D&D General Where do New DMs Go for Help Online?

[SlyFlourish]

The whole recent collapse of Reddit has me thinking a lot about where new DMs might go to get help with their games. The /r/dmacademy was a fantastic subreddit for this sort of thing. Hundreds of new DMs would go there, ask questions, and get answers to their sometimes common problems. As a guy who focuses on helping GMs run great games, I'm always interested in seeing where people are having trouble and what sorts of advice or tools can help them out.

If you're a new DM, I'm very interested to hear where you got your help (recognizing the self-selection of EN World posters).

If you know of other players where new DMs go to get help, I'm all ears.

 

[aco175]

I find the first several Matt Colville videos to be a good start for new DMs. There are also several threads on this site. Not sure how many more books I would want to read if I was a new DM if I already are reading the PHB, DMG, and MM.

I first need to read up on the collapse of Reddit, have not seen anything, but also not that plugged into it.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

I find the first several Matt Colville videos to be a good start for new DMs. There are also several threads on this site. Not sure how many more books I would want to read if I was a new DM if I already are reading the PHB, DMG, and MM.

I first need to read up on the collapse of Reddit, have not seen anything, but also not that plugged into it.

@SlyFlourish Could you summarise the Reddit collapse you're referring to?

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Not new... but maybe this is helpful...

I would think all new (and experienced) DMs find their way to Running the Game sooner or later. I know I did when I was first delving into 5e after a few decades away from the hobby.

Podcasts were also a good source of advice in my early days of 5e. Most memorably The RPG Academy and then Down with D&D (which, as you know, evolved into Mastering Dungeons).

A few posters here on ENWorld had (and continue to have) a big influence on how I run things at our table.

Then I finally got my prep under control with Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master about 5 years ago. (thanks, Mike!)

 

[FallenRX]

Running the game by Colville or the Alexandrian blog.

 

[cbwjm]

Well Reddit hasn't really collapsed so people will still be going there, likely as their first port of call to ask questions if they can't google the answer. I think discord is another resource which often has real time answers if enough people have joined a particular discord.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Depends on what floats to the top of Google, honestly. For answering questions that’s really hard to predict IMO because Reddit was uniquely convenient for that sort of thing by aggregating what would have been hundreds of distinct fora and making them easy to find.

I’ve noticed a migration to Tumblr but it’s not really searchable; meme content will probably go to Instagram/TikTok/Youtube Shorts, but “ask the community” is what fora are best for.

 

[Quickleaf]

The whole recent collapse of Reddit has me thinking a lot about where new DMs might go to get help with their games. The /r/dmacademy was a fantastic subreddit for this sort of thing. Hundreds of new DMs would go there, ask questions, and get answers to their sometimes common problems. As a guy who focuses on helping GMs run great games, I'm always interested in seeing where people are having trouble and what sorts of advice or tools can help them out.

If you're a new DM, I'm very interested to hear where you got your help (recognizing the self-selection of EN World posters).

If you know of other players where new DMs go to get help, I'm all ears.

I am not a new GM.

However, I do see new GMs regularly posting on Discord servers for Zipperon Disney, No Fun Allowed, and DM Academy.

There is also very light support for new GMs on my local game store's Discord server (Pair a Dice Games, San Diego).

I am not using Mastodon yet, but have heard that the dice.camp server is also a gathering point – not sure how many are new GMs vs. experienced GMs there.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

@SlyFlourish Could you summarise the Reddit collapse you're referring to?

Have you not heard about the blackouts, the whole "price the API at ridiculously high cost to drive out the far better competition" thing, the talking-out-of-both-sides-of-his-mouth from the CEO where he says he supports protest but also says he will exploit the moderator code of conduct to force reddits to re-open by removing mod teams that set their communities to Private mode until a mod team arrives that is willing to re-open it?

TL;DR: Steve Hoffman, Reddit's CEO, has been trying to ram through a price hike (up from the current, no-cost) for API usage on Reddit. That they wish to charge for this service is not a problem. However, the price they've set is completely prohibitive to anyone who might want to make a usable third-party app for reading Reddit; it's very clear that the goal is not to make money, but to drive out all competition, so everyone has to use the official Reddit app--AIUI, none of the existing third-party app developers can even remotely afford the new fees.

This is a problem for several reasons that others can explain better than me, but the gist is, (1) there are a ton of moderator tools that depend on these third-party apps which will go up in smoke on July 1 because it would cost the tool creators literally millions of dollars because they get billions of API calls per year; (2) the Reddit official app sucks, and has sucked for years, and hasn't gotten any better despite years of empty, broken promises; (3) the official Reddit app has none of the accessibility features that many disabled users rely on for access; and (4) Steve Hoffman has explicitly and repeatedly insulted the all-volunteer moderators (calling them "landed gentry" for example) and in other ways lied, misrepresented, or talked out of both sides of his mouth. For example, he explicitly said they would not force any subreddits out of Private mode ("going dark," as Private reddits are inaccessible to most people) because protest is vital to the spirit of Reddit....and then only a day later, turned around and started saying that Reddit would remove moderator teams that choose not to come out of Private mode and replace them until they do come out of private mode. And this somehow counts as supporting protest.

It's a PR disaster not dissimilar to the WotC/OGL thing.

 

[Raiztt]

The whole recent collapse of Reddit has me thinking a lot about where new DMs might go to get help with their games. The /r/dmacademy was a fantastic subreddit for this sort of thing. Hundreds of new DMs would go there, ask questions, and get answers to their sometimes common problems. As a guy who focuses on helping GMs run great games, I'm always interested in seeing where people are having trouble and what sorts of advice or tools can help them out.

If you're a new DM, I'm very interested to hear where you got your help (recognizing the self-selection of EN World posters).

If you know of other players where new DMs go to get help, I'm all ears.

Slyflourish.com and the alexandrian.