

But moving on from that! - I think it's hard to come into a session of D&D and run it cold. Even if one takes advantage of all the material in the Monster Manual (which is someone else doing prep on our behalf), there is still the need for maps. Combat maps can of course be drawn up reasonably quickly in "real time"; but D&D as typically played also relies fairly heavily on maps (of dungeons, buildings, towns, wildernesses, etc) to support the exploration aspect of play. Drawing all those up in "real time" is not easy; but doing without them is also - in D&D - not easy. Just to give one reason as to why: in D&D it is meant to matter how long it takes to get from A to B (otherwise the rules for buying rations, etc make no sense; and the rules for random encounters can't be applied) but the system has no way of answering this question other than by looking at a map, taking a measure of the distance, and then dividing by the movement rate (which is the only character-sheet measure of ability to journey effectively from A to B).

A system that uses a different mechanic to determine travel wouldn't need prep in the same way: eg suppose that each character had a "Safe Travel" bonus comparable to the to hit number in D&D, and this was rolled to determine what happens when that character goes on a journey (success: you get there unscathed; fail by a bit: you have an encounter on the way but, if you survive that, you get there; fail by a lot: you find yourself somehwere else and have an encounter you didn't want to have, and after that you check again). That system would still need the Monster Manual-type prep (to handle the encounters), but wouldn't need the maps to resolve travel from A to B.

The point can be generalised across other aspects of play: how is it worked out what stuff is in/at what place? how is it worked out whether or not a PC beats a non-player opponent in a fight? etc. This is what I mean when I say that some systems generate pressure to prep (or rely on someone else's prep) whereas others generate less such pressure, or even none at all.

But another theme about prep I'm seeing in this thread is about prepping to give the players a good experience not from the point of view of organisation (have I read the module?) but from the point of view of "curated experience" (am I telling them a fun story?). This is where I think that other aspects of system - less to do with action resolution and more around framing, how content gets introduced, how signals are sent between various participants about what content they want to see in the game, etc - make a difference.

I took pressure to prep as it being a requirement, and that the requirement is a negative. If that’s not how you meant it, then sorry if I misinterpreted.

But following up on this, I would agree that some prep is needed in Dungeons & Dragons. Maps and monsters and so on. However, I think that this prep is likely a good thing in that it provides an example of how the game should proceed, and can serve as a model for new DMs to create their own content.

I agree with you that a lot of this can be heavily influenced by mechanics. I just don’t know if such a mechanic is inherently a good thing. Nor is it inherently bad. But I would expect in most cases that having some information determined ahead of time would be useful for most folks who are learning how to run a game. Give them a foundation to get started and then let them adjust to suit their preferences as they learn.

Figuring out how content can be introduced and picking up on cues from players about what they’d like to see in play seem to me to be things that a GM with more experience will learn. However, I would agree with you that certain trends or techniques can become far too ingrained in the mind of some GMs, so I think stressing that there are multiple ways to handle most game elements, and a variety of techniues that can be used, is always a good thing.

Out of curiosity, with what game were you introduced to RPGing?

 

[Manbearcat]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]

Do you agree prep can allow one to provide more colour within a story which can lead to a more engaging story?

Do you agree prep can allow one to provide more thought about an NPCs motives and even possible notes on dialogue within a story which can lead to a more engaging story?

Do you agree prep can allow one to provide a more dynamic action scene which can lead to a more engaging story?

According to your statement above, prep work doesn't assist any one of these.

Not pemerton, but I'll throw some quick words at this.

I'm assuming you're using the orthodox meaning of engaging here; to captivate or to hold one's interest.

If so, then I'll just say this:

Yes to all of the above...IF they that same person is better at preparing than they are improvising!

However, as I've written a million times on this forum, significant deliberation and extrapolation before play (prep) can easily lead to the GM who is so invested in their efforts being seduced into deploying Force during play to ensure outcomes. Alternatively, it can also lead to their game being opaque to the players because (a) the minutiae and causal chains that seems so clear to GM are unclear to them and (b) they aren't privy to key backstory information that may serve as a bridge/glue. Typically, this is because a GM's concoctions are derived by and for their personal mental framework/frequency and therefore may not translate in part or in whole to their players. Further still, there isn't a conversation proxy or prism as through which the information is conveyed...the GM just mainlines it without need for a cipher. This turns a game into a muddled, consternating experience for players. As a result, the pacing and engagement will be damaged (I'm looking at you some of the cases of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: The Thames Murders & Other Cases!). Thousands of D&D games featuring complex histories, intrigues, mysteries, and entangled plots have suffered mightily due to this.

Games that are clear, that support limited prep and open conversations and GMs that are deft at running them are less threatened by the above game problems.

 

[pemerton]

Out of curiosity, with what game were you introduced to RPGing?

Classic Traveller - which I found extremely hard to make sense of - and Moldvay Basic - which on the surface I found very easy to make sense of, but which I didn't properly grasp at all, resulting in mixed experiences with B/X and AD&D (which for present purposes can be treated as a version of the same game, I think).

Classic Traveller can be run with little or no prep (the patron table, the world gen system, etc can all be deployed quickly and easily to generate needed content) but it doesn't have enough advice on what to actually do to make a game happen. For instance, the example of PC generation does involve building up a PC backstory, but (i) working out such a backstory isn't itself presented as part of the PC gen process, and (ii) there is no suggestion in the account of patron encounters that the first such encounter might hook onto the backstory, so as to help get things moving.

Another example: the rules for determining encounter range based on dice modifed by terrain and Tactics skill can be used to obviate the need for detailed mapping. Rather, the referee can proceed by way of general descriptions (you're in a city, you're in a clearing, you're in a base, etc) and then (if necessary) use the result of the roll for encounter distance to precisify that description. But the rules don't talk about this possibility at all. (Later Traveller books assume pre-drawn maps, but the original rulebooks are very thin on this whole issue. I think they are making assumptions about player familiarity with some RPG and wargaming conventions.)

The Classic Traveller books also suffer from the stanard early RPG problem of rules scattered in different places (though not as bad as AD&D), making it hard for the new player to get a full sense of the range of action resolution the system can support and the extent to which it does or doesn't need prep to make that happen.

Moldvay Basic, on the other hand, has interesting advice on setting up scenarios (at or near the start of Chapter 8 on GMing advice and techniques) but - as one can discover through actual play - doesn't actually support those scenarios in a deep way. They turn out to be relatively thin veneers over a game of Gygaxian "skilled play". But the discussion of this is a bit thin - Gygax's PHB does a better job, I think - and the result (I can testify from experience) can be a mismatch between hopes and realities of a fantasy adventure experience.

The first published RPG work to show me what RPGing could be - in terms of some sort of correlation between PC gen, desired fantasy adventure experience, setting, etc - was Oriental Adventures. It has systems that, however imperfectly developed, establish PC motivations (family, honour); PCs have classes and calllings that give them an orientation towards the setting other than raiding dungeons; monsters also have motivations and supernatural affiliations that (again, however imperfectly) give them a "meaning" within the game that allows a back-and-forth between players and GM to emerge which is not about dungeon-crawing in the classic sense but about "story" in some recognisable (if nevertheless not fully realised) sense.

(No doubt there were RPG books earlier than OA that did this - eg Runequest at least to some extent; James Bond, although it's a bit more narrowly focused - but at the time I didn't know those works.)

Let us ignore the simple room with its tapestries and concentrate on something a little more scene-framey, like witnessing an attack by an adult blue dragon on a town or the arrival of the PCs in Baldur's Gate during a major holiday celebration only to see the city's beloved Duke being murdered viciously by an unnamed assailant during the festive proceedings.

A little prep providing colour or the Duke's opening speech to the gathered crowd would certainly improve the story, not?

Do you agree prep can allow one to provide more colour within a story which can lead to a more engaging story?

Do you agree prep can allow one to provide more thought about an NPCs motives and even possible notes on dialogue within a story which can lead to a more engaging story?

Do you agree prep can allow one to provide a more dynamic action scene which can lead to a more engaging story?

Some thoughts in reply:

To the extent that demands of GM prep are being seen as an obstacle to GMing, is this the sort of prep that is in mind? I don't know, but hadn't got that impression. I thought that maps, stat blocks, etc - and the managing these and the associated rules at the table - was the issue.

But in any event, does this stuff - I agree with you that it is mostly colour - make for a better story? I think it's contribution to the story tends to be overrated, for two reasons. One is probably personal to me: I prefer action to (mere) narration, and in RPGing action = the players making decisions about what their PCs do, and working out what results from that. A few sentences from a NPC is fine, but if that has to be prepped I go back to my comment just above that I don't see that prepping a few sentences (for those who aren't so good at spontaneous narration) is the obstacle that is being pointed to.

The second I think is not so personal to me (though naturally reflects my own dispositions and orientation): a heavy emphasis on narration and colour seems to me to make the success of the RPG venture turn on its weakest point rather than its strongest. Given that most GMs probably aren't great writers, then their speech for the Duke is probably not going to be super-great listening. Whenever I reread the LotR I tend to skip the Old Forest narration on grounds that it is tedious, and a similar thing from a GM who is not as good a writer as JRRT is likely to have a similar problem.

If I want inpsiring, or exciting, or gripping, narration I'll read a book or watch a film by someone who is almost certainly a better writer than the local GM.

Whereas the strentgh of RPGs is the interaction between the participants, and the back-and-forth dynamic between players and GM, and I think that is facilitated by a modest amount of colour clearly drawn, which gives the players something to work with but doesn't make the narration rather than their action declarations the principal focus of attention.

NPC motives are a different thing because they go beyond colour. But my own view is that these can work just as well when they're developed via play - using supporting tools like reaction tables and social resolution mechanics, as well as the back-and-forth of play - rather than worked out in advance. So this isn't an area where I regard prep as necessarily conducing to a better story experience.

Dynamic action scenes seems to me to go straight to system. D&D undoubtedly requires prep - even if its just drawing up maps and getting some stats done - to support dynamic action scenes. In some cases it might also require writing up whole resolution subsystems. But other systems needn't impose the same sorts of demands.

This is not a criticism of D&D. It's just reiterating my point that, if prep is seen as an issue for attracting GMs, it makes sense to look at how systems, tools, tecniques, approaches etc tend to make prep more or less necessary.

 

[hawkeyefan]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] So then based on your own experience, would you say the game with more prep to it was the one you grasped more easily?

For me, that was certainly the case. D&D in its many forms was my introduction to the hobby. My main criticism of it is that I was not quite old enough to realize the differences between the B/X series and AD&D, so our game was very much a hodgepodge of rules.

I don’t think that the texts themselves always do a great job of depicting some kind of exact play experience, but I do think that the structure of the game itself gives good examples that new folks can lean on. Especially the solo adventure presented in the Red Box.

To me, that kind of stuff is likely more useful to a new GM than random tables that allow a GM to determine things on the fly at the table.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] So then based on your own experience, would you say the game with more prep to it was the one you grasped more easily?

No. I would say that the game with clearer procedures was superficially easier to grasp. Because it's procedures weren't perfectly clear - the Forewrod and scenarios of Moldvay Basic suggest one thing (heroic fantasy), but the mechanics and procedures of play, when followed, produce a different thing (classic dungeon crawling) - I didn't fully grasp it and as a result had less-than-optimal experiences.

There's no in-principle connection, in RPGing, between clear procedures and a need for prep.

 

[hawkeyefan]

No. I would say that the game with clearer procedures was superficially easier to grasp. Because it's procedures weren't perfectly clear - the Forewrod and scenarios of Moldvay Basic suggest one thing (heroic fantasy), but the mechanics and procedures of play, when followed, produce a different thing (classic dungeon crawling) - I didn't fully grasp it and as a result had less-than-optimal experiences.

There's no in-principle connection, in RPGing, between clear procedures and a need for prep.

Yeah, I don’t think there’s a connection between prep and clarity. However I do think that a game like D&D which has preparatory elements like maps and NPCs and monsters tends to provide a better example of how play should proceed. A map implies exploration, an NPC interaction, a monster conflict. That kind of thing.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, I don’t think there’s a connection between prep and clarity. However I do think that a game like D&D which has preparatory elements like maps and NPCs and monsters tends to provide a better example of how play should proceed. A map implies exploration, an NPC interaction, a monster conflict. That kind of thing.

I think what makes clear how play should proceed is a clear description of how play should proceed. These are incredibly rare in RPGing books.

I'll give one example to show what I mean; it's from the 4e Rules Compendium (published 2010), and is the "example of play" at the end of the discussion of skill challenges (p p 162-63):

<snippage> The goal of the challenge is to find the spot where the adventurers’ enemy, a wizard named Garan, summoned the demon. Garan has hired some thugs to beat up anyone they spot snooping around. If the adventurers fail the challenge, the thugs find them and attack.

<snip early stage of skill challenge and first success>

Uldane: Can I look around and see if I can tell which way it came from?

<snip resolution of Perception check - it fails>

DM (marking the first failure): It takes you quite a bit of work to uncover the tracks. It looks like they head to the east side of town.

<snip some stuff that is irrelevant to my point>

DM: . . . Three thuggish-looking men sit on a bench by the front door. They glare at you as you approach.

Notice how the failed check didn’t stop the action. The adventurers wasted some time, giving the thugs more time to find them, but eventually found the trail.

Kathra: I’d like to talk to the men to see if any of them saw the demon come by here. How about a Diplomacy check - an 11.

DM (marking the second failure): The thugs make a show of ignoring you as you approach. Then one of them snarls: "Around here, folks know better than to stick their noses where they’re not wanted." He puts a hand on the hilt of his dagger.

Shara: I put a hand on my greatsword and growl back at them, "I’ll stick my sword where it’s not wanted if you keep up that attitude." I got a 21 on my Intimidate check.

DM (marking the second success): The thug turns pale in fear as his friends bolt back into the tavern. He points at the building behind you before darting after them.

<snip more stuff involving the building, including another failed check - Streetwise - in an attempt to learn about the building>

DM (marking the third and final failure): It looks like an old shop that’s been closed and boarded up. You heard something about this place before, but you can’t quite remember it. As you look the place over, the tavern door opens up behind you. A hulk of a half-orc lumbers out, followed by the thugs you talked to earlier. "I heard you thought you could push my crew around. Well, let’s see
you talk tough through a set of broken teeth." Roll for initiative!​

Here are just a few of the things about the procedures of play that this example does not explain, or is misleading about, which - I can testify from experience - are absolutely crucial to running a skill challenge:

(1) It is misleading about the first failure - it suggests that the cost for the first failure is the adventurers waste time, whereas that's just colour. The actual cost of the failure is the encounter with the thugs. By being misleading about the cost of the failure, it is even less helpful - utterly opaque - in explaining how the GM came up with that idea as a consequence for failure.

(2) The cost of the second failure is a hard failure (no information) plus what in Dungeon World would be a "soft move" from the GM - a threat from the thugs. How did the GM decide to do this? Why is the second failure handled differently, in this fashion, from the first failure?

(3) The soft move is (at least temporarily) handled by the players with because Shara's player declares an Intimidate check in response, and succeeds. What happens, though, if the players are cowed by the threats and so don't declare the Intimidate check? Do they just lose the challenge? Is the GM expected to frame a different opportunity for further success (given that, by the rules, only two failures have occurred to this point)? The example is completely useless in giving this sort of guidance to a GM.

(4) The success of the Intimidate check not only (temporarily) resolves the GM's soft move, but it also undoes the hard failure, by providng the information. But this isn't called out in the example, and the relevant principles - eg how many retries are allowed? what form can they take? what techniques is the GM meant to use to stop them being boring? - are not canvassed at all.

(5) The consequnce for the final failure is that the earlier soft move comes back in hard form! But what would have happened if the last check had been (say) a failed Religion check (in an attempt, say, to get divine revelation about the cultic secrets of the building)? How, in that case, does the GM feed in as a consequence the arrival of the thugs? Does the nature of the final action attempted, when it fails, make any difference to the overall outcome of the skill challenge?

There are only two sets of RPG rules that I know that come close to dealing with the procedures of play in the sort of detail necessary to actually teach someone how to referee the game. One is Maelstrom Storytelling, but for all sorts of other reasons I don't think it would be an easy game to begin with, because while it has an interesting setting it doesn't fully explain how that setting is mean to be used (even Ron Edwards, hardly an ingenue in RPGing, seems to have had some initial trouble working it out). The other is Burning Wheel, but for different reasons - namely, overall system complexity - I don't think it would be an easy game to being with either!

The third-best ruleset I know of for explaining its procedures of play is Moldvay Basic, and that's in spite of the criticisms I've made of it earlier in this thread. I think it's something of an indictment on RPG rules writing that the best example we have outside of some fairly low-uptake indie RPGs (I suspect Maelstrom Storytelling is even lower uptake than BW) is now close to 40 years old.

Even for prep-oriented games, if we want more GMs it might help to actually write decent procedures and advice that they can work from!

EDIT: I realised I'm being unfair in not including any Vincent Baker games or offshoots. In a Wicked Age has pretty clear procedural text. So does DitV. I suspect AW does also, but I haven't read it closely enough. But its fantasy offshoot, Dungeon World, does give good advice in relation to prep and reasonable (in my view not first rate - not as clear as BW or Maelstrom Storytelling) advice on managing the actual play of the game.