It began, fittingly, with a 5E Starter Set. A friend bought me the D&D beginner’s box, and we agreed to form a group to try the world’s most ubiquitous role-playing game.
I became the de facto DM, and I shouldered the responsibility with gusto and a sprinkle of worry—at the time, my wide-eyed pining for fantasy-themed adventure overrode the sense of anxiety I felt at taking on the responsibility. I didn’t realize then that Dungeons & Dragons would become my most toxic relationship.
Not because of my players, necessarily, but because I never stopped to ask myself what I wanted from the game. My relationship with D&D—more specifically, with being a Dungeon Master—turned into a tumultuous on-again, off-again fling. It took a toll on my sense of self-worth, my confidence, and my mental wellbeing. By the time I decided to let go of any designs on being a Dungeon Master, I’d spent two years trying to make an unworkable infatuation into a meaningful relationship. In other words, I was the immovable object, and D&D was the unstoppable force.
I should say up front that I still love Dungeons & Dragons. I even have two characters stashed away in case the opportunity to use them pops up in the future, and I hope it will. But my “break-up” with the version of me that wanted to be a Dungeon Master proved a pivotal step in learning to let go.
I didn’t start running my own game until months after my friend bought me the Starter Set. In the interim, a different friend and fellow book reviewer launched a campaign set in Ravnica, a vibrant and brutal Magic: The Gathering setting. I learned the game by playing as Jimothy Sparklesprinkle, a plucky bard who lived up to all the stereotypes, seductive tendencies included. I could fill volumes with Jimothy’s ridiculous exploits, but I’ll save that project for another day. Jimothy’s campaign acclimated me to D&D, teaching me the intricacies of the game. Playing under the deft storytelling hand of my friend gave me a framework on which I could base my own hypothetical future campaigns and DM style.
The hypothetical turned very real when I fired up a seven-person campaign based on the adventure within the 5E Starter Set. I felt like I was ready-made to DM a campaign: I love to think on my feet, riff with friends, and tell stories. I adore fantasy in all its forms. This felt like a good fit, an easy win. Early on, I definitely overestimated my readiness for such an undertaking—all of the fantasy knowledge in the world cannot prepare a fresh DM for an unruly seven-player group with no collective experience. I entered into the process with little understanding of what the other parties wanted. Moreover, I allowed too many people into my creative headspace, not giving myself room to grow or make the mistakes every first-time DM needs to make. Perhaps most significantly, I didn’t understand that DMing doesn’t need to be as daunting or complicated as I made it seem. There’s no rule stating you need a grandiose, MCU-style interlacing narrative for your campaign to succeed; I tried to emulate a vast, complex narrative anyway, and I failed.
We made it maybe six sessions. I tried to craft my own world based on the Starter Set content, a task I found crushing in its difficulty. My desire to ensure that everyone enjoyed the game led me to give players easy wins. I granted powerful items to them even if they did nothing to earn them. I deus ex machina’d bosses my party couldn’t beat. I struggled to balance the needs of a whopping seven characters within a compact narrative meant for half that many.
Burnout settled in, and I realized the situation was untenable. I put the kibosh on the campaign and took my first break from DMing.
The break didn’t last long. I chatted with a few of the players about reviving the campaign and picking up where we left off, but with a smaller, leaner party. More importantly, with a party that wanted to commit to the game and take it somewhat seriously. Here I learned an important lesson, though this campaign, too, would falter: I should have discussed at length what my players wanted from D&D, working to shape a game that meshed the story I wanted to tell with the way they wanted to play. Instead, I operated on my terms.
This, too, was short-lived. It took about six months, during which we played only a handful of sessions. I loved the players that remained, but they all had different expectations. One wanted a low-commitment game without having to do much outside of actual game time. Two others were constantly at each other’s throats, creating a tense atmosphere. We couldn’t agree on what we wanted as a group. One player would sit silently until the party entered combat, refusing to role play. Others wanted deep, lore-filled backstories and heavy exploration and NPC interactions.
To be clear, they were all excellent players, and though this party also fizzled, the players that comprise it remain my best friends. It just wasn’t working. But rather than break up completely, I took a different approach. I tried to redefine the terms of my relationship to the game so we could stay together and keep going. Enter the Bounty Hunters’ Guild.
By this point, I thought I had identified the pain points of my relationship to DMing. I couldn’t keep up with a sprawling world. Developing side quests and the main storyline was a burden on my free time that brought me no joy. But when I was in it, actually running a session, I had fun. So I opened my game back up and invited anyone who wanted to play D&D to a low-commitment league called the Bounty Hunters’ Guild.
The concept was simple: anyone who wanted to play could play. Anyone who wanted to DM could DM. The Guild would feature one-shot storylines intended for 3-4 players, which we could then recycle if more players were interested. I created the Unofficial Smirnoff Ice Dungeon, which had players working on behalf of Smirnoff corporation to market the company’s products in fantasy worlds. It was the kind of fun I had longed for in my first campaign—funny stories fueled by a balanced combination of combat, exploration, and role play.
But the pangs of doubt returned. In a few sessions, players were outright mean to each other. And I swiftly discovered that I was the only one willing to write and DM a session, which was at odds with the Bounty Hunters’ Guild concept. (I still have a character I made for these sessions sitting in a dark Google Drive folder, waiting for his chance to test his mettle. Perhaps Orchibald Bowtickler will fire his bow once more in the distant future…)
The Bounty Hunters’ Guild fizzled because it relied too heavily on me to deliver—and it was around this time that I started to notice my anxiety kicking in. I was beginning to grasp and define my mental health struggles, many of which were ignited by the need to act as a people-pleaser. During this third (and penultimate) iteration of my DMing career, I had an epiphany.
I felt that I was giving everything, and receiving nothing. Maybe that’s a bit severe—my players thanked me for my hard work after every session, and a few of them remained highly invested in their characters and stories, which was a fun hobby outside of playing and planning. However, each time I sat down to craft a dungeon or a module, I just felt drained, as if the energy was leaking from my body, dissipating into the air around me instead of channeling into the creative opportunity in front of me.
And that’s when I started to think: Maybe my relationship with this game is toxic. And maybe it’s not anyone’s fault.
I finally had the tools to understand my relationship with D&D, and I came to the realization that I didn’t have a healthy connection to it. The game I thought would give me a creative outlet and an easy way to spend time with my friends instead consumed my free time and stoked my anxiety. But like a lot of bad relationships, it didn’t quite end there.
My last-ditch effort was a from-scratch campaign based on the Ravnica story my friend runs. I invited two players from the previous campaigns and two rookie friends who had expressed interest in the game. For a while, it was all hunky-dory—we had great sessions filled with laughs and hilarious moments. I had learned more about constructing a narrative, and my players were at least tangentially interested in the story.
So why, then, was I so burnt out and upset whenever I had to plan a session? I had what I thought I’d wanted along: great players who agreed on the level of story and commitment they wanted. Frequent-enough sessions to keep everyone interested. Modules full of fun, funny moments and meaningful interactions.
After four attempts at DMing, all resulting in the same burnt-out frustration, I at last turned the lens on myself. I finally looked inward and asked: what isn’t working for me?
Pretty much everything, it turns out! I eagerly took up D&D, thinking it would be the perfect target for my creative energy. I thought I could just tell stories I wanted to tell and enjoy them with my friends, but I’d forced the image of what I thought I wanted onto a game that begged for more malleability, more randomness and tangents.
When all was said and done, I had an honest conversation with myself. This isn’t what I want. This isn’t sustainable. One long, tearful message later, I had announced to my final group of players that I was stepping away. This time, I didn’t lace the message with maybes or empty promises. No more “I’ll review this when I’m ready” or “I might DM again soon” or “I will continue the Bounty Hunters’ Guild.” I needed to quit; so I did.
Since then, I’ve leaned into playing D&D as a character and let go of the urge to DM. I won’t say I’ll never do it again, but it won’t be for a long while. I channeled the energy I thought was such a perfect fit for Dungeons & Dragons and instead turned it toward the page and writing stories I would’ve otherwise told through the game. I fleshed out my Jimothy Sparklesprinkle character and wrote him a more complex history (with massive help from my own DM) than I could’ve ever imagined during session one.
It took three and a half failed campaigns and a boatload of self-exploration, but I finally understand what it takes to break off a relationship that isn’t working. After I looked inward and acknowledged my feelings about running a game, I learned to let go and find a way of playing that allows me to truly enjoy the pleasures D&D has to offer and have fun—which is, of course, the point…
And who knows? In the future, I may return to the DM circle refreshed and ready to start anew. But for now, I’m content to move on. I hope my experiences might benefit other relatively new players avoid some of these pitfalls, or more generally serve as a reminder to cut yourself some slack, follow your instincts, and—if doing something makes you unhappy— find a way to change it for the better, even if that means you have to let a large part of it go.
Cole Rush writes words. A lot of them. For the most part, you can find those words at The Quill To Live or on Twitter @ColeRush1. He voraciously reads epic fantasy and science-fiction, seeking out stories of gargantuan proportions and devouring them with a bookwormish fervor. His favorite books are: The Divine Cities Series by Robert Jackson Bennett, The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, and The House In The Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune.
Yeah, DMing isn’t for everyone. I ran only one campaign (for Marvel Superheroes), but that was it for me. PC for life!
I’ve been DMing since 1991. I’ve played some PCs, but it is a matter of one per edition, no more.
In the meantime, I’ve also published my campaign setting on DrivethruRPG (Alfeimur), changed a lot of players, run conventions and tournaments.
The only takeaway is the importance of the session 0. This is the first session you have to run with your players, to decide tone of voice, safe zones (some players may not be at ease with some topics), role vs combat, story vs sandbox, and required group cohesion. You create PCs only after the session 0 is run and an agreement is made.
That’s the basis. Anyway, keep up playing!
i understand the urge, the desire to create your own homebrew world. honestly though, i think it’s best to start with modules if you are getting into GMing. it takes a lot of work off your plate and lets you learn how to run a game. if you are looking, specifically, to tell a story via game (ala critical role), you need to have players that are agreeable to that. you need to be adaptable enough to deal with chaotic players. you need to know when the rules are an obstacle and the story takes precedence. it’s a lot of work: you are essentially writing a story in real time, with a random number generator determining plot points, and someone else writing each character in the story. it’s okay to take awhile to figure out how to do that successfully.
also, as noted, GMing is not for everyone. i’d rather be a player, myself. some love it, but it’s too much effort for me. i cannot imagine the load if i was writing and creating everything.
finally, everthing @@@@@Dracomilan said about session 0.
DMing is definitely not for everyone. For myself, I am a professional DM with 5 regular games and couldn’t live without it, however, I have quite a bit of difficulty as a player. I love how well you encapsulate so many things that can come up and be a detriment to the experience.
It is absolutely important that game expectations are known and accepted by all parties, and that everyone involved is going to get what they want out of it. I always start with the schedule when building a new table. The game is on X day, at Y time, with Z frequency and the people whose schedule can accommodate that are the people who are playing in the game. I have seen numerous times where trying to fit a set group of players into a regular game ultimately leads to disaster as one person or another cannot make it to the floating game night. Sometimes a player misses a session or two, and sometimes a player needs to no longer be a regular player, always welcome when they can make it, but without game content specifically tailored to that player’s character.
I’ve been running and less often playing RPGs for decades, starting after one session as a player because somebody had to, and I still get stage fright, and I’ve dropped some games because they were too daunting. I’ve seen people take to GMing and others bounce off it hard. Burnout is possible for even the keenest GM, too. Knowing what you’re comfortable and happy doing is vital to any hobby. Thank you for sharing your thoughts here.
Definitely feel that. The biggest thing I learned from stepping away from DMing DND is that there are SO many other games out there that are worth playing. I loathe DMing DND but I absolutely adore doing it for Dungeon World. It turned out that I just wanted to create fun, immersive worlds with my friends without all of the rules of 5E. It was just a better fit for me and I wish other people would explore more games outside of just DND. Now I think everyone who wants to DM should start with something low stakes and light weight like Dungeon World.
Showing my age but in 44 years if playing these games, starting actually with little black box Traveller before others introduced me to AD&D (we’d heard of the box set of D&D but no one had it) once the books came out.
I’ve played on both sides of the table more times than I can count, heck remember. I find I do enjoy being the storyteller so I don’t mind being the game master of whatever game we’re playing.
If D&D isn’t working, no prob, there are lots of other games out there. These days I still play Traveller, for fantasy I have Pathfinder 2nd ed & Runequest and various others covering lots of topics. Spend some time looking and you might find something that suits you better or that one of your friends might enjoy running as the GM so you can be another member of the story around the table.
Good rolls!
There are other fish in the sea. There are literally thousands of other TTRPGs that you might try if you want to, as either one or the protagonist players or the game master player. Everything from traditional D&D-like games to games that are GM-less and asymmetrical. Plus a number of solo games.
When you feel like you want to ttrpg again, I would recommend a different game entirely.
Thank you for your honest and heartfelt post. Agree being a DM is more complex than many realize. And of course it’s not for everyone. Glad you got to a better space and hope you continue to have fun out there!
I think it is essential you break up the Gamemastering into 2 phases. Phase 1 is to produce your effort which is essentially the adventures and all the supporting adventure content material to provide a quality experience. All the exhibits, NPC and monster stats, scene environments etc.. If you are hesitant to do this and only have a few adventure ideas then incorporate published adventures that will guide you in your own custom campaign. The world flows around the adventures so this can be driven by where characters are at and what they need from it. If the kingdom of Furyundy is not in your game dont waste time with it except for the”Common knowledge” details. Put a limit on your campaign or at least a book One. With your project management skills, identify the adventures or chapters of book 1 and start developing. Personally, I have run games on the fly and it shows. Lack of exhibits, lack of depth, and lack of consequence. You will find that creating the campaign will keep you from feeling burnout. It will drive you to get things created and every adventure allows proactive and paced thought to the next. Phase two is simply running the game. The work is done, you know where it leads and you are in control. Your focus is to guide the group without them feeling guided. Its a tall order but have side adventures and know the drives of the players and characters and feed into that. Never say they cant or “thats not part of my story”. That should be the focus of the GM in phase two. Create a sandbox for your players but control the playground.
Boy, I identify with this.
These days I get a lot out of soloing with Ironsworn, Starforged (out in PDF!) and Utopia. All 3 are aimed at solo, GMless or GM’d and I find the solo a lot of fun. Maybe I’ll try with GM less and see what happens.
Also, Risus is a ton of fun and I say this as someone that played with the original red box.
I broke up with D&D two or three years after the advent of the 2nd edition. We remained friends, however, and stayed in touch. While it’s been more than a quarter century since I smote an umber hulk with a +3 longsword, I never lost my affection for the cheesy aesthetic of D&D. It’s part of a broader current of nostalgia that impels me to haunt sites like this one.
Go back the the roots of D&D. Wizards of the Coast added their money making scheme into it and ruined the game. Go back to 2nd Edition. I got burned out, so much time into the NPC’s etc… I MADE one of the players DM a first level three part adventure.
HE quit giving me so much grief when he realized just how much effort you put into THEIR experience. HE educated the others about bickering vs the time to play and some other stuff. After that they collectively (6 players) got the schidt together and actually had fun.
For a few sessions. Then they all thought they should be able to kill a green dragon in his forest in just a couple rounds. Those are the silly debates. So I TPK’d them, using said dragon, by the book for it’s age. And then I went along with my life because they collectively thought it was BS and quit. So I feel your frustration. I still DM, but only 2nd Ed with a few from 3rd. but after that forget it.
Like any relationship, it’s about both boundaries and communication. When entering into a relationship, whether it be as DM, or a player, you need to be honest with yourself about your boundaries, and then clearly communicate them to the rest of the group. It’s the boundaries you set yourself that sometimes are the hardest to avoid transgressing.
Keep communicating: people’s boundaries will change over time, both yours and theirs. Sometimes they expand, sometimes they contract. Clear communication manages expectations, both your expectations for yourself and for others.
One of the boundaries should be to set a limit on an arc; there’s a reason tv comes in seasons. It’s difficult to maintain creativity, so you need to build in gaps for the whole group to recharge. It also means people are more likely to turn up for sessions when there’s a finite number of them, postponing other activities for the “off-season”. It also means there’s convenient points for characters to demote themselves from main cast to regular, or vice versa, depending on how the rest of their life is going, and therefore how much they can commit to turning up every session.
Firm boundaries and honest, clear communication. :)
There was your first mistake.
Makes sense well articulated thank you for sharing and im glad you found some sustainable expressions of your creativity. Whatever your future with dm’ing, you sound more at peace and healed.
If you ever decide to DM again you should try a different system. reading this whole thing i was struck by how much my journey as a DM mirrored yours, with one major difference. instead of resigning myself to being a PC, my friends and I tried out the Cypher System. that game has mixed reviews so i won’t say that’ll definitely fix it for you, but playing a system that required much less prep and much less number juggling as the GM allowed me to focus on what I liked: riffing with friends and setting up cool narrative set pieces (like the battle between a Godking and a kaiju-sized Mantis Shrimp that my players are about to have to navigate).
I don’t want to be too critical here, but you made the decision to DM a campaign for 7 people with a homebrew bend with very little experience.
Perhaps your eyes were bigger than your stomach, so to speak.
Also, part of your responsibility as a DM is to make it so you choose people who actually get along in real life. If you have people who dislike each other trying to play a game with a group of people, then it will always end this way.
Additionally, you may want to find people who want a low-pressure game or a high-pressure game. You can even run two different campaigns with different people at the same time.
Just saying, there are quite a few red flags in this article. As someone with a decade of DMing under my belt, you are vastly overcomplicating it by taking on a 40 hour week job when you don’t need to do so nor seem to have the experience to manage it.
Running a game is definitely not for everyone, and there is nothing at all wrong with that. Personally, I’m a forever GM. I started playing back in 3rd edition, and I think I played about 3 sessions as a PC before I took over for our friend group as DM. The group size swung from as few as 3 players up to about 9 (I still have nightmares about 9 character sessions) as I started in Faerun, then to a completely homebrew world, then fell in love with Eberron when we shifted to 3.5. I ran games regularly every Sunday night for all 5 years I was in college, then graduations and moving across the country and world broke up the group in the days before easy access to VTTs. I took a hiatus from TTRPGs altogether, as I had really small children, and no easy access to new players. Then, about 5 years ago, I picked up some Pathfinder 1e books, and my husband and I found another couple who wanted to play, and I started running a game again. That lasted until the pandemic shut so much down. During the pandemic, I’ve been teaching my 10yo and 12yo children Pathfinder 2e, and just recently started a separate PF2e campaign for a work friend, her boyfriend and my husband. I’m currently running two separate games, 1 weekly, 1 every two weeks, and I’m thriving. I can’t be a player. I need to know what’s going on too much, and I don’t find it relaxing at all to have someone else run a game.
Take heart. Dungeon & Dragons is one of the most complex and scatter shot designs in all of gaming. The book keeping alone is exhausting for DMs. Try some other systems. From the very beginning Melee and Wizard offered much better basic mechanics. I’m a game designer so just create my own systems. But there are many to choose from get off the traditional D&D treadmill.
sounds to me like you might have missed your calling as the author of D&D adventures, just not ones you run in person. :-)
You might try looking at other games as well. Most newcomers to the hobby conflate “RPG” with “D&D”, whereas as popular as the later may be, it is far from the only game in the market (or even, dare I say, the _better_ one in the market).
Though I have never played it myself, “Dungeon World” might be right up your alley, as far as “prep time” go. From what I hear, there’s no standard “GM prep” for DW, which is much more focused on the player side of things as they do interesting things to move the plot along.
Do give other games a try – they might greatly expand your RPG horizons!
Your 1st mistake you used 5e that system sucks use 2nd ed it’s much better for dm ing or 1st ed learn the old school better system s,
Im trying to get into it I really want to i think, but im struggling with even the basic lmop layout. I’ve run a couple of one shots, one page adventures and i love the simplisty of the one page style that i want to convert each section of lost mines to that but that too might be beyond what time allows. If anyone knows a great source of one page adventures maybe ill just string some of those together.
I read you saying “I had a story I wanted to tell…” but you came to the correct conclusion: D&D isn’t the game for that. It’s a cooperative storytelling game where the DM sets up scenarios for the player characters to tell a story together.
I love the idea of the Bounty Hunters’ Guild; it sounds perfect for new DMs who want to play and not have to focus on world building!
But, you do need players who are there for fun for all. Good luck in the future.
I highly recommend picking up the book “Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master” by Mike Shea a.k.a Sly Flourish. It contains great advice on how to efficiently create and run adventures. Also, as it was pointed out in the second reply, be sure to run a “Session 0” to establish tone, create characters, and discuss what you everyone wants from the game. Don’t forget safety tools.
Most of all remember that it is just a game and everyone is there for the enjoyment of the game. As DM, your role is to be the facilitator of the game, not so much a story teller. Provide challenges for your players to overcome and secrets to uncover in the world that will lead the next challenge.
The joy we find in D&D are the stories we tell after the game is played not before the game is played.
A seven person group? Yikes. I’ve never ran more than 4. I’ve been in large groups and the lack of action coupled with players who can’t wait their turn leads to a breakdown. Still, being a gm can be as hard or easy as you want to make it. I think the lack of simple modules has hindered the growth and recruitment of new GMs. Used to be you could pick up a module thumb through it in an evening and be comfortable running it the next day. The current adventures(or lack there of) are needlessly complicated especially to bring in new players. D&D 5E is a fairly simplistic system as far as most TTRPGs, they just haven’t come up with enough beginning adventures to go along with it.
I must admit I find it humorous how many people are promoting 1st & 2nd editions of AD&D. Been there, done that, 5th is a far better game than those were. Nostalgia is a heck of a drug.
If the choices 5th made don’t suit you, there are many other games out there. I tend to recommend Pathfinder 2nd & the current version of Runequest because Glorantha remains the ultimate cool fantasy world as well as being a pretty great game.
Yeah, it sounds like Mr. Rush just fundamentally doesn’t like being a game master. It’s not for everybody. Although, I suspect hardly anyone likes doing it when the players are at each other’s throats, but clearly it went beyond that–the worldbuilding is a chore. So is planning adventures, and knowing just how much adventure to plan is tricky–if you’re not going to railroad enough to annoy the players, you don’t know just what they’re going to do, which means if you overplan you can end up with a whole big thing you spent sweat and tears on and they go in a totally different direction. I find it’s best to figure out the basic outline of the idea, and then sweat the details once they’re committed to dealing with the particular antagonist. And, I spend most of my time working out just what the antagonist is and how they’re set up–I don’t try to predict their interactions with the party, like what will they do when the party does X, because the party will probably do N instead.
As a side note, if you have players interested in roleplaying, IMO you should skip D&D entirely. When Covid started my roleplaying group decided to add a campaign to help keep us sane in isolation, and we went for total nostalgia: AD&D 1st edition with all the trimmings, doing the Giants/Drow modules, albeit with a few elaborations and changes. Half way through we decided to switch over to 5th edition; we’d gotten tired of the 1st edition nostalgia and wanted to see what modern D&D was like. Annnnd . . . I was surprised just how the same it is. There are some interesting new mechanics, a couple of interesting new character classes, all character classes have some cute new perks and combat options. The whole thing seems less random, more like a system. But in many ways it’s at least as constraining as 1st edition, especially 1st edition with the later skill system grafted on. You are going to be one of these character classes, you will be able to do these particular things, mostly combat-oriented, and very few other things.
I really find that games based on points and skills, like GURPS or Hero system, allow far, far more flexibility in terms of what kind of person you can be and what kinds of things you can do. In our GURPS campaign, I’m currently running an Islamic scholar with an interest in archaeology and exotic weapons. He has a photographic memory and a ton of scholarly skills, from archaeology itself to theology, embalming, mathematics, physician, poisons, alchemy . . . his skill with medieval-tech engineering has been a big help in allowing the use of block and tackle and similar things to lower our centaur into places she would not normally be able to reach. But he’s an effective light combatant with his Deer Antlers and thrown Chakrams, especially if he can boost himself with an alchemical elixir. He is not someone I could do in D&D. My previous is an elvish wizard, decent with sword and shield, but mainly an impressive craftsman, by the time he retired one of the great swordsmiths of the world, and capable of being dropped naked into a howling wilderness anywhere and a month later having a comfortable home with clothes, dishes, glasses, weapons and armour, wine, furniture . . . the works. Most of my GURPS characters have not been people I could do in D&D. That kind of flexibility is something I really miss when I play D&D.
I commend your desire to outlet your creativity through your attempts at DMing. Usually though, in my experience (30 years of playing and DMing), DMing isn’t something you want to undergo, unless you absolutely have to, without at least playing a full campaign or two. This gives you experience not only with game mechanics, but also with what to expect from different playing styles. While I do commend the attempt, it also kind of sounds like you set yourself up for your experience here. It may have been innocence, or ignorance, that was your folly, as you sound unaware of the fact that once you start as the DM, especially with a group of new players, there is going to be an expectation that you will continue to be the DM. It is already a lot of work to be a DM using prewritten adventures, let alone creating your own adventures and campaign setting.
A piece of advice. Find a group, with an established DM, and just enjoy playing for awhile before you delve into DMing again. It had been nearly 20 years of DMing since I had last had the opportunity to just be a player until last year, and trust me when I say that there will be times as a DM that you will definitely miss being a player when it’s gone!
This isn’t about D&D, at all, it’s about role-playing games, in general. Starting out as a novice DM in the early 2020s is a much different prospect than starting out as a novice DM in the early 1980s, when the four decades plus of material we now enjoy simply didn’t exist.
The most important thing to keep in mind as a DM in today’s environment is that *the DM is NOT the, or even a, storyteller*. The DM is, as Professor Dungeon Master has said, a *conflict designer*. It is the PCs who ultimately “tell” the story.
The DMs job is to be the manager “behind the curtain”, who pulls the mechanical levers of the locomotive beast to keep the train rolling. The DM designs the setting, scenario, and session, but the story results from the choices the characters make within those boundaries.
The fantasy epic genre has a tendency to make us all believe that we must have an intricate world construct waiting in the wings to counter every possible player action, inquiry, or request, but that really isn’t true and is often detrimental to enjoyment. It’s OK for a DM to say, “I don’t know”, particularly in light of the fact that the PCs would often not have any way of knowing much outside their immediate perspective.
The second most important thing people need to understand about RPGs is that weaker is usually better, particularly for novice players. Keep the magic level low, even after you have the experience and skill to handle more.
Running a game and writing a game are different skills and you don’t have to learn them both at once, or even at all. I’ve been running games in many editions and systems for many many years and writing good campaigns isn’t my skill set, so I don’t do it. I run published adventures, that’s what they are for. Make a few tweaks to match what your players want and you can have great fun running games without nearly as much stress.
At the very least start with prewritten adventures in any given system to see how the game flows and whether you like it before you jump into writing your own stuff.
@33 I take issue with “NOT . . . even a, storyteller”. I think the game world needs to be more than just a passive backdrop or empty stage where only the players seem to have agency. That’s boring, and as a game master I would also find it unsatisfying. You do need to give the players room to strut their stuff and tell their stories, sure. But there are other people in the world, with their own motivations. They are doing politics, running shops, trying to make ends meet, romancing the girl from the next farm, selling you sausages inna bun for a price that’s cutting their own throat. There are things happening. Not all need to be things that are even part of a scenario you expect the group to get involved with. As game master, you are telling the world’s story even if you’re not telling the particular story the player characters are doing.
Telling story isn’t all you’re doing. But it’s certainly a thing you’re doing.
Ha yeah I’ve been playing as both player and as a dreadful GM with the same group for years and years.
DnD is not a fun game to do as your starter rpg. There are so many cool systems out there! Hop about between a bit of everything till you find a system and set of stakes that suits your crew. Run one shots to get a feel and see if it works.
Arkham horror is fantastic. Even just running the starter game as a Halloween one shot it’s just fun.
And as a pile of Trekkies we also played star trek. When your captain spouts star fleet at you without Google yano you’re doing okay.
But what this games have in common is that the characters are glass! The whole thing is built around you really trying to not get into combat because you more or less suck at it and will die. It took us a long time to realize that’s what it took to engage us.
Now we are playing 5th Ed. With no tank or cleric it’s hilarious we are having a ball!
No shame in deciding that you’d rather be a player rather than a DM. I thought that you seem very honest in your Self-appraisal and deserve to be supported for making a sensible decision.
I know how you feel. DMing can be very draining, and it takes a special kind of person to be hard on players, and not give them too much. I’ve played and DMed since the early 80’s and now play and DM 5th edition. But what I find to be the best balance for me is to actually play and DM at the same time.
My character is actually a PC just like the rest in the group, and helps with combat, but almost never gives opinions on strategies or what to do next (unless the other players are completely missing a huge and obvious plot hook). I never give my character any treasure or magic item that is more powerful than what the other players have, and it never feels like I am the mary sue of the group.
So, its actually a lot of fun. If you have enough experience with DMing then I highly recommend trying to play an actual character in your own campaign. It can be really great!
I’m glad Steve mentioned it early on, reading your narrative it seems that the Dungeon World RPG would have a very high probability of being a good fit for your developing DMing style. Story On, I enjoyed your narrative – it was quality self-reflection!
I’ve been GMing since 1979 in all sorts of game systems and made my share of mistakes. If I had to boil it all down it would be three overlappiing bits of advice (none original to me):
1) It’s your world, but their story.
2) Prep situations, not plots.
3) Play to see what happens.
Note the emphasis on improvisation — if you come up with plots beforehand you’ll have to shoehorn your players in, eventually leaving them wondering what their role is in the game. (Not their characters’ role, their role.) Early RPGs hadn’t figured that out yet, and stuff like Dragonlance confused things for years, but now that we’ve had four decades it’s clear that the only unique things this hobby has to offer are spontaneity and unlimited freedom of action, thanks to the human referee.
Phandelver has a plotline pasted on top of a bunch of really nice location-based adventures, but it comes apart at the seams if you stare too hard at it. It works better if you come up with a plan for the villains — including a timeline — and then figure out what everyone in the setting does in reaction to the players’ actions. Barely any prep involved other than reading the module, and your between-session investment is simply updating all the moving parts’ positions.
@26: What you’re looking for is the One Page Dungeon contest, like these.