D&D General Which Aspect of DMing Do you Struggle Most With?

[Hexmage-EN]

As a DM I greatly enjoy combat. I find it fun to build battle maps, design homebrew monsters, and think about how monsters will synergize. When running combat, I mostly just have to worry about what's on their statblocks and general tactics.

When it comes to world building and developing NPCs, though, I find the brainstorming portion fun but feel myself get more stressed out in the hours leading up to a game that I'd like to be more roleplay heavy. Combat feels a lot more straightforward and manageable to me versus the party having free reign to explore or interact with who they want in a non-dungeon environment.

For a more concrete example of what I'm talking about, I have been designing both a hag's lair and its features (including set dressing, unique items, NPCs, possible curses the hag could inflict, etc) as well as a more linear dungeon scenario. I've created a 10-page word document for the former, and it feels a lot more mentally intensive in trying to juggle everything I've developed, remembering the details, and creating on the spot improv for how NPCs react or what happens if a PC wants to know what books are on a bookshelf versus running groups of monsters.

Although, I think part of this comes from me trying to plan too much ahead of time and being afraid to wing it.

 

[Steampunkette]

Confidence.

Before every session I'm second-guessing every single decision and thought process I've ever had about my talent as a DM. I am testing out accents and voices and hating them. And that last 30 minutes before the game starts before I get on the call before I sit down with friends... It's everything I can do not to call everyone and tell them that I have died and therefore must regretfully cancel the session.

And then during the game everything's pretty much fine. Because every time I do a stupid accent or a ridiculous voice or air some plot line that I've second-guessed four or five times everyone seems to eat it up.

And then at the end of the session everyone's laughing and happy or heartbroken and happy and telling me what a good DM I am or what parts of the session they particularly liked or high-fiving or complaining about some minor problem and I explain more about that problem and then they're happy about what happened... And I'm delighted on everything is right with the world.

And then 2 hours later I'm wondering why they lie to me so much about enjoying my games which are clearly garbage.

I've been playing D&D for around 30 years. It has never changed in that regard.

 

[hopeless]

Unsure.
Initially I realised I didn't know as much about 5e as I should have and much of my time running the game was trying to keep up to date.
I created my own monsters, npcs and treasure in an effort to make the game more distinctive.
I'm far from feeling like I'm reasonably competent, but i still enjoyed trying.
The hardest part to me is trying to get the players involved as they have resisted my efforts to obtain more details about their character's histories for example three of them their parents are dead and the fourth as an acolyte hasn't even addressed that part!
Those details help with the story, but I have been looking much further for inspiration such as skipping hoard of the dragon queen for a modified against the cult of the reptile god for instance.
And found a way to include it in the campaign I had been running back then.
Hope you find your own inspiration to help you with the parts you found difficult too.

 

[TheDelphian]

I don't struggle with a great deal which may be the issue.

A sort of complacency and not improving all that much.

I use to try to choose a single weakness and get better at it then once it becomes better move to another weakness, but haven't been like that in a while. Partially in laziness partially cause my players seem happy.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Map making!

I feel very confident at adventure design, world building, designing challenging combats, pacing, etc. But for whatever reason when I sit down to draw out a map for a dungeon my mind goes blank.

Luckily we live in a time with an absolute proliferation of free or cheap maps online. I often use these as a starting point and then modify them to fit my adventure.

 

[Morrus]

Accents/voice acting. Though not to the extent that it bothers me. I just accept I can't do that.

 

[ccs]

The two biggest one's, even after all these years of doing this:

1) Naming the NPCs &/or monsters.
This is a problem if I'm winging it. Thankfully there's random name generators.....

2) predicting how much progress/content the players will get through in any given session.
I constantly overestimate this. Always have, regardless of the edition.
So it's not really a problem per-se as I've always got more content.

 

[Charlaquin]

Confidence.

Before every session I'm second-guessing every single decision and thought process I've ever had about my talent as a DM. I am testing out accents and voices and hating them. And that last 30 minutes before the game starts before I get on the call before I sit down with friends... It's everything I can do not to call everyone and tell them that I have died and therefore must regretfully cancel the session.

And then during the game everything's pretty much fine. Because every time I do a stupid accent or a ridiculous voice or air some plot line that I've second-guessed four or five times everyone seems to eat it up.

And then at the end of the session everyone's laughing and happy or heartbroken and happy and telling me what a good DM I am or what parts of the session they particularly liked or high-fiving or complaining about some minor problem and I explain more about that problem and then they're happy about what happened... And I'm delighted on everything is right with the world.

And then 2 hours later I'm wondering why they lie to me so much about enjoying my games which are clearly garbage.

I've been playing D&D for around 30 years. It has never changed in that regard.

I feel you. We’re always our own harshest critics.

 

[Yora]

Coming up with a campaign concept.

 

[hopeless]

Coming up with a campaign concept.

In the one I ran I took some inspiration from the Neverwinter mmo and the 4e sourcebook on that setting.
And initially was going with the Mage's Guild trying to turn the city and kingdom into a magocracy only rather than a few sessions leading into the shadowfell I let the players actions guide me.
Thus the run in with were rats the dwarven run Stingray and eventual trip down south to locate one of the missing heirs.
Had tried to set up a short email scenario intended to lead into the next session that involved them in some downtime to see how they'd handle that as the ramifications of the metropolis they had come from had been destroyed by an ancient dragon bursting itself free from the mountainside part of the city was built upon.
Refugees streaming in as the gauge the scale of the problem as that free time (2 weeks) would allow them to decide where they wanted to go next.
Continue after the missing prince last seen being carried to what is assumed safety further southwards by a gold dragon that had been posing as an acolyte of the Dawnfather, trace the remaining Cloaked Serpent Cultists in the fishing village or go back to help the refugees.
There are other options after all, but I like to think they might surprise me.

If I had to make a recommendation I'd suggest select a favourite movie or tv series and a book or comic you liked and see how mixing them might inspire an adventure idea and go from there?