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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Camelot" data-source="post: 5294202" data-attributes="member: 82617">I'm exclusively a DM in real life.  My players are all exclusively players.  I DM only because I don't know anyone else who knows how, and my players are players only because they don't know any other DM. When we all started out, completely new to the realm of TTRPGs, it was (and still is) mostly a lot of fun.  However, I sometimes get upset at my players because they don't pay attention, complain about things, don't attempt creative actions, etc.  They sometimes get bored because combat is taking too long, NPCs aren't interesting enough, I'm not dropping enough plot hooks, etc.  These are problems in the players and myself, not the game; plus, these problems fold onto themselves and create more similar problems, repeating this until someone loses their patience and wishes to stop playing for the day. An example that happened recently was a new player (who has only played a TTRPG once before, also with me as DM) created a fighter who was built for dealing damage as well as taking hits.  I guided him through the character creation process, doing most of the work for him, and then we all sat down to play.  During the first fight, this player stepped out in front to take on the monsters, as a fighter should.  The monsters retaliated as appropriate.  Over the course of the entire fight, this fighter was the only character to take damage, partly due to chance but mostly due to him being in the front.  Also over the course of the entire fight, the player complained that he was the only one getting hurt.  I tried explaining to him that he was a fighter, it was his job to take the most damage and protect the others.  It wasn't a huge problem, and we all had a lot of fun, but it kept nagging me that he expected to get out of the fight scar-free. Recently, I've gotten the idea that these recurring problems are caused because no one at the table knows what it's like to be on the other side of the screen, including myself.  So, I want to teach each of my regular players how to DM and give myself a chance to play.  This way, I hope for them to learn the responsibilites they didn't even know I had, and most importantly to learn which actions of the players annoy or please the DM, so that they will learn to avoid the annoying actions and take more pleasing actions when they are playing.  I will hopefully learn more about what kinds of plots are fun for players and how long a combat encounter can go without getting boring from a player's point of view.  I hope that maybe we could run a game in which the task of DM is switched around each game, or maybe one player will learn to love DMing and start their own game. Am I being too drastic?  Will this only result in them being overwhelmed, bored, or annoyed?  Or will it actually achieve the goals I have in mind?  Thank you in advance for your advice and anecdotes!</blockquote>

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