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]

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.

This is quite a bold statement.
Children prep for their school orals, you believe their prepping does not improve their stories/oral mark and they should rather just do it on the fly since according to your belief writing it out and learning it would be no better than improsing it on the day?

 

[pemerton]

This is quite a bold statement.
Children prep for their school orals, you believe their prepping does not improve their stories/oral mark and they should rather just do it on the fly since according to your belief their writing it out and learning it would be no better than improving it on the day?

I don't have that belief about tests. But I don't think the test analogy is sound.

The analogy for an RPG is not a speech, or a short story, or an essay; it's a conversation. The only "conversation" that I know people routinely prep for is a job interview, and that's because it's not really a conversation at all, but a funny way of extracting a semi-improvised speech from someone. There are some people who are more entertaining as speech-givers than conversationalists, but frankly I think they're quite a minority (and their conversation often takes the form of mini-speeches).

When it comes to RPGing, suppose the players announce "We head into the tavern, looking for trouble!" My experience as a player of RPGs doesn't give me any reason to think that the reply a GM gives will be more interesting, or entertaining, or engaging, or better-paced, if they've pre-prepared an account of what would make for trouble in a bar.

 

[Sadras]

I don't have that belief about tests. But I don't think the test analogy is sound.

The analogy for an RPG is not a speech, or a short story, or an essay; it's a conversation. The only "conversation" that I know people routinely prep for is a job interview, and that's because it's not really a conversation at all, but a funny way of extracting a semi-improvised speech from someone. There are some people who are more entertaining as speech-givers than conversationalists, but frankly I think they're quite a minority (and their conversation often takes the form of mini-speeches).

I'm sorry @pemerton but I'm not going to let you side-step this example like you did Umbran's upthread.
When you set the scene it is not conversation - conversation happens only after you have set the scene.

When it comes to RPGing, suppose the players announce "We head into the tavern, looking for trouble!" My experience as a player of RPGs doesn't give me any reason to think that the reply a GM gives will be more interesting, or entertaining, or engaging, or better-paced, if they've pre-prepared an account of what would make for trouble in a bar.

Well heading into a tavern, looking for trouble is not the scene your typical DM would prepare for, if you think it is, then you seriously misunderstand prepped adventures.

 

[Aldarc]

When you set the scene it is not conversation - conversation happens only after you have set the scene.

Not always. IME, though the GM may engage scene-setting, the setting of scenes is often negotiated in conversation.

 

[Sadras]

Not always. IME, though the GM may engage scene-setting, the setting of scenes is often negotiated in conversation.

Sure and expanded upon, but if you look at those block texts within modules and adventures, that is what I'm referring to. Not the information part after the block which reflects upon more information of when conversation between DM-PC arises.

Now one does not necessarily have to write up an entire block, one can could have just jotted down points of interest for the scene framing, so as not to forget something important or to add colour, that also counts as prep.

 

[pemerton]

I'm sorry @pemerton but I'm not going to let you side-step this example like you did Umbran's upthread.
When you set the scene it is not conversation - conversation happens only after you have set the scene.

I'm not sure what example you're saying I side-stepped - I just reread Umbran's post that I replied to and there weren't any examples (other than an improv comedy show, and I directly talked about that).

As to whether setting the scene is conversation, every conversation has a first move - "How are you going?" or "Did you see the new X-Men film yet?" or whatever it might be.

In the context of a RPG, that might be "You ride into a Keep where you believe your long-lost sister is now living" or "OK, so why are you heading to the law firm?" or something else that fits the genre, the PCs the players have built, the group's or the system's expectations about party play, etc.

Well heading into a tavern, looking for trouble is not the scene your typical DM would prepare for, if you think it is, then you seriously misunderstand prepped adventures.

For "tavern" substitute "dungeon" and that gives me a good number of the D&D adventures I've got on my shelves!

I'll only canvass one, though - B2.

B2 has got three components - the Keep, the Wilderness and the Caves.

I reckon the Keep could be presented in a page or so - a brief description of layout and occupants - and the reason it takes up the space it does in the module is because of system requirements about mapping (in D&D you can't resolve a PC's escape across the battlements and over the walls without a map), about stats for the NPCs, about how buying things is handled in the game (so we have a tavern price list), and maybe other stuff I'm not recalling of at present (eg I can't remember if there are any hidden or trapped stronboxes in the Keep, but describing them in D&D again has a system element, including a need to describe where and how they are hidden and trapped).

The wilderness is pretty brief as it stands, but would be even briefer if system conventions around maps and stats were different.

As for the Caves, they could be presented very differently - and, again, more succinctly - if the system was different. The need for maps, for precise numbers of inhabitants, for precise descriptions of room layouts, etc, all turn on system features of D&D. Contrast that with, say, a system that allows you to say there's an orc cave, and has (non-map) mechanics for determining your progresss through the cave, whether or not you encounter orcs (so there would be no difference between placed and wandering monsters), whether or not you find treasure, whether or not the orcs can call up an ogre buddy, etc.

I'm not saying that the Keep is bad. Or that the system is bad. I'm saying that it's the system that requires the Keep to be as long, and hence prep-intensive, as it is. We can imagine other systems - and don't even have to imagine them, really, given they exist - which would permit the "story" of the Keep to be told in a way that didn't require much prep at all.

Of course, the system being different, the play experience would be different. But that difference wouldn't be about story quality. It would be about what sorts of demands are put on the players: less wargaming/skilled play of the Gygaxian sort; more "story readiness".

I don't have a good handle on what it is that is currently making D&D popular, but to the extent that it's driven eg by watching videos of others playing I would have thought that maybe "story" is as big a thing as wargaming/skilled play, in which case it mght make sense - if there is a shortage of GMs in part due to workload issues - to think about system approaches that reduce that burden of workload. That's all I'm saying.

EDIT: Saw this, which is clearly relevant:

Sure and expanded upon, but if you look at those block texts within modules and adventures, that is what I'm referring to. Not the information part after the block which reflects upon more information of when conversation between DM-PC arises.

To me, that seems to go to a whole other thing: how much description does the GM need to set a scene?

My own view is that boxed text of the sort I'm familiar with in modules is almost always badly written - and so doesn't contribute to "story" in any helpful way - and is mostly redundant. To the extent that it engages with intricacies of the layout (eg you see a room which is so-and-so wide, with such-and-such doors in such-and-such walls), it is serving a system purpose, not an aesthetic one (REH's descriptions of the dungeons Conan travels through don't read anything like module boxed gtext); to the extent that it gives us details like the colours of curtains or the sigils on tapestries, I think that is the sort of stuff that - if needed - can be made up on the spot with no cost to the quality of the story being created.

 

[Sadras]

[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.

 

[Sadras]

To me, that seems to go to a whole other thing: how much description does the GM need to set a scene?

Clearly in Tolkien's works, a lot.

My own view is that boxed text of the sort I'm familiar with in modules is almost always badly written - and so doesn't contribute to "story" in any helpful way - and is mostly redundant. To the extent that it engages with intricacies of the layout (eg you see a room which is so-and-so wide, with such-and-such doors in such-and-such walls), it is serving a system purpose, not an aesthetic one (REH's descriptions of the dungeons Conan travels through don't read anything like module boxed gtext); to the extent that it gives us details like the colours of curtains or the sigils on tapestries, I think that is the sort of stuff that - if needed - can be made up on the spot with no cost to the quality of the story being created.

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?

 

[jasper]

This is quite a bold statement.
Children prep for their school orals, you believe their prepping does not improve their stories/oral mark and they should rather just do it on the fly since according to your belief writing it out and learning it would be no better than improsing it on the day?

What the Demi Moore Gorgon? How in the 666 layers of the abyss can you compare a game master prep where there only wasted time if a bad session versus school orals?
What in As Most dais less are SCHOOL ORALS? What country? What levels ? Please give the average age. Ex 6 year here in USA is 1st grade.
Your test analogy is from a whole another plane if not solar system.

 

[Sadras]

What the Demi Moore Gorgon?

Amazing beast if I ever saw one.

How in the 666 layers of the abyss can you compare a game master prep where there only wasted time if a bad session versus school orals?

If understand you correctly your disagreement is because the consequence of a bad session is just a bad session, whereas a bad school oral is poor marks? I have to ask, do you even know what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and I are discussing?

What in As Most dais less are SCHOOL ORALS? What country? What levels ? Please give the average age. Ex 6 year here in USA is 1st grade.

Yes because all those answers are important for discussing the pro's and con's of preparation.

Your test analogy is from a whole another plane if not solar system.

My apologies I used a planes shift spell.