Why did you start DMing?

[demiurge1138]

It was nearly four years ago. The rain poured down. I had been playing D&D for a couple of months now, collected Monster Manuals like they were going out of style and was even homebrewing a bit. A few monsters here, some silly spells there, nothing extreme. But then I started it - The Return to Kastle Kojark. Half a parody of the ridiculous dungeon crawls we've all come to know and love and half the craziest dungeon crawl of them all. Didn't make a lick of sense, of course, but I loved it. It was my baby. Sure, I was playing D&D and having a good time of it, but I wanted more.

My DM at the time was Joe. Joe's a great player, but his DMing was not exactly stellar, and he knew it. He had reluctantly assumed the reins after our huge group split into two smaller ones (and I was fortunate enough to get into the saner of the two groups), and his best idea for a campaign was a painstaking ripoff of the Lucasarts game "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis" (so much so that he kept forgetting to replace "Atlantis" with "Nafungabuzi", his name for the lost continent. in game). The players were growing restless with the constant emphasis on puzzles, and Joe was growing frustrated with having to make new material on a regular basis.

"Hey, why don't you run that kobold thing you keep babbling about?" he asked, or words to the same effect.

And on December 21, 2001, I did. I've been DMing pretty much nonstop since then.

What about you?

Demiurge out.

 

[MrFilthyIke]

I had no fellow gamers, so I DM'ed and forced non-gamers to play. I was desperate, what can I say.

 

[arwink]

I largely started GMing because I wanted to game as often as possible, and my first GM was a friend of the family that I only saw about once every six months or so (and even less by the time I was GMing regularly).

 

[Readerbreeder]

I started because I had just convinced my parents to buy that cool-looking red box for me, and after reading the rules, I wanted to play. So I convinced my brother to make a character. I've been DM'ing ever since.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I hadn't played D&D, or any RPG for that matter, for a couple of years. I had to drop out of the previous group that I was in as juggling full-time work, studying for a Graduate Diploma and having a girlfriend became too much. (My previous group played quite a few different RPG's but the DM didn't like D&D so we never played it.)

A couple of months ago I decided that enough was enough and I wanted to start playing again. My old DM had since moved interstate and the group had broken up. I had always wanted to give DM'ing a go and since I had to start the group from scratch, being the DM'ing was probably going to be the easiest way to do so (I find players are much easier to find than DMs).

So far we are 2 sessions in to a D&D3.5 campaign and things seem to be going ok so far. There are lots and lots of things that I need to improve on but I'm sure that things will get better over time as I become more comfortable in my DM'ing abilities as well as becoming more familiar with the rules (I'm sure the number of rules in 3.5E grew since the last time I played it )

Olaf the Stout

 

[Aikuchi]

I joined my first group and tried all sorts of different games and systems.

I eventually met up with this group (at that time all strangers with 1 or 2 acquaintances each from each ateendant).
Had a couple of games and the guy who hosted at his place was the DM. Wasn't that great but at least we were gaming. Then when he said he was getting busy to prepare games, I volunteered for the monumental task.
After a few games, the others thought it's be fun to DM too.
After many false starts and group dynamic changes.
I started my own game from several members of that initial group.
Those members have been my core central gamers ever since then. Gamers have come and gone. But these 2 core members have played for years with me. I've only recently taken a break from DM'ing (about time, since I've been DM'ing the last campaign that lasted 3 years and the one before that for 2) but I may be starting up another campaign soon.

 

[The_Gneech]

'cos nobody else would, pretty much.

-The Gneech

 

[Michael Silverbane]

I was the first kid in my neighborhood (it wasn't really a neighborhood, my nearest neighbors were like a mile away) to discover D&D. Since I was the only one who knew anything about it, it fell to me to run the games. I've been pretty much running ever since I first discovered the Red Basic box, in 1981...

Later
silver

 

[Crothian]

Someone had to and I was the only one that wanted to learn the rules and read the books.

 

[coyote6]

The first regular gaming I did was at the local library, Saturday afternoons & nights. Some random conglomeration of friends & acquaintances from there decided we wanted to game more often; somehow, I got picked to GM. It was the first Dragonlance module; I think we played two, maybe three times (almost nobody played the novel characters; we were all about the elven fighter/magic-users & kender fighter/rogues. And the weapon specialization; let's just say that there wasn't nearly as much angst and desperation in the PCs as in the books. ).

It was a while later that my buddies & I decided we wanted to play Champions. So, I started GMing that.

Wow, that was 20 years ago.

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