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.

 

[Sadras]

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

That is what I was getting that, some people can create a better story through a little bit of prep than on the fly.

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.

Agreed and agree with pretty much the rest of your post which has not been included for brevity purposes.


@pemerton my thoughts on prep: I recently ran an hour long online session. It included no action, only resolving a social interaction between an NPC and some of the PCs. I could have run the entire session on the fly, but i gave myself 20 minutes of forethought, jotting down ideas and various arguments/angles that would be made/pursued by the NPC. The NPC essentially provided the PCs with important information, answering their questions and challenged them on their current adventuring path attempting to lure them towards something which was directly important to her.

The entire encounter consisted of a conversation, at times passionate, as well as 2 solitary skills checks.

I believe the 20 minutes of prep I afforded myself, allowed me to focus my ideas and thereby was better able to convey the character and her dialogue to the PCs, and hopefully created a more engaging session than if I had done it on the fly. By how much, I cannot say. What I can say with certainty is that I was more confident going into the session having prepped, knowing the character's modus operandi.

 

[pemerton]

I recently ran an hour long online session. It included no action, only resolving a social interaction between an NPC and some of the PCs. I could have run the entire session on the fly, but i gave myself 20 minutes of forethought, jotting down ideas and various arguments/angles that would be made/pursued by the NPC. The NPC essentially provided the PCs with important information, answering their questions and challenged them on their current adventuring path attempting to lure them towards something which was directly important to her.

The entire encounter consisted of a conversation, at times passionate, as well as 2 solitary skills checks.

I believe the 20 minutes of prep I afforded myself, allowed me to focus my ideas and thereby was better able to convey the character and her dialogue to the PCs, and hopefully created a more engaging session than if I had done it on the fly. By how much, I cannot say. What I can say with certainty is that I was more confident going into the session having prepped, knowing the character's modus operandi.

In your view, would/should that sort of prep be offputting to prospective GMs?

From what you describe, it sounds less demanding in some ways than (say) drawing a map or writing up stats - eg it sound like some of it (not the jotting, but some of the thinking) could be done while (eg) walking home from the shops.

What I'm getting at isn't to interrogate you about your game, but to start thinking about different sorts of prep, different modes of and purposes for prep, different drivers of prep, etc. Then it should be possible for a good game design writer (not me - maybe Robin Laws, Vincent Baker or Luke Crane?) to write something or post something that makes it easier for propsective GMs to get a sense of what the range of possibilities is.

 

[Sadras]

In your view, would/should that sort of prep be offputting to prospective GMs?

Probably not, but just to clarify my involvement into this thread was not about that but by the below comment you made.

I also don't think that prep is going to improve anyone's stories. Most people are no better at writing than they are at improv.

 

[S'mon]

I've always been mostly a GM, and mostly enjoyed it.

I think the trick is mostly in creating materials that make GMing easier. The best effort I've seen was the Pathfinder Beginner Box, but the 5e Starter Set is also a good attempt.

I think there is a dearth of material that makes frequent, regular, low prep GMing easy - and still provides a high quality game. Most published material is far too verbose, and often not well presented. I find a minimalist approach like Stonehell Dungeon (running 4 groups this week!) works best for me - a sheaf of 1-page dungeons could also work well. Enough to get started but fast to read and not constraining. A lot of the Basic Fantasy RPG material is also good for beginners.

 

[pemerton]

I think there is a dearth of material that makes frequent, regular, low prep GMing easy - and still provides a high quality game. Most published material is far too verbose, and often not well presented.

I definitely agree with this.

I've been using Prince Valiant episodes recently. They are nicely short - 1 to 3 pages - but could still have better organisation. Thus, they have a general intro/background, plus an entry for principal NPC motivations, plus an entry for the 1st scene. This produces overlap (so some of it is unnecessary) but less than full redundancy (so there's no bit you can just ignore and still have a full sense of what the author had in mind).

 

[pming]

Hiya!

(Didn't real the whole 10 pages...so I'll just address the title question)

DM's are busy with their own games. Kind of an obvious answer, but true. On top of that I fully blame 3.x/PF for the "downturn" of good (or hell, even mediocre) DM's due to two factors:

One was that it was just FAR too much "fiddly mechanical bits" to keep track of and make notes for (re: prep and creation). The 3.x/PF systems do NOT lend themselves to what I call "horizontal additions". The 3.x/PF systems were focused mostly on "vertical additions". Think of a "horizontal addition" type system as a sort of jig-saw puzzle. You have the base pic...but you can add bits on to the edges, or take out a couple pieces in the middle and add new ones in their place. Things are tangentially tied to each other, but nothing so much that it "breaks". Now with 3.x/PF's more "vertical additions" its more like a Jenga tower. You had a tight core rules (Class, Level, CR, d20 roll, Feats) and everything was built upon those...so you built 'upward' on top of those core things. If you wanted to add something, you added it on top of these things. Eventually, every single time IME, the "jenga tower of the d20 system" would come crashing down...unless you refused to add/change anything. This overall "upwards towards eventual failure or stagnation" was NOT a very alluring song to sing to perspective DM's.

The second was, IMHO, that the 3.x/PF game pretty much treated the DM as "just another player". Actually, it treated the DM as less than another player in some ways. A DM in those systems had it hammered into their brains constantly: "Your job as DM is to make sure the players have fun". This was echoed in the umpteen supplements written primarily for the Players to buy, the Players to use, and the DM to "Just say Yes". This is NOT a good way to foster solid Dungeon Mastering! When the books basically back up the Players first and only touch ever so occasionally on "Oh, but the DM may decide...", that little DM nod is mostly without teeth. DM's of 3.x/PF (new ones, who learned DM'ing from those systems), IMHO and IME, have tended towards the "mediocre" side of the batch. They may be able to run combat encounters, and may even have some cool ideas for stories and "backdrop"...but it's all hampered by their constant re-evaluating and self-depreciating take on their Players during the game. A DM may have a kick ass combat encounter he can use that involves flying lava monsters, a decaying rope bridge over a river of lava and random eruptions spewing semi-solid boulders up out of the river...but it will all be for naught if the PC's start to get the burnt end of the stick and the Players start getting all grumpy-faced at how "unfair" or "hard" it is...then the DM caves and starts fudging/cheating so that the players can "win"...or, "Have fun". Because that is what the DM has been brainwashed into believing is his primary job: "To let the Players have fun" no matter the cost of HIS/HER fun or the cost to his/her campaign in the long run.

So...less DM's now. They've been weeded out or beaten down from 3.x/PF. Yes, I know, opinionated and totally in my opinion, but I'd bet many other long-term DM's out there can at least see where I'm coming from. Thankfully, 5e has given the DM a new set of sharp, chompy dentures with which to really bite into the whole DM'ing side of meat! I'm very glad that 5e puts so much emphasis on DM's. Now maybe someone will start to feel pride in their creations and actually WANT to keep creating stuff for their campaign and their players.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[S'mon]

So...less DM's now. They've been weeded out or beaten down from 3.x/PF. Yes, I know, opinionated and totally in my opinion, but I'd bet many other long-term DM's out there can at least see where I'm coming from. Thankfully, 5e has given the DM a new set of sharp, chompy dentures with which to really bite into the whole DM'ing side of meat! I'm very glad that 5e puts so much emphasis on DM's. Now maybe someone will start to feel pride in their creations and actually WANT to keep creating stuff for their campaign and their players.

I do think 3e 4e & especially PF went overboard on the "servant GMing" ethos, and didn't make clear that fun is an emergent process, not something you can just slather on by giving the players what they want in the moment.

5e seems better at encouraging the GM to have fun too, and the lack of GMs is more just a factor of the rapidly increasing player base. On the other hand, I have seen new GMs try and fail with those big WoTC campaign hardbacks; they seem extremely intimidating, verbose, and very poorly designed for ease of use by a novice. There ought to be far more Keep on the Borderlands type product for official 5e.