"Instead of giving the dm tools to challenge the players, they gave the players tools to challenge the dm" Perfect. An argument that takes many words for most people put into a simple phrase. Not enough support for the newer dm.
Thanks for the comment. I knew a lot of folks felt that way, because I did and knew I wasn't unique. When I said that I wasn't trying to convince anyone of anything. I was trying to put our collective frustration into words.
If you feel you're not challenging your players enough, add more magic. Magic heavily tips the scale. Also, there's more to the game than combat, give your players a puzzle to solve.
@@wingedhussar2909 "...give your players a puzzle to solve." There's the other thing with D&D 5e. I'm generalising, but today's 5e players don't consider *themselves* there to be challenged. It's the *player characters* that are given the puzzle, and the players expect to be able to roll a d20 for a (series of) skill checks against a target DC without having to think too much themselves. Their argument being that, after all, you wouldn't expect the players to swing a sword, would you? As an online 5e DM for the last 4-5 years, I've found it's not even worth detailing the puzzle apart from a basic description. You just say - "Taking the panel off the door, you are confronted by a fiendish puzzle lock with a number of exposed cogs, wires, and rods. It's DC 25, needing 5 success to solve before you get 3 failures. Applicable skills are X, Y, Z - narrate which ones you're using and how you're applying them. Then roll the dice!" This extends to social encounters, mystery solving, etc. too. Everything is just a DC to meet or beat.
@@wingedhussar2909 - There's an argument for taking a lot of magic away, across the board. The reason some have been looking for "low magic" sword & sorcery ones. Curtail the horde of magic items, special "exception" abilities, and the large zoo of character races. Boil it down to grit and inventiveness, making magic less common & more special. Fewer 'get out of jail free' trinkets.
I am running Curse of Strahd. So much useful info is missing in the book, and people says its one of the best adventures. I think WotC should add a complexity level on the books. CoS for is NOT for new DMs. I would say it's only for experts that can handle tons of NPCs and know how to weave storylines together in this semi sandbox world.
Honestly, prep for D&D is currently easier than it has ever been. ChatGPT makes brainstorming ideas and fleshing out details so much faster than it has ever been. When I started using it as a planning tool it reduced my prep time per session by hours. Add in something like Stable Diffusion to quickly generate NPC portraits, landscapes, and images for important items and you can produce a fantastic game in a fraction of the time. Now if you don't use these new tools and also don't have decades of experience then it can be pretty daunting.
You are the first person I have seen talk about the adversarial player. I bring up the adversarial player often on subreddits like DMAcademy, and just as often get laughed at. It's refreshing to hear someone else acknowledge the DM is not some sort of super player service provider there solely for the fun of the others at the table.
Pointing out anything contrary to the prevailing lulzidiot opinion on Reddit gets you downvoted and scorned. Reddit is the only place that has a net average negative IQ.
My previous 5th only players WHHIIIIIINED LIKE BITCHES, when their poor decisions ALMOST got them killed in a 3.5 module, and one of them called me a killer DM. so.
"Instead of giving the DM tools to challenge the players they gave the players tools to challenge the DM." "Instead of giving the DM tools to challenge the players they gave the players tools to challenge the DM." "Instead of giving the DM tools to challenge the players they gave the players tools to challenge the DM." This bears repeating.
Don't forget the players who want their character to be their magnum opus. Not necessarily toxic, but definitely tips the scale further on the lines of responsibility vs authority. That being said, I have a great group for D&D 5e right now, I'm blessed to have grown them from ground up, before the online culture could corrupt them.
@@priestesslucy More the second one. I'm not even talking about people who hog the spotlight, just how the investment some players put into their character before the game even starts creates an expectation and burden on the dungeon master. While some dm's like mining player backstories for content, this is far from the only style of play, and certainly not the easiest one for beginning dungeon masters. It is not a toxic trait to have a well thought out character, but I think a lot of people are put off from becoming DM's because of these expectations. Tying characters' backstories into an elaborate narrative arc is significantly more challenging than running a dungeon or a location-based module. These expectations often don't come from players at the table, but are nonetheless present in the online discourse. I don't think I would have become a dungeon master if this is what I believed was required of me. I think players that have a high level of investment in their character are equally responsible for the feeling that 5e is a cake walk as are optimizers. While optimization makes it difficult for new dm's to find an appropriate level of challenge, narrative focused players are sometimes not okay with character death, except at specific moments. This is a perfectly valid style of play, however it decreases the authority and increases the responsibility of the dungeon master.
There's also the DM burnout, which I feel all of this contributes to. Over time you get to this point of "Well, what's the point of me even doing this if my players are just going to disrespect both me and the game *they asked me* to run?" Right after I acknowledged that the game wasn't fun for me anymore, I got diagnosed with a chronic illness where stress was the biggest trigger, and when the stress can literally kill you, you have to take inventory of your life and decide what's important. I still DM, but just one shots and for smaller groups of people I know.
Fuck man. I'm feeling the same right now. I've been DMing the same campaign for 2.5 years now. We're close to ending it but the closer we get, the less motivated I am. I took a break from DMing it this summer since I hadn't taken any since we started, hoping my motivation will come back but I'm not even motivated to prep anymore. I feel like I lost all the inspiration I had when I started. On the opposite side, I run a few Call of C'thulu one-shots from time to time and I have a blast. Mostly because it takes WAY less time to prep. Like for real. A DnD session takes me a few days when Call of C'thulu takes me an afternoon at worse.
this is why I changed systems. Dm Burnout is real and 5e as a system is a large part of why I got burnt out personally, I feel like we could easily get another 10 minutes to this video discussing this issue of the DM shortage, DM burnout, and how 5e really contributes to it.
For my circle, DM is a verb not a noun. My group of 80’s kids came back to the hobby in 2020. We all DM (taking turns), we taught our kids to play, we had our kids DM. Every player should DM, or at least try. And you are spot on that WotC creates more PC content than DM content!
10/10 Old Grognard. You managed to break down what takes me half an hour minimum of rambling into a fact dropping 7 minutes. The gradually moving slider was a nice touch and really drove the point home. It's crazy how it takes me the entire weekend to plan for our 2 hour session for 5e, whereas I can whip up a beefy 1 shot for EZD6 in just a couple hours (unless I get carried away with the map making). Also - I was super sad when you said you weren't gonna do your regular closing. Those are always my favorite. Wasn't expecting the shout out. Many thanks! Coming up on that 1k the best I can (though I'm just barely over the 50% mark for watch time).
Glad you liked it. I have wanted to do that episode for a while, but I went back and forth on it because I felt that it was yesterday's topic. Better late than never. I like doing the regular closings with various characters. I will add some more regular characters to keep stuff going. Just figured it was about time to return the favor on the shout out.
@@oldgrognardsays Ah man by the time I get a video out whatever I'm talking about is old news. My next one is gonna be about player deaths in 5e because apparently that was making some rounds on the interwebs, but I think it's already come and gone. Meanwhile I'm just now starting to work on a script
I decided to do an episode about the DM problem even though it's old news, because it still exists. As far as I know they haven't fixed it yet, mostly because I don't think anyone has put much energy into defining the problem. I would go ahead and do it because even if it isn't at the top of the news cycle, it still exists as an issue for the viewers.
I feel like there's an obsession with the GM prepping tbh. I literally never Prep more than like, the length of the actual game and I'm sought out specifically over the people that work themselves to death.
If I may ask, what takes up that much time during prep? I agree that prep takes a while, but in my case it is mostly system agnostic stuff like writing NPCs, reading up on some lore, and preparing maps.
I have been a DM for 5e for about 3 years now. I have DMed for a total of 15 people now (not at the same time, of course) within several different campaigns. I am currently running one group consisting of 6 players and another group consisting of three players, though the latter group is very sporadic due to respective IRL commitments. All of these individuals are people I met from playing on roleplaying servers in World of Warcraft. I had never actually played real D&D prior to this; my oldest brother DMed for 2nd edition back when he was in high school and I had played the original Baldur's Gate games. Learning the rules of 5th edition was pretty easy, but the Player's Handbook did a much better job of teaching me how the game actually works. The 5E Dungeon Master's Guide is, quite honestly, terrible at its job. A lot of early games consisted of me just saying, "Look, none of us really know what we're doing so we're going to make mistakes" since almost all of my players had little no experience. I pretty much had to deep dive brainstorm on how all their classes worked. One of the things that really annoys me with 5E (or maybe this is just a modern TTRP experience) is that Dungeon Masters are expected to learn and know everything yet there seems to be minimal expectation for the PLAYERS to do their share. It always annoyed me when I was putting in work to make games run smoothly but my players would never bother to make sure they read their spells properly, knew how their classes worked, or making sure their character sheets were properly updated. And since I run all my games via roll20 with D&D Beyond and the beyond20 extension (i.e. literally automating just about everything) I found that there was no excuse. I'm one of those weirdos who actually likes to DM instead of being a player, and I've developed a method to my madness when it comes to preparing for games, but it would be a lot easier for new DMs if players actually bothered to do their part to make the game easier. I see a lot of videos on "How to be a good Dungeon Master" but you almost never see any videos on being a good player.
You suffer the super casual players in every system. We had one of them back in my very first game in 3rd edition in Highschool back in 07 Best way to get them on track is to skip their turn until they know exactly what they want to do and how it works. Some learn to get into the game, some don't. You have to weigh whether you are willing to kick out the ones that won't to have a smoother game
You are right ttrpg responsiblity has always leaned heavily on the dm/gm. In some cases very little is required of the player which boils down to this is your character, your character does this stuff, & you roll these dice. Many never crack a rulebook.
@@JohnBrown-wk4io its fine that this is true, as long as the players don't have an imbalanced idea about this or treat the DM with unrealistic standards and expectations.
Good points, before I watched I wasn't really sure that there was an DM shortage. More of DM stress than shortage, but i can see the point where this would lead to shortages. TBH my stress and hard time to prepare for one of my campaign has led for me to not DM at all. Its been 1 year since I last DMd for this group, but I'm getting back to it.
Thanks. I was an early adopter of 5e, so I figured I had a different perspective than most people and used that to analyze what the problem might be. Working on a Game Development degree has given some perspective as well.
This is the best, most complete, and most succinct rundown of the problem I have seen. I've been lazy on this topic and default to "WotC's design philosophy is almost entirely player-facing, not DM-facing" and call it a day. I think I will point people at this video from now on. Also, first video, and I really like the twin thread of communication you weave between audio and video. It's an underrated skill, and makes engaging with the video a lot more fun, especially for a snack-sized one like this.
i have discovered dnd about a year ago and started out as being a Dungeon master for my group and i did and still do absolutely love being a DM and my Players loved my first dnd campaign as well which was completely homebrew by the way. The Feedback after we finished our first campaign was amazing still some things to improve and i will my non existent confidence will make sure of that i think. And now we are a few sessions into my second campaign and so far its going well. i dont think i will ever give up being a DM i just enjoy it to much for that. I will just not DM for Players that show themselves of as some of those adversarial or toxic ones.
That's awesome. I like to run games more than I like to play in them too. Sounds like you have a good group and most of what I talked about in this video doesn't apply. Thanks for the comment.
As an, almost, forever DM I feel most of what you expressed here, I spend hours thinking up storylines and arc for my players, build and create a living world for them to inhabit with history and a future often moulded by my players actions in various campaigns, I try to plan ahead for every eventuality and conversations with NPC and yes the players still find a way to go "off Piste". I would posit one more reason for the shortage of DMs, and it's that there are probably as many if not more DMs than ever before but the number of potential players has grown exponentially as a result of popular entertainment resulting in a "perceived" or "apparent" shortage of GMs. The advantage for me as a DM dealing with this glut of players is that I can very very choosy as to who I wish to have sitting around my table, currently I have three long-term players from when I got back into running D&D in 4E, and 3 newer players who are the distillation of 6 players, one I had to ask to leave due to attitude, one who left giving no reason and one who moved across the country unexpectedly. I happen to be lucky to live on the outskirts of a mega city (London) so all I ever need do is put a post out on various social media platforms to garner a large number of responses from players wishing to join my games. So I would suggest that if you are happy to get rid of players that don't suit your table, and that in itself is a skill acquired over many years dealing with people, then this is one of the best times to be a GM as you should rarely be short of potential players, even if like me you insist on only round-the-table, face-to-face play.
Yeah dealing with an adversarial player at the moment. I get I was one too but, I choose a home-brew summoner as a wizard. Sure I had NPC’s but, I folded like paper when the DM needed me to and if I lost concentration I lost my summons. I walked into a black pudding to buy my group some time, my character not knowing oozes, ect ect. And after two years I am quitting my group as DM before the friendship turns sour to the point of friendship death. I taught my group that my homebrew was wine to the modules beer. Both good in own right but, you don’t just get to run me over as a DM.
When I was starting to get back into the idea of revisiting my old campaign that started in the 80's I looked into the idea of running 5E... I got myself on Roll20 and started looking at the various social media sites that dealt with online gaming. I would NEVER in my darkest hour dream of putting myself through the Hell of DMing for the majority of people who seem to be complaining about a lack of DMs. Apparently, everything I ever did and still do as a DM is wrong. I start characters at first level... I don't offer an allowance to spend on Magic Items... I tell my players to not write protracted back stories and whatever they do write they should not expect me to use them as the basis for anything more than background... they are "Background" stories after all, and not "This is what I want you to write specifically for my character" stories. I spend the days, weeks and usually months writing the plot and the adventures... so you'll allow me the freedom to choose what that is. That brings me to "Railroading." Apparently having a series of adventures linked by a common thread is "Railroading" and that is bad. What a DM is expected to do is wait for the players to come to a group decision as to whose bullshit backstory they want to pursue first, and I am then supposed to contrive a suitable adventure. Then when that is over that player is likely to leave when their story is done and they get bored of not being the centre of attention, and the remaining players who didn't leave because they wanted to be the centre of attention will eventually disband and blame the DM for not focusing enough them. When I was younger, in my late teens I longed for the notion that one could become a "Professional" DM and play D&D for a living. But looking at the bullshit that modern 5E DM s have to put up with pandering to the whiny little shits who've been playing three weeks and think they know how an RPG should be run... it would probably turn out to be one ofthe most soul destroying jobs I could imagine having to do. I settled back into AD&D 1&2E hybrid, and do not play with anyone I have not vetted. Most are as old as me, or near enough, and we have a wonderful time. No one talks about "Optimised Builds" or "Min-Maxing" and no one demands to be the centre of attention. I haven't played 5E enough to come to a decision as to whether I like it or not... but the reason those players can't find a DM is simple. They are too entitled, too self important and generally too stuck up their own arse to realise that ANY one of THEM could be the DM
Listing briefly my experience as a 5e DM I started out running at my local hobby store (pre-covid) and the amount of players that rocks up treats me like a punching bag to test out their OP build that was taken from the internet (they wouldn't admit it but I knew, because I do watch those same build guides because I do enjoy picking those builds a part and oh boi, are most of those builds soo flawed) was immense! But those people are not invited back by me. I'd say it took about a year running games there weekly, just churning through players until I got the group I have now, they have become my closest friends now, we have moved onto playing on VTTs and/or in person and we haven't returned to playing in store (not that we can a our local hobby store went out of business thanks to covid 😢) As for context, I love to run more narrative style of game but I still enjoy some of the crunch but I have always been on the look out for a new system and honestly Pathfinder 2e is a strong contender!
Been DMing for many years. I erased a lot of the expectations from a typically 5E group I DM for by using my entirely custom system lol. Believe it or not they actually like the system and it allows for me to give them challenges without insane complaints about stuff. But yeah 5E players are hard to DM for typically.
I've experienced this too: once you move to another system and start out with a good enough one shot that encapsulates what you're going for, even 5e longtime players break out of their habits and expectations, though your mileage will vary on this
This video encapsulates my idea of the game so well. In my most recent campaign, I spoke with my players beforehand on the type of game I enjoy running: a low-magic sword and sorcery type of campaign. They were fine with it and I imposed some heavy restrictions on class and race. So far, it is one of the best campaigns I have ever run and my players seem to love playing in it. It is enjoyable to have players actively working with myself and each other to make an incredible story unfold.
I am happy that this video popped up as a suggestion from the YT algorithm. I definitely share the feeling that there is a toxic push towards not trusting the DMs in the 5e community. Why so much content targeted towards becoming a better DM and so little to toward becoming a better player? The not-so veiled assumption is that the DM responsibility is to entertain the players.
I started DM AD&D back in the mid-80's and stopped with version 3.5 when it got to the point where there was just too much material to know. I used to be able to run an AD&D game from my DMG & PH, with an occasional reference to MM, MM2 or FF. When AD&D Unearth Arcana dropped, it was a very big deal and it took a while to incorporate the classes, spells and other changes into our games... and some DM's didn't want to even allow it. Now from what I'm seeing 5e had books and other supplements that come out on a very regular basis, and players (in general) seem to want to use their newest "X" because it does "Y" to benefit them. And heaven forbid if you are not familiar enough with "X" to allow it in your game or you feel that "X" is overpowered and is part of the power creep that seems to be prevalent in gaming. In my opinion, gathered from what I see at our local Con and talking with the players, there is too much for a Good DM to be fluent in... it has to be intimidating for the fledgling DM.
I am absolutely guilty of the crazy absurd combo monster characters. However, I also walk the DM through it, and most importantly, explain how to shut it down. My current combo monster, Eliza, is a PF1e Spheres of Power build that is an aura stacking, debuffing beast of a character. She's also critically weak to being stunned, true striked, and anti-magic effects. The DM knows this. I know the DM knows this. In universe characters know this. And when she dueled an NPC who knew her, the first thing that NPC did was break out Spheres of Power's equivalent to True Strike. That wasn't toxic, or metagaming, or anything of the sort. The character knew how Eliza fought, and adapted accordingly. I only won because of some VERY lucky rolls, and by all accounts, should have lost. And this led to some great character development from the results. If you're gonna build some crazy combo build, make sure the DM knows what you're doing and how to interact with it. And if the DM interacts with it in a way that shuts that down, accept it. And make damn sure the build is your own, and not something you pulled off the internet just to feel strong. Because it's okay to want to make a powerful, mechanically intensive character. And it's okay to want some custom stuff if it fits and it is interesting. But there are a bunch of other people, including, yes, the DM, at the table. And everyone deserves to have fun.
high responsibility low authority for GMspaired with the elevation of adversarial players as virtuous model gamers is a great point thst hits the nail so squarely. I used to enjoy prep too, now 5e prep is just pain
I've actually never run into any problems described in this video. My session prep runs an hour or two at most if I'm making a new map, but usually less. I find 5e rules simple and easy to understand. And if there are lots of adversarial players, I haven't met them. Setting aside game mechanics, I don't find running a game to be much different than when I first did it back in the late 80s. Except we never used maps back then.
I've DMed a D&D5 campaign for 2.5 years, up to level 20. My conclusion: after 12+ level, do not try to challenge your players. Instead, give them leave to run wild and gently direct them to make things move forward. DM is not the player's enemy, he/she is their co-conspirator. He is the fan of their characters. It's about changing one's mindset.
@@BouncingTribbles that's why there is almost no official support for high tier play. Most DMs don't have what it takes to run a high-octane lvl 20 D&D game.
@@arcanefeline most players don't either. People forget what they can do as soon as it takes multiple sheets to track, it's remarkable. Makes me miss playing level 15+ 3rd edition with my 2 DM buddies. It goes both ways, if a player wants to run a country or command an army you both need to be able to work through the logistics and problems. Same with multidimensional travel, though that falls more directly on the DM having multiple settings ready. The real reason high level play is hard to do is because it's just complicated: you don't just have to prep the encounter, you need to have a whole multiverse at your fingertips, or at the very least a whole world with plots and motivations. The video makes an important point: a lot of players view their DM as a meat computer, but they are another player of the game. When I wanted to lead a troop of 100 soldiers to occupy the fort of a lich I didn't ask the DM to figure that out, I asked to borrow the book with troop rules and wrote everything out myself. You're not going to get high level play out of an average player, you're going to get average play
Ironically the term homebrew has a lot of love up here in the Pacific Northwest where D&D has been homed for the past 23 years. We love our one man shop microbreweries and micro cideries and micro wineries xD
@@davidmorgan6896 Most GMs homebrew, whether they start out that way or branch into it. The video creator just has distaste for the term homebrew in relation to homemade content, but he is very pro custom content
@@priestesslucy I hate the term too. It implies, to me, that it is somehow less than commercial products. Less clichéd and less railroady perhaps, but that's all. Maybe handmade could catch on.
I've been in the Pacific Northwest, and the micros are pretty good. The term homebrew probably means something different up there. I get that. Thanks for the comment.
I found your video in my recommendation. I addressed this in a video of my own a while back. And one thing that has always frustrated me is that a lot of the new content is made for players. So DMs have to constantly keep up to date on new rules and errata and administer that in their game. Or if not, there is a feeling of pressure even when you don't include those new rules. This focus on the player (because it makes WOTC profit) can be a herculean task for new GMs or players who don't respect the GMs time and energy.
It’s funny you said you had problems with players pushing back against your home brew. I had a similar problem except I was using the actual rules. Rules like Darkvision still gives you disadvantage or -5 to your perception/passive perception and my players thought I was pulling this stuff out of thin air and only trying to make their life harder. When I pointed it out to them that this was in the core rules, they apparently decided it messed with their head canon too much “If I’m playing a Dwarf and I’ve had darkvision my whole life I should be able to see perfectly in the dark! I don’t need a torch”. Definitely a major factor why I don’t DM anymore…the 45 minute long arguments over the rules in the middle of a session when their should be 0 interpretive wiggle room. Especially when the first few pages of the Players handbook states “Ultimately, the Dungeon Master is the authority on the campaign and its setting, even if the setting is a published world.”
For good or for ill, I'm the Forever DM, and have been since I first started playing in 1978 or so. My campaign has always been comprised of (at first) my like-minded college friends and (later) my husband and children. For that reason, I believe I've been mostly insulated from toxic players; and since I'm the Forever DM, I've rarely had a chance to be a player, though there have been opportunities for me to pass the responsibility to someone else. And yes, I have seen, over the years, some examples of toxic players and DMs. So to answer your point, "would I run a D&D 5e campaign?" Yes. I already am. I have segued from the original white box of books through all editions except 4th. I've dabbled in Pathfinder as a player. I'm now running a 5e campaign, and I'm teaching my younger son (who is now 33) to be a DM. I think playing within the family and close friends has kept the "bad players" at bay. But what it really boils down to is communication. This is my campaign, and I'm the DM, but I'm also a person playing the game, and it's my right to have as much fun as my players. I'm the one who has set up the world and who decides what will be allowed with respect to levels of techonology/magic and race/class; I'm the one with the story to tell, but my players are the ones telling it. Their adventures, and how they comport themselves, determines which direction the story will go. I can draw on all the experience that 40+ years of being a DM has given me to adjudicate the rules, but I never forget that it is their character that these rules affect. It's not a matter of DM vs. player, and it never has been. If you're stressing out over your campaign, re-examine how you approach the game, talk with your players, and work out solutions. It really is as simple as that.
I think it really depends on your group. I forever DM for my best friend, his brother, son, cousin, and another close friend. I like to homebrew around modules and get a lot of feedback from my players so I know what works and what doesn’t. I also delegate responsibility to my veteran players. One is the “scribe” or note keeper, another has their bag of holding and manages their storage unit inventory (lol). After 1-1/2 years they’re about to wrap up Mines of Phandelver at lvl6. Granted my newer players /did/ have some Skyrim moments, but the whiplash of the consequences corrected that behavior fairly quick (with my vets smirking at each other). Communication is key, as are managing expectations. None of my players foster the “gotcha!” culture of surprising or “beating” the DM. They understand good play/decisions = good rewards/experience. I believe very much in the Rule of Cool, but my players also understand “I won’t kill you, but I won’t stop you from killing yourself”
I've always played 4e, but some friends on discord got into dnd recently and asked me if I would be willing to dm for them as they know I play and have DMed before. It is 5e. I prefer 4e, but man DMing brand new players who have no TTRPG experience and most of whom hardly play games beyond minecraft (they just aren't very big on games, they aren't kids), it has been such a blast. I can wing it with remembering the different names for stuff in 5e and dumb down combat to not even doing opportunity attacks because they're still rereading their sheets to attack or figure out if they have a skill or spell they'd like to use. They get giddy about rolling their d20. I dread the fact I only have oh so long before they've learned how to RP, they've learned combat, learned to not take everything at face value with a single solution. I want to teach them and slowly help them get better but man am I gonna miss these days once we get there and I won't wanna DM as much because it really does become a pain. At least currently it takes them so long to get through stuff that a decently long one shot I made ended up taking 3 sessions to complete. I feel far more rewarded for the time I put in than I deserve, but that will dissipate oh so soon into nothing but a fond memory. The culture is a problem, and 5e characters becoming far too varied in utility is also a problem I totally agree.
Thanks for the comment. Noobs can be fun, especially if they treat your world like a real place and make decisions without knowing what the "man behind the curtain" does.
Good to see someone who loves 4e. It really is a very good system. I played it for some time before 5e when I got back into it. Once everyone moved on to 5e I fort of had no choice. 5e is still good. enjoy it.
@@SomoneTookMyName agree. If people like tactical combat, or big set piece sort of fights, it's very good. It awkwardly needs exactly enough prep that you can't be instantly ready for a party randomly starting a fight in town for no reason, but a planned encounter goes much faster and yields a better experience than 5Es fairly boring enemies. A shame it got memed to death when it came out.
As someone who is wrapping up his last 5e game for now i couldn't agree more on the rules and prep side, while i take some issues with your points to the culture they are very much understandable and explain a part of the problem. The main reason i am stopping to run 5e is because i finally looked over the horizon at other games and found some that actually cater to how i want to run the game much better, and with 5e's lack of help i see no reason to stick with it at all.
I haven't learned 5th yet, but I have read a lot about it and spoken to people irl who play it. As far as I can tell 3rd edition is just a better game in general, particularly if you include all three sub editions (3.0, 3.5 and Pf1) like my group does. The only merit I've found in 5e is that it's simpler for a brand new roleplaying neophyte to pick up without any guidance from an experienced player
First vid of yours I was ever recommended. I have to say I love the name. It's both iconic and funny. Why funny? 'Grog' is a type of alcohol. 'Nard' is slang for 'a testicle'. "Old Beerball" is just hilarious to me.
@@oldgrognardsays Oh, that's where the disconnect was. So it should be pronounced like Gron-yard rather than Grog nard like I was doing? That makes much more sense. But yeah, either way, I guess. I like both.
I'm a tabletop novice and I've been DMing pathfinder 2e for a few sessions now, and it has been going incredible. The sheer ammount of build variation and creativity my players are allowed has made me actually excited to DM. I wonder if i would have felt like this playing 5e. Honestly i dread to even think about how it is to run this game
Game I'm currently in as a player actually had a moment that highlighted this. Two of our players jumped down the DM's throat for giving an enemy Spellcaster access to third level spells, specifically fireball. We have had access to fourth level spells at this point for about 3 months now mind you. I like the group on the whole but this specific blowup pissed me off because despite my OWN wizard making active use of the spell, and REGULARLY Counterspelling fucking everything, the guys we're fighting slip one thing past me and we have to hear a 5 minute rant on why fireball isnt allowed on NPCs because its "Been Overpowered since second edition" To anyone who believes that spell is BS name for me a spell of that level or lower outside of Lightning bolt because it's just "fireball but line effect" that has so much variance on its damage that it can - when cast at level - do either 48 damage... or *TWO* damage for the low low cost of burning literally 1/3rd of the resources of the guy casting the spell and making a pitifully easy Dex save. Hell I even mentioned that even if I had known that was coming, I'd have STILL Counterspelled the single target charm instead because the last thing we need is our own fighter being turned against us at worst, or simply inactive - at best - for potentially 3+ rounds. My point in all of this? Yes, this video is accurate in that players have their own ideas of what's fun and the "community" 100% is encouraged to lay all responsibility for differing definitions of that word at the DMs feet and be complete twatgoblins when there is a clash between the two. I've been a DM myself since 3rd edition and I sure as shit dont wanna DM 5 witnessing this level of a *basic* breach in protocol being seen as fine.
Thanks for the comment. I do think a lot of the problems with 5e aren't actually with 5e, but with the culture surrounding it. Your story exemplifies this. I plan on finding an excuse to use the word "twatgoblin" as soon as possible.
The more I hear stories like your the more I never want to GM for a game of 5e for randos. Running 3.5e, and my friends do not complain at all when I throw enemy wizards dropping Cloudkills and Black Tentacles, and supporting them with Frontline disarming or tripping Warblades. I run hard games, I can't stand that sort of entitlement.
Well to be super clear, these guys arent some random people, these *are* friends, and they're NORMALLY fine, until something happens that goes against what their definition of "balance" is. After that event however I talked privately with the DM and asked his permission to run a single fight built at half the expected ECL for a party of our level for the purpose of making a point, and he agreed. This dude has never DMd before, and he's not doing a bad job. I dont know WHEN he's going to tag me in for the proposed encounter as of yet, and told him I dont wanna know and to just do it when he feels the timing is fine. But I'm interested to see what they think of game balance after they receive a 15 year DM deliberately going full-tilt at half their on-paper power level *once* Though as amusing as that thought is, I DO worry if I'm the asshole going a little far.
@@Rebellions That's fair, to be clear on my own reply I specified randos because I have complete faith in my friends to take things as they come. My encounters tend to be full-tilt desperate struggles, and they've accepted it and roll with the punches. As for your situation, I really understand the frustration, but I think springing something on them like that out of nowhere will only make things worse and get them mad without really getting your point across. I think you should be direct and forthright with them if it's that much of an issue. Afterwards, you are free to run your encounter. I fully understand the temptation though, I have had a couple of obnoxious-ass players I could tell many a story about.
I've always preferred DMing, myself. I just think its so fun to get to set up the story and help the players write their own ending. I also really like all the work I do for prep and the challenge of having to think on my feet when the players do something unexpected. I've been very fortunate to have an awesome group of players.
The influence of video games is a BIG thing I noticed when 5e came out and I took the hobby up again after a twenty year break. Not just the way players interact with the game's systems, but the way they interact with the game world. The world isn't a place the characters inhabit, it's another system that is there to provide them with quests and story and NPCs to interact with, and give them a sandbox in which they can do anything they want without significant consequences. I've had players genuinely surprised that after they insulted the Duke, went on a drunken rampage, and spent the night sobering up in a cell, the world didn't just 'reset' the next morning and let them go about their business as usual.
I DM for a group a campaign set in a specific hex-grid (10x12). With two major cities and a lot of significant monsters with their “area of effects” that then, causes the minor encounters. There's a total of 6 major “entities” and 12 randomly placed “power-sources” around the land - some of them in the same space of the entities. I took around a day to draw the Map (all time spent added) but could've gone for a premade. I used only one day worth of free time to prepare and tie it all together. DM'ed around 20 sessions of it and still don't need more than reading my notes (written during play) and background points on specific places, to run the game. Probably won't have to prepare nothing on 20+ more sessions. I mean, it took me a WAY LESS to prepare than I played. It only happens because I'm a experienced DM, I know what I really need to prepare, what I can do on the fly and, mostly important, what I can let the players create - yeah, you can go and tell the players “Well, that shop you want, how do you imagine it ? What's the shop keeper's name ? Ok. That's it.” What I understand is causing that massive DM shortage is the books not teaching the DM to prepare, only the rules they want you to play by. The DM work is not on the Rules Book.
Great video, I agree 100%. I've been playing since 1978 and lately have been trying to figure out broadly what the difference is in the games I play in now, or DM in now, compared to those of the late 70s and early through mid 80s. I've been trying to think of it outside of the system, outside of the rules, to see if I can identify a sort of "meta" difference in my personal experiences. I came to a conclusion that is totally in line with your points, I just used different language to describe them. As a starting point, as I was reflecting about this the early games I played in way back in the early 80s were focused on the campaign. The PCs supported the campaign. They certainly had their own stories within the campaign about their adventures and such, but everyone at the table was focused on the campaign, with the PCs being used to bring the campaign to life. We all played multiple characters, characters died all the time, etc., which of course prompted a focus on the campaign because it was the only constant. Most of the games I play in now focus on the characters, not the campaign. It's almost as if the campaign world does not exist outside of the experiences of the PCs. I'm honestly not trying to say one approach is necessarily better than the other, but I am saying that these different world views create a VERY different playing experience, both for the players and the DM. I came to another realization that is related to your point about having all the responsibility but none of the authority, I just came to a slightly different conclusion. By adopting this second worldview/approach of the game world existing in terms of the PCs' experiences and perceptions as I described above, this has essentially taken the DM's "character" away from them. The campaign now primarily exists in relation to the PCs, it is less of its own free-standing "character" played by the DM like it was in the earlier games. As a player in the early 80s I remember experiencing the game as a great unknown and exploring to see what it was like, much like how we experience the real world. Just as I had created my character who was free to do what I wanted, the DM had created a game world that had its own goals, expectations, and freedoms to act and change in response to what I did as it saw fit. Few things were actually that predictable back then. But in the games I am playing now, the DM is indeed a "meat computer" as you put it without getting much opportunity to develop and advance their "character" (the game world). Players always focus on the importance of player agency, and rightly so. But the cultural expectations now, ironically, have reduced the agency of the DM by taking away their "character." The DM is not encouraged to create an encounter or room in a dungeon in a way that is consistent with how they believe it would be given the world they have created, having it fit together into some larger aspect of the world that the players may not even ever know about. Instead, the DM is constrained by things like challenge ratings. Interestingly, the very things like challenge ratings that are seemingly intended to reduce "competition" between the players and the DM only draw attention to it, because if the PCs encounter something that is beyond their expectations given their level and such, the DM is "cheating" and is therefore playing against them. Comments that I have read in other forums say things like, "the DM should make the players feel like their PCs are going to fail, and then at the last minute they succeed." If I am a player in a game like this, assuming I don't know that this is being directed by the DM behind the scenes, this does sound exciting, and I do appreciate the mindset of trying to create an exciting game for the players. But if I'm the DM in these games, it doesn't sound like much fun. But it is important to note that this is NOT because I would be catering to the wishes of my players per se, but instead because I have little agency outside of the experiences of the players to "run" my "character." I'm not sure that taking away the DM's character in this way is that much different of an undesirable process than a DM railroading a player into only one action during a game. Seems quite similar to me. And as you said ... who wants to play that game?
A shortage of 5e DMs means it’s the DMs that have the power to play the game they want. I have introduced a number house rules to temper the power of players and make my life easier. Yes was a little grumbling about not liking some of my choices by some of my players, but I just let all that wash off my back. Guess what, the players don’t quit to join a game more suited to what they want, because where are they going to go? There’s a shortage of DMs after all.
Want a DM? Honestly, treat it like you would organize any team. Help the DM in ways that you would want. ASK WHAT THEY NEED! Offer and follow through with help in coordinating, communicating, and setting up games and hosting. When making a request for a game, keep your expectations of commitment low. Ask for short games and campaigns. In-play, share your resources and rules expertise. Offer help to other players. Step up against bad play/behaviour. Remember to reinforce good play behaviour & cheer on the DMs & other players. If the group gels and the DM and players are having fun, the scope might expand naturally.
Yep, you've certainly identified much of the problem. I am guilty of perpetuating the problem myself. I used to be able to run games at the drop of a hat. Those were the days when we played in person, in real life around a physical table. We'd have a vinyl mat and watercolor markers, some dice and a box of figurines. Drawling a few lines on the mat and describing the dungeon was sufficient, no prep work required frankly. Nowadays I'd have to learn all the intricacies of a table top simulator which is frankly daunting. I'd have to scout the web for map and prop resources, know what resources I've acquired and where to find them in a labyrinth of folders, get expert at piecing all these details together. I'd have to spend hours putting together character and NPC sheets sufficient for that TTS to actually play, and none of this permits the sort of seat of the pants play I used to be able to do in the meat world. As down as so many talking heads on UA-cam have been about AI DMs of late, I really do think this is part of the solution. Not because the AI will supplant the DM, they won't, at least not anytime soon. Rather they will provide tools for GMs to largely remove the impediments I mentioned above... "AI, give me a small underground lair in the forest populated by a bandit gang of orcs sufficient for a one evening adventure for my existing gaming group of average difficulty." Presto, nice map, character sheets for NPCs ready, a dozen unique Orc tokens on the map, and some adventure twists in notes for the GM. Play starts in five minutes.
I already get part of my Player Fix (Semi Forever DM here) playing with an AI DM. Requires some DM Assistant work from the player to summarize the story and keep it fresh in the AI's context space, but it works well
Yeah, there's a DM shortage. To be fair, there have always been more players than DMs, but it wasn't always a problem. Someone recently described 5e's design purpose as "to protect their brand." I think this directly contributes to the problem. Characters in 5e are *powerful,* and building stories and encounters around them is surprisingly difficult compared to other game systems. Either the players steamroll through whatever the GM planned, or things go horribly wrong and suddenly a TPK is on the table. I think this is intentional. There's clearly a way to build encounters in a "safe" way, and that way is demonstrated in the published modules. Map design, encounter design, character builds and advancement... All of it follows a hidden proscription that you don't notice at first, but it's there. I usually only run 5e if a group specifically asks for it. Mostly, I prefer to run systems that prompt players to look up from their character sheets and think about their situation critically. That's usually due to either a crunchier system with lots of weird options or a very loose system that doesn't give you a box that your character acts from. For 5e, I can get the same results by telling the players during Session 0 that "I don't balance my encounters." The knowledge that they can easily walk off the map and into an ancient red dragon's lair at level 2 is usually enough, but that's what it takes.
I agree that all the issues you bring up affect the willingness of players to transition to DMing, but the answer is more likely the simple fact that D&D 5e is still growing rapidly. This means the ratio of new players to experienced players is pretty high, and new players will be resistant to DMing. Because D&D is the main introductory game for the RPG hobby, it’s basically the only system where players are looking for DMs. Every non-D&D table starts with a GM who wants to run something different and goes looking for players, or an existing table with a GM/DM that wants to try something different.
Does anyone know how many 5E DMs create their own worlds these days? That was a big part of the fun and I could see how running someone else's modules in someone else's world (official or not) would lose a lot of that.
I have ran both. l'm honestly enjoying running the forgotten realms more, for 5e at least. The amount of depth in the setting gives me years' worth of content. I will probably run my own setting when I want to play some weirder fantasy though
Thank you. Succinct & excellent. I might add, we have a generation of compliant and timid people, programmed by my generation [X] and Millenials, that have difficulty accepting the reins of power & authority and "ruling" the table as a DM. They are too afraid of becoming unpopular and subsequently alone. Being a DM means sometimes walking alone.
Idk. Prep can take up a lot of time, but that's mostly system agnostic stuff once you know the rules and basic concepts. When it comes to the cultural part, I have a feeling this might be a problem the DM's are creating for themselves or it might even be a US thing. I have yet to meet a player who doesn't respect the DM's ruling and I have been playing and GMing two to three times a week for the last couple of years. Then again, we don't have a DM shortage over here. Actually, it is much harder to find GMs who will run even slightly less popular systems.
I've seen a lot of the Matt Mercer Effect (new 5E players demanding that their DM be a clone of Matt Mercer while ignoring that he's a professional voice actor "running a game" for a bunch of other professional voice actors)
Right there your statement "instead of giving the DM tools to challenge the players. They gave the players tools to challenge the DM" sums up what I've been thinking for a bit now really succinctly. Thank you.
I have been a dungeon master since around 2015 and these are all the exact same thoughts that I came to about a year ago. And now anytime I try and bring up other systems people get scared that they're going to have to have some responsibilities when running a game instead of just kick back and let the DM do everything
Yeah, I hear you. I DM for my son and a few of his friends and it isn’t fun for me. 5e is so nerfed, yet also power gamey, that it’s just exhausting for me as the DM.
Because I understand the balance of the game much better, I don't that many issues as a DM (I essentially had to help the DM as a player numerous times, so I learned the DM side of things in a no-risk situation). But I totally get it. If a newer DM gets a proficient player such as myself, I will only cause them problems, as I could leverage my greater understanding against them. This was why I had to help my DM. They were new, and a player was running amok due to understanding the rules better. I also knew the rules better than the DM and didn't like this other player running amok. The reason I don't DM more is that, well, even if I have an intuitive sense of the game balance, the ability to write good stories, the memory to account for player abilities, the time to prepare, the ability to improvise, and more, I just. Don't go beyond my circle of friends. I understand them. I know what they like to play, I know what they like to do, I know how they interact. I can easily account for them, for their benefit, my benefit, and the story's benefit. There is a level of unknown with players you don't know. Are they new and don't know things? Are they experienced and know how to play? Are they a powerbuilder who wants to be annoying as heck? Who all is in my party, what is their ability with the game, and what is it they seek out of the game, what is it they seek out of me? With my friends, I know them, and can intuit numerous things due to it, and can adjust based on them. With randoms, I have to learn them first. And that's yet another thing to add to the pile of work a DM does.
I've been playing for over 30 years now, and most of the group is still the same from 2nd edition. And I feel all of the same things with the current edition. I consider myself a pretty experient DM, but everytime I want to block something "official", mostly because of scenario fitting and avoiding "goofy" stuff, I heard complains. Most of the material I homebrew is left there without use, unless is something obviously broken (I did that once just to check if the players were at least reading my stuff). And even 3rd party publishers that I tried to use are also discarded and never used. Also the scale is so tipped to the side of the players that it took me 8 sessions of almost non-stop combat to reduce their resources to a point where they start to feel challenged. It's hard to challenge your players in this situations. I agree 100% percent with your analysis.
its definitely a culture issue. my group formed independently just after 5e with us not really playing before with me as the DM, and thanks to the influence of old grogs i knew and how i ran the game, each of my 18 players became there own DM. 5e had some issues that they promised to address in the beginning and yet never have and now never will with the recent decisions making it clear how little they want us to fix it ourselves.
You're probably right, and I preffere 3.5, but that being said, this is what session zero is for, tell your potential players what your game and GM style is, with any homebrew, or official optional rules. If after hashing everything out in session zero they still want to play, great, if not, time for them to find a different GM who IS running the sort of game they want. I purely run dark Fantasy and horror on toril (because I'm clearly a sadomasochist lol), so if I allow a common starting magic item, sorry that Eberon rifle ain't gonna fly. I also run the more grueling rest rules who's name escapes me where a short rest is 8hrs and a long rest is a week (or in torils case, ren days). I run milestone so no point in murder hoboing, and on the rare chance I run xp, dealing with the threat gives xp, not killing monsters (so bribing the goblins is actually more resource efficient sometimes). Also, alignment has nuance, chaotic evil does not mean stupid and suicidal. You will get ambushed by four goblin archer in a tower holding action. I will toy with your emotions so if I still can't hurt your super hero, you bet you'll still feel when beloved characters get hurt (last night, one of a gay polar bear couple that pull the PCs wagon almost died in an epic battle, the PCs rushed to defend Derek because it would have destroyed Dave (if you have speak with animals, use it for drama, not comedy)). I also run flanking
I'm a first time DM starting in September 22. I have been running a campaign for 3 different groups every week. First group has 11 people, 2nd and 3rd have about 6 and 8. Anyway, the most challenging part for me has definitely been creating encounters. I have fairly low level characters dealing 60 points of damage in an encounter and defeating higher level monsters with ease. It's honestly a tad bit discouraging when I am not challenging my players and it's mostly because PCs in 5e are akin to demi-gods. Another problem I've noticed is huge " main character syndrome ". Every player wants to feel important, which is good and should absolutely be encouraged and given their time to shine, however, it's not fun when everyone wants their time to shine constantly. Nobody works together because they want to be the most important person in the group at every point possible. Again, it's very demi-god like when everyone believes their PC to be god's gift to the planet. The combination of these two things make D&D a little less fun for the DM and other players too
I can only imagine the disaster of main character syndrome in a group with 11 players.... I don't know how you handle a group that size so new into DMing, I feel like I would have run for the hills with a group over six during my first decade lol. Granted I've heard in the old old days, back in Basic or 1st Edition huge tables like that were common. They even had a tradition of a single spokesplayer Calling out the group's decisions to the DM
@@priestesslucy Believe me, I was scared shitless when I first started. I still am every week haha. However I feel like it's honestly been a pretty positive experience. The only thing I could do without is that much chaos because these are a bunch of teenage boys so the chaos is at a level 100/10
@@oldgrognardsays It's been insane, but also super fun and honestly I think it was a great intro to DMing. It's definitely overwhelming but it keeps me on my toes. Today I was playing with my last group of the week and I let one of the kids take oved DMing for the day and he had a blast! For the rest of the school year I'm going to let the kids try DMing because it makes me happy to see kids younger than me so passionate about a game I'm passionate about
I completely agree with most of your points there. I've been DMing for about 40 years, and like you I started playing 5E in 2014 with the starter set, and thought 5E was great, and it is good. Its very simple on the surface but there is a lot of hidden complexity. There is a rather toxic trend online for 'killer character combos', and a lot of players do subscribe to this sort of thing. The DM is a leadership position, and too many 'want to be' DMs either refuse to accept this fact, or are unaware of it... Good DMs take a bit of time to mature. The game doesn't really allow for this 'maturity phase'. That said, even as an experienced DM, quite a few of the abilities caught me off guard and it took me awhile to really adjust to the style needed to genuinely provide a challenge for the players. The included monsters, as written in the manual are absolute fodder for most PCs.
The toxic "Killer builds" were back in 1E too. I seen players try to play the "Jester" from one the April issues of Dragon mag. There was the Dorc. Half Dwarf Half Orc take the best of both races but drop all the drawn backs.
It started in 2nd Edition for me - I would have players that would refuse to play anything less than a Demigod. If they got an "average" set of stats, they would take their ball and go home if I wouldn't let them reroll. It finally got to a point where I was just like "F it, just write down whatever you want for your stats!" Of course this led to ALL 18's with them MAYBE putting a 16 or a 17 for stats that their class largely didn't need, ya know...to not appear biased or anything. One guy even insisted on playing his custom race of catfolk with a natural Dex of 21 and a natural Charisma of 19, because you know...kitty cats are naturally agile and cute, and everybody wubs them.
And let me guess... these games were crazy boring? A game that's not challenging is just a game of make believe. And that's fine if you like that, but for many people that gets boring really fast. There needs to be thread of danger, difficult things to accomplish, to keep the game interesting for more than a few sessions.
@@HereComeMrCee-Jay are stats really so impactful that all 18s would make 2e boring with zero risk? I'm running a gestalt 3.P game right now, where the players had a choice of 18, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10 or 16 across the board and last session there were three times where a character dropped unconscious in a single encounter.
@@HereComeMrCee-Jay I'm pretty creative and eccentric in my DM'ing so I was able to make them fun, but yeah the encounters were trivial to where all I could do was to make the BBEG an HP sponge.
Thanks for the comment. I played in a short series of adventures in the early 90's that were like that. It was fun, but we didn't do it again after we got it out of our system.
Two of my worst experiences as a 5e DM has been centered around lopsided parties in terms of optimization. When the group as a whole is mostly interested in roleplaying or if the group as a whole is interested in min/maxing and challenging combat, it's fine. You just scale the difficulty to the degree of optimization for the party. When you have a roleplay focus group with 1 min/maxer, however, things get messy on a mechanical level because you lose either way. Either the game's mechanical side is geared towards the roleplayers and the min/maxer will likely trivialize everything, or the game takes the power of the min/maxer into account and the roleplayers are punished for not being optimized. The nature of min/maxing in 5e means there isn't a middleground that the min/maxer won't trivialize or that won't punish the roleplayers. It's one or the other. This is further complicated by the fact that people who know how to optimize, even if they are "holding back", can easily end up invalidating certain character classes even when they're not min/maxing. The "Rangers are bad meme" was always just a meme and even a PHB Ranger will invalidate any Rogue as a martial utility character when put in the hands of someone who understand the spellcasting feature in 5e. Pass Without Trace alone is a better stealth feature than anything a Rogue can do. Other examples are Monks not being able to benefit from feats to optimize martial combat, or the fact that having spellcasting (full-, half- or third-) is pretty much always better than not having it. My first properly bad experience was around lvl 4. A fun roleplaying party, with a dwarven fighter (standard array), a goblin bard pretending to be a halfling (standard array), an elven druid constantly high on mushrooms (standard array), an elven ranger (standard array. More Legolas than Drizzt) and... a variant human Polearm Master/Sentinel Hexblade Warlock (point buy) with Devil Sight and the Darkness spell. It was fucking impossible to balance anything for that party and I was pretty new to DMing. My second experience was a one shot at lvl 13, which is a lvl I am unlikely to ever revisit again. The party was also more roleplay than min/maxing with a Battlemaster Fighter, Vengeance Paladin, Soul Blade Rogue, Draconic blasting Sorcerer... and an optimized armor dipped Abjurer Wizard with a strong emphasis on defense, dmg and control. The Wizard was basically immortal and did more to solve every encounter / challenge than the rest of the party combined. And the Paladin did much more than the Fighter or Rogue ever could thanks to their spellcasting.
I've been in that situation as a player of a roleplayer with an optimized combo-oriented min-maxer in the group. It was incredibly frustrating. That player regularly argued with our DM too.
@@marchmaps I can assure you, it isn't fun from behind the DM screen either. I try to be very upfront about what sort of campaign we are going into with my players and that I am not above taking action to keep players in the party balanced.
For the broken combos thing I always warn my players up front that if they are bringing that sort of thing, their enemies will be bringing it right back at them. Usually that's enough to get the point across.
I honestly agree with the majority of what you said, but I would argue that this problem only erupts with new players. When I was a new GM, I was flooded with new players that saw me as the obstacle, but I also saw them as the same. As I've grown in experience, refined my players, and got more picky with how I set up my games, my games got more enjoyable, and my players began to play more fairly. I think the reason why there is a lack of GMs is not due to the facts you outlined, but that GMs have a hefty weight on their shoulders in designing the game. Most people would prefer to be the actors of the story, a much easier job, compared to the playwright and director (which is what a GM is).
Thanks for the comment. I think it is most prevalent with new players. Being the DM is always a hefty weight, regardless of system. In 5e they just thought it would be a good idea to make it heavier for some reason.
@@oldgrognardsays 5e is a failure of a system. There is a huge, huge emphasis in 5 to have the GM make it all themselves. Because the rules are so loose, there is tremendous pressure on the GM. Its a unique problem to 5e, I find. Other games, a great example being Stars Without Number, where there are lots of small, easy rules than can be picked and chosen. 5e is a good beginner system, but its a bad system
The mighty algorithm be praised! I would have never found your channel otherwise. Just seeing the titles of your other videos I know I'm in for good here, and I love the video's style.
100%. 5e dumps more work on the DM, and it's not necessarily fun work. The statblocks are bloated and the options for players get ridiculous. Worst of all, there's an expecation from many 5e players for the DM to provide not only entertainment, but a 'balanced' experience where everyone gets to shine, everyone gets to win but paradoxically only where failure seems like an option, (but not really). I'm generalizing of course, but I have seen it a lot with 5e players.
Thanks for the comment. My video schedule is in the community tab. I word the titles so they are plainly worded to tell what the episode is about. That way you can skip it if it's something you aren't interested in.
This is literally why I've dropped running 5E and gone back to PF 1E. Players complain that it's too complicated, but I can literally spend 1/4 the time prepping and create something great (not to mention that the worst adventure path is a legend compared with almost any published D&D adventure of the last 10 years.) And yes, I am aware of PF 2E. I've gotten the core book and looking it over.
This video is far more important than 99% of other D&D content on youtube. Thank you for sumarizing what has been my thoughts about 5e and current D&D culuture for a long time. You are appreciated.
this hit hard, exspecially when i am putting alot of work to make my custom games work, it is a hassle to have to prep for 2 days min for 1 level and then have players complain about the game, or the options they want but i don't let them have (exspecailly if i have listed it in session 0 or it just adds more prep work for me)
I’m pretty sure most players were still playing Pathfinder when 5e came out, not 3.5, considering Pathfinder had been outselling 4e for years by that point. And I predict that Pathfinder 2e will begin to outsell the next edition of D&D again. WOTC is betting on there not being an interest in other TTRPGs as if that hasn’t been an issue for them in the past.
Sadly unless 6E really drops the ball, I doubt we'll ever see Pathfinder get supreme against D&D. So long as D&D plays it safe, brand recognition alone will carry it. 4E was really a special exception because it was so different from prior editions. I seriously doubt WotC will ever take that route again.
Excellent insight. I'm designing my own rpg system and I'm going to take another hard look at it and see how many player side exceptions I've built in, and if I actually need them.
That stuff about the DM getting flak for ad hoc adjudications is so true. I ran a game of Dragonlance once with a player that refused to respect the 'cutscenes' so I had set a princess kidnapping set piece way off in the distance and got fussed at for giving the kidnapper a potion of speed to feed to his mount to ensure they got away when the player described how he caught up with them quickly and would have overtaken and stopped them. Player knew it was a cutscene to kick off the next section of plot, player figured I only gave the bad guy the potion once he was going to stop the cutscene, but player still kicked up a fuss about how "unfair" it was even after other players pointed out that it was something they'd likely have. It was like that one scene from The Gamers when the elf shoots the Bandit King with an arrow in the middle of his speech just because the surprise round 'timed out'. Some of my players just outright didn't accept anything but by-the-books as being balanced and wonder why I rarely if ever DM anymore...
I run 3.5 and I can make up an adventure from scratch in like... A few hours, a lot of that comes from decades long familiarity with that system I'm sure, because a lot of people seem to describe running 3.whatever as a logistical headache (which has not been my experience but I digress) my primary exposure to 5e comes from being excited people were finally talking about planescape again, and old cutter like myself can remember the 2e books being on the shelves, and so I read the basic rules for 5e and read the planescape supplement and... It felt like a hardcover magazine article about planescape, a summary, a metaphor even, for Planescape. I have much the same impression with the Van-Ricthen guide to the heavily abbreviated and uncannily separated domains of Ravenloft... So I came to view 5e as a bit of a casual gamer version of DnD, which is fine, but of very little interest to me from the get go. Now fast forward to me finding DnD nerds to talk to on social media only for them to A utterly dismiss any idea that doesn't come from 5e (as you mentioned) and B the moment I let slip that I am a DM by choice it's as if I've painted a target on my back and... I don't even play DnD with these MF. Once I answered a question someone had about customizing their druid, and I mentioned something about a fungus-zombie "necromancer" without referencing any game system, just pure fluff, and somebody came along to tell me 5e had something like that, I said like oh cool, I don't run 5e and people started to feel sorry for me...? I will never run 5e based off of my experiences with the culture surrounding it.
While I don't agree with some of the concepts here, the concept of "adversarial players" is an interesting concept to explore. I also strongly agree on starting DMs feeling pressured that they will make "bad D&D". I routinely run beginner's D&D adventurers to let people try out the hobby, and often, people will mention how they want to DM. They are almost always worried they will be poor at it. I usually tell them three things: 1. NO ONE knows all the rules. You learn what you can, then make notes on problems to look up later. 2. I usually tell them to browse combat well, have a list of skills in front of them, and use the 10, 15, 20 DC checks to make it easier. 3. You don't get better at things by avoiding them. Everyone starts somewhere. Give it a few sessions and, if you still are struggling or don't like it, take a break. After a little time, try again. Don't give up.
I'm really lucky to have a close personal friend who is very open to experimentation with gaming. His family are all board game nuts, so he's always happy to change rules, follow rules as best he can, and provide good positive feedback. When I moved to playing old school editions of D&D to make DMing easier and to challenge my players, none of my friends wanted to earnestly follow except for him.
I think I can say you've brought up a lot of excellent points regarding peoples hesitancy to take up the DM/GM mantel. A big part of being a hero is the risk that you could easily end up dead. I'm not advocating for stacking the deck maliciously, but my biggest take away from old editions regarding situations you can't win is the "Rabbit of Caerbannog" tactic, AKA run and comeback if you aren't on a time crunch. Sometimes it's better to just loot and scoot rather than kick in the door and turn a B&E into a battle. If you're quest is elimination of a threat, the lead up should be discovery and information gathering. It's usually not as fun if there's no challenge in the hunt. And beyond all that, most people who played back in the early days didn't have anything other than the books for reference on how best to play. The DM was ultimately the judge of what did and didn't go down in a game. "Yes and..." Is a good tool for gaming but sometimes you also do just need to have the freedom to veto. You can't really create anything for anyone if they're constantly trying to dictate how it's made.
Only ever been a player, but I recently started DM'ing for some younger family members. I didn't expect to enjoy it so much. I'm not particularly good at it yet, but it's been its own kind of fun
You absolutely nailed my problems with the culture surrounding 5e. I feel like my concerns as a DM are addressed extremely well here. Often times when I introduce something unique or give a ruling, it's met with arguments or displeasure from the players. It gets frustrating and I'm glad that someone finally addressed this.
Wow...I don't know who you are playing 5E with, but having been a DM for 28 years, I haven't seen this philosophy of which you speak. There is always a lack of DM's because being DM is a HUGE undertaking and quite intimidating. It doesn't matter the edition. Wherever I go, I end up being DM. And I don't mind, as long as the players don't expect me to keep track of their characters abilities.
I haven't been at it as long as Grognard, but even with my little experience, 5e very much makes me not want to GM, and for several (if not all) of the reasons he listed. All the abilities the players get ruin it for me the most, and I am by no means a power trippin GM. I just like to have a semi-decent story with some interesting characters. I thought maybe the whole TTRPG thing just wasn't for me, until I got into some other TTRPGs. Turns out it was just 5e.
4e never had this problem. It took 5 minutes to build an encounter and they were always perfectly balanced and easy to run. 5E takes hours and half the time the actual gameplay sucks. That's why I quit playing 5E.
@@savevsdeath I run 3.P in a similar manner. I expect the players to use their abilities to deal with the shit I throw at them and my focus is just on stringing it together into a solid narrative without thinking specifically about what they can do.
I'd love to learn more about how to prep for hours and run for days. I feel like I've started to grasp it running a very basic dnd rule set (basically just the 6 ability scores and player imagination) for some folks I go to church with, but I'm not quite there yet.
As one recently fallen out of love with 5e, this resonates. Can you explain more what you mean by exception based rules? I think I get the gist, bit the way you brought it up sort of implies that prior editions did it differently? Is there an alternative within D&D tradition?
You are correct that those exceptions did not start with 5e. Here is an example of what I think he is talking about. In 5e, an optional rule is to allow feats. There are lots of different feats that you can have, bringing flavor but also complexity to the game. In a way, each feat is an exception to the standard rules of combat. In contrast, the game Dungeon Crawl Classics has a mechanic called a Mighty Deed that applies to fighters. You tell your Judge (DM) something crazy you want to do... "I jump from the balcony to the chandelier, then as I'm swinging I throw my dagger into the monster's eye in an attempt to blind him". If the Judge thinks that's feasible for a character at your level, you role your Deed die and you roll to hit... if both are successful, you did it! So DCC has created one simple mechanic in the place of hundreds of Feats and in fact it can cover anything you can dream of. So that's a standard, consistent way to handle an aspect of the game... as opposed to have hundreds of feats, each one an exception to the normal rules. Make sense? I think this is what he is getting at, anyway. Another way to think about it... crunch = complexity and it reduces the speed of the game and makes more things for the DM and players to manage. Crunch can be fun, but there are tradeoffs for sure. Games with fewer rules and fewer exceptions to rules tend to be faster and easier to play.
Cee-Jay got a point, but I also think it has to do with the fact that players are given SO MUCH stuff to do and each player/character can have WIDELY different mechanics compared to others. This puts a large pressure on the DM to not only conform to the base rules, but also to every single thing a PC can do. When you have 4 or more players each with numerous different abilities and mechanics that create more and more exceptions to those base rules and which might override each other and so on and so forth, things become very complex, very fast. This basically makes it almost impossible to balance or prepare in any sane amount of time. Unless you're being paid to DM (Hi Matt), then you're not going to want to spend the time necessary to run a group in that system that's actually fun (challenging but rewarding).
@@Thunderous333my game of choice ( 3rd edition and PF1) has incredibly wide arrays of things characters can do as well. A GM would drive themselves insane trying to plan around their players abilities, and at the end of the day.... Players choose those abilities because they want to use them to solve challenges. So why bother? Just have fun crafting diverse and imaginative adventures and encounters and let the players figure out how to use their abilities to handle it or how to gtfo if they can't
@@priestesslucy True. I was in the throes of emotion rather than reason. 5e can be prepared and balanced. Still, 5e and systems like it with their endless "This is the rule... UNLESS" drives me insane.
@@HereComeMrCee-Jay I don't think I fully agree with this. There is a difference between the rules-heavy rules-light dichotomy and exception based rules. Exception based rules are more about different objects of the game world running by different rulesets or having a light rule core, which is expanded by options and exceptions. You can have a heavy rule core like PF2e or 4e, though, and have a lot of options and crunch based on that heavy rule core without them becoming exceptions to the rule. I'd argue exception based rules happen, when you want to have the initial simplicity of a rules-light system AND the crunch of a rules-heavy system. Since the simple rules do not allow for crunch you have to make exceptions. So to solve that problem you gotta go rules-light like DCC/Savage Worlds and remove the crunch or go rules-heavy like PF2e and fully embrace the crunch. Having it both ways like 5e is great for players and terrible for DMs.
All good and valid points imo. I think the internet and online community have a LOT to do with the lack of those willing to run the game. "Living up too," imo, is one of the biggest problems in the community. Personally I would point out that those "great" GM's have great players and that most of the players making the demands are nowhere near that level of player, it runs both ways.
Great arguments but I have always felt that there was a shortage of gm/dm's in ttrpg in general. I feel your points along with the surge of new players has just added to the problem. Professional DM's aside dming can be a lot of work.
Interesting points. I can see this being a basis for many DMs. Personally, I don't have these problems as I set up rule number 1 before new players play in our game. The DM has the final call on what's permitted. This isn't done in an authoritative way, and I even let my players know when I've made a particularly good or bad call as a way to demonstrate how to recover if bad or how it enhanced things if good. For example, just last week, a player had to make a saving throw. It was the standard full damage and a condition upon failure, or half damage if successful. The player rolled, got a pretty good roll against an extremely powerful foe. I didn't have the DC directly in front of me, so I just said, "I'll check the DC when we take a break, but we'll call that a pass for now." I assured everyone that I wouldn't retcon damage if the DC was actually higher and reminded them about rule 1. We took a break, I checked the DC and it turns out the player would have failed rather significantly (by like 5 points or so). I told them the proper DC going forward as the battle is expected to go on for several rounds but showed how my making the call kept things going and the action engaging. They all agreed. I also made a bad call in the same campaign of letting the druid wildshape into a beast we encountered as he technically met the criteria within the rules as written. However, the beast was from a 3rd party supplement and it's DC was a bit lower and stats a bit higher than they should be if aligning to other "official" beast stats. This became apparent when the druid wildshaped and threw the balance of the encounter off significantly. After the session, I took the time to explain my mistake to the group and how I was going to amend the wildshape rule to only allow for those beasts published in the official books. Everyone agreed that the beast was OP and the druid admitted how he felt like he was cheating using that form. As long as the DM lays out their role for running the gaming and sets the tone properly, I think 5e works rather well. It's a lot easier than AD&D (1e), which was my preferred edition until I had kids old enough to play. I've noticed that my kids run some games as well as their friends who've played in my games. They take the same position for being the DM and even have to take turns at the helm because they all want to run their own games. Now, if I could just get them to accept me as a player. They're too used to me being the DM and say I'm way to much of a ham when I get to run my own player character.
The problem is the rules. We're in an era of Magict the Gathering D&D like, that turned it into a combo game for powerfull players. There is no space for role play. The system is broke. That's why people are going after Odl School RPG, even old D&D, like BECMI, AD&D 1e or 2e (the TSR era).
Great video, I'm my groups forever dm and it has burned me out so bad that we barely play anymore and we only play Like 3 session campaigns. No one wants to even try dming and they all say it's too much work. They don't even realize that the worst part is that no one even tries to see where you are going with the story before they do whatever they can to derail the session! I've had session 1s where the players won't even sit still long enough for me to organically introduce them to each other
I'm a very lucky person. I've been GMing for the same group for over a decade now, and I don't ever have any of the culture problems because I found a great group, and so I have fun GMing every session. Shoutout to my players, who have shared my moments of greatest storytelling and also suffered through some real stinkers.
It is sort of hard to think back 40 years ago when I ran my first game.It was a bit easier I guess, enormous dungeon crawls were what people expected, and once you have drawn the map, and a random encounter table, it was just them mapping, exploring, avoiding traps and solving puzzles, and lots of monster slaying.Maybe new people’s expectations are too high? After 40 years of gaming across dozens of games, I have a lot of experience to draw from, which gives me the confidence I guess, something new DMs will only get through practice, running games. I don’t even NEED books anymore, just pick a combat and skill system, or make one up on the spot, and improv. Some of the best games I have participated in as both player and gm alike were completely improv, just out camping, and decided to play. Flipping coins because we didn’t even have dice! It’s all about having fun, and if a DM is not having fun too, they won’t want to do it anymore.
What a pleasant surprise to have stumbled upon this in the recommends beneath a Zee Bashew video... an excellent piece, and something that I concede I and my friends have mused about from time to time. I played predominantly in the 3.5 era myself and while I appreciate how many options there are for players in 5e I frankly find it sort of suffocating... there's not just a ton of stuff that players can do, there's almost *too* much they can do, and of questionable utility oftentimes as well.
"Instead of giving the dm tools to challenge the players, they gave the players tools to challenge the dm"
Perfect. An argument that takes many words for most people put into a simple phrase. Not enough support for the newer dm.
Thanks for the comment. I knew a lot of folks felt that way, because I did and knew I wasn't unique. When I said that I wasn't trying to convince anyone of anything. I was trying to put our collective frustration into words.
If you feel you're not challenging your players enough, add more magic. Magic heavily tips the scale. Also, there's more to the game than combat, give your players a puzzle to solve.
@@wingedhussar2909can you please elaborate on 'add more magic' ?
@@wingedhussar2909 "...give your players a puzzle to solve."
There's the other thing with D&D 5e. I'm generalising, but today's 5e players don't consider *themselves* there to be challenged. It's the *player characters* that are given the puzzle, and the players expect to be able to roll a d20 for a (series of) skill checks against a target DC without having to think too much themselves. Their argument being that, after all, you wouldn't expect the players to swing a sword, would you?
As an online 5e DM for the last 4-5 years, I've found it's not even worth detailing the puzzle apart from a basic description. You just say - "Taking the panel off the door, you are confronted by a fiendish puzzle lock with a number of exposed cogs, wires, and rods. It's DC 25, needing 5 success to solve before you get 3 failures. Applicable skills are X, Y, Z - narrate which ones you're using and how you're applying them. Then roll the dice!"
This extends to social encounters, mystery solving, etc. too. Everything is just a DC to meet or beat.
@@wingedhussar2909 - There's an argument for taking a lot of magic away, across the board. The reason some have been looking for "low magic" sword & sorcery ones. Curtail the horde of magic items, special "exception" abilities, and the large zoo of character races. Boil it down to grit and inventiveness, making magic less common & more special. Fewer 'get out of jail free' trinkets.
"You can prep for days and run fir hours" Such a good point, I feel like I prep for so much longer than the game lasts. Even with pre-written stuff
5e is that bad on DMs?
Half the time I don't prep my 3.P games at all.
The other half it's probably under an hour of prep for a 3-4 hour game session
Thanks for the comment. I knew that if others weren't saying it, they were thinking it and just needed words.
There are RPGs out there that are far easier on GMs. I'd suggest looking into them if you're frustrated with 5e.
I am running Curse of Strahd. So much useful info is missing in the book, and people says its one of the best adventures. I think WotC should add a complexity level on the books. CoS for is NOT for new DMs. I would say it's only for experts that can handle tons of NPCs and know how to weave storylines together in this semi sandbox world.
Honestly, prep for D&D is currently easier than it has ever been. ChatGPT makes brainstorming ideas and fleshing out details so much faster than it has ever been. When I started using it as a planning tool it reduced my prep time per session by hours. Add in something like Stable Diffusion to quickly generate NPC portraits, landscapes, and images for important items and you can produce a fantastic game in a fraction of the time.
Now if you don't use these new tools and also don't have decades of experience then it can be pretty daunting.
You are the first person I have seen talk about the adversarial player. I bring up the adversarial player often on subreddits like DMAcademy, and just as often get laughed at. It's refreshing to hear someone else acknowledge the DM is not some sort of super player service provider there solely for the fun of the others at the table.
Pointing out anything contrary to the prevailing lulzidiot opinion on Reddit gets you downvoted and scorned. Reddit is the only place that has a net average negative IQ.
I ran a 2e game for 5e players. In the after action they saw how really poor decisions got them all killed. Realization struck.
My previous 5th only players WHHIIIIIINED LIKE BITCHES, when their poor decisions ALMOST got them killed in a 3.5 module, and one of them called me a killer DM. so.
"Instead of giving the DM tools to challenge the players they gave the players tools to challenge the DM."
"Instead of giving the DM tools to challenge the players they gave the players tools to challenge the DM."
"Instead of giving the DM tools to challenge the players they gave the players tools to challenge the DM."
This bears repeating.
Don't forget the players who want their character to be their magnum opus. Not necessarily toxic, but definitely tips the scale further on the lines of responsibility vs authority. That being said, I have a great group for D&D 5e right now, I'm blessed to have grown them from ground up, before the online culture could corrupt them.
Can you elaborate on 'Magnum Opus' ?
Are we talking a power gamer, a spotlight hogging thesbian, or something else?
@@priestesslucy as we wait for the OP's answer, I wouldn't be surprised if it was "Yes." xD
Thanks for the comment. Having a good group eliminates a lot of problems.
@@priestesslucy More the second one. I'm not even talking about people who hog the spotlight, just how the investment some players put into their character before the game even starts creates an expectation and burden on the dungeon master. While some dm's like mining player backstories for content, this is far from the only style of play, and certainly not the easiest one for beginning dungeon masters.
It is not a toxic trait to have a well thought out character, but I think a lot of people are put off from becoming DM's because of these expectations. Tying characters' backstories into an elaborate narrative arc is significantly more challenging than running a dungeon or a location-based module. These expectations often don't come from players at the table, but are nonetheless present in the online discourse. I don't think I would have become a dungeon master if this is what I believed was required of me.
I think players that have a high level of investment in their character are equally responsible for the feeling that 5e is a cake walk as are optimizers. While optimization makes it difficult for new dm's to find an appropriate level of challenge, narrative focused players are sometimes not okay with character death, except at specific moments. This is a perfectly valid style of play, however it decreases the authority and increases the responsibility of the dungeon master.
Magnum opus?! Wtf? It’s acharacter in a game that has a limited lifespan.
There's also the DM burnout, which I feel all of this contributes to. Over time you get to this point of "Well, what's the point of me even doing this if my players are just going to disrespect both me and the game *they asked me* to run?" Right after I acknowledged that the game wasn't fun for me anymore, I got diagnosed with a chronic illness where stress was the biggest trigger, and when the stress can literally kill you, you have to take inventory of your life and decide what's important. I still DM, but just one shots and for smaller groups of people I know.
Fuck man. I'm feeling the same right now. I've been DMing the same campaign for 2.5 years now. We're close to ending it but the closer we get, the less motivated I am. I took a break from DMing it this summer since I hadn't taken any since we started, hoping my motivation will come back but I'm not even motivated to prep anymore. I feel like I lost all the inspiration I had when I started. On the opposite side, I run a few Call of C'thulu one-shots from time to time and I have a blast. Mostly because it takes WAY less time to prep. Like for real. A DnD session takes me a few days when Call of C'thulu takes me an afternoon at worse.
this is why I changed systems. Dm Burnout is real and 5e as a system is a large part of why I got burnt out personally, I feel like we could easily get another 10 minutes to this video discussing this issue of the DM shortage, DM burnout, and how 5e really contributes to it.
For my circle, DM is a verb not a noun. My group of 80’s kids came back to the hobby in 2020. We all DM (taking turns), we taught our kids to play, we had our kids DM. Every player should DM, or at least try. And you are spot on that WotC creates more PC content than DM content!
I'm a big believer in the table rule that everyone takes a turn behind the screen.
10/10 Old Grognard. You managed to break down what takes me half an hour minimum of rambling into a fact dropping 7 minutes. The gradually moving slider was a nice touch and really drove the point home.
It's crazy how it takes me the entire weekend to plan for our 2 hour session for 5e, whereas I can whip up a beefy 1 shot for EZD6 in just a couple hours (unless I get carried away with the map making).
Also - I was super sad when you said you weren't gonna do your regular closing. Those are always my favorite. Wasn't expecting the shout out. Many thanks! Coming up on that 1k the best I can (though I'm just barely over the 50% mark for watch time).
Glad you liked it. I have wanted to do that episode for a while, but I went back and forth on it because I felt that it was yesterday's topic. Better late than never.
I like doing the regular closings with various characters. I will add some more regular characters to keep stuff going. Just figured it was about time to return the favor on the shout out.
@@oldgrognardsays Ah man by the time I get a video out whatever I'm talking about is old news. My next one is gonna be about player deaths in 5e because apparently that was making some rounds on the interwebs, but I think it's already come and gone. Meanwhile I'm just now starting to work on a script
I decided to do an episode about the DM problem even though it's old news, because it still exists. As far as I know they haven't fixed it yet, mostly because I don't think anyone has put much energy into defining the problem.
I would go ahead and do it because even if it isn't at the top of the news cycle, it still exists as an issue for the viewers.
I feel like there's an obsession with the GM prepping tbh. I literally never Prep more than like, the length of the actual game and I'm sought out specifically over the people that work themselves to death.
If I may ask, what takes up that much time during prep? I agree that prep takes a while, but in my case it is mostly system agnostic stuff like writing NPCs, reading up on some lore, and preparing maps.
I have been a DM for 5e for about 3 years now. I have DMed for a total of 15 people now (not at the same time, of course) within several different campaigns. I am currently running one group consisting of 6 players and another group consisting of three players, though the latter group is very sporadic due to respective IRL commitments. All of these individuals are people I met from playing on roleplaying servers in World of Warcraft.
I had never actually played real D&D prior to this; my oldest brother DMed for 2nd edition back when he was in high school and I had played the original Baldur's Gate games. Learning the rules of 5th edition was pretty easy, but the Player's Handbook did a much better job of teaching me how the game actually works. The 5E Dungeon Master's Guide is, quite honestly, terrible at its job.
A lot of early games consisted of me just saying, "Look, none of us really know what we're doing so we're going to make mistakes" since almost all of my players had little no experience. I pretty much had to deep dive brainstorm on how all their classes worked.
One of the things that really annoys me with 5E (or maybe this is just a modern TTRP experience) is that Dungeon Masters are expected to learn and know everything yet there seems to be minimal expectation for the PLAYERS to do their share. It always annoyed me when I was putting in work to make games run smoothly but my players would never bother to make sure they read their spells properly, knew how their classes worked, or making sure their character sheets were properly updated. And since I run all my games via roll20 with D&D Beyond and the beyond20 extension (i.e. literally automating just about everything) I found that there was no excuse.
I'm one of those weirdos who actually likes to DM instead of being a player, and I've developed a method to my madness when it comes to preparing for games, but it would be a lot easier for new DMs if players actually bothered to do their part to make the game easier. I see a lot of videos on "How to be a good Dungeon Master" but you almost never see any videos on being a good player.
You suffer the super casual players in every system. We had one of them back in my very first game in 3rd edition in Highschool back in 07
Best way to get them on track is to skip their turn until they know exactly what they want to do and how it works. Some learn to get into the game, some don't. You have to weigh whether you are willing to kick out the ones that won't to have a smoother game
You are right ttrpg responsiblity has always leaned heavily on the dm/gm. In some cases very little is required of the player which boils down to this is your character, your character does this stuff, & you roll these dice. Many never crack a rulebook.
I feel the same way
@@priestesslucy I will have to try this
@@JohnBrown-wk4io its fine that this is true, as long as the players don't have an imbalanced idea about this or treat the DM with unrealistic standards and expectations.
Good points, before I watched I wasn't really sure that there was an DM shortage. More of DM stress than shortage, but i can see the point where this would lead to shortages. TBH my stress and hard time to prepare for one of my campaign has led for me to not DM at all. Its been 1 year since I last DMd for this group, but I'm getting back to it.
Thanks. I was an early adopter of 5e, so I figured I had a different perspective than most people and used that to analyze what the problem might be. Working on a Game Development degree has given some perspective as well.
This is the best, most complete, and most succinct rundown of the problem I have seen. I've been lazy on this topic and default to "WotC's design philosophy is almost entirely player-facing, not DM-facing" and call it a day. I think I will point people at this video from now on.
Also, first video, and I really like the twin thread of communication you weave between audio and video. It's an underrated skill, and makes engaging with the video a lot more fun, especially for a snack-sized one like this.
i have discovered dnd about a year ago and started out as being a Dungeon master for my group and i did and still do absolutely love being a DM and my Players loved my first dnd campaign as well which was completely homebrew by the way. The Feedback after we finished our first campaign was amazing still some things to improve and i will my non existent confidence will make sure of that i think. And now we are a few sessions into my second campaign and so far its going well.
i dont think i will ever give up being a DM i just enjoy it to much for that. I will just not DM for Players that show themselves of as some of those adversarial or toxic ones.
That's awesome. I like to run games more than I like to play in them too. Sounds like you have a good group and most of what I talked about in this video doesn't apply. Thanks for the comment.
Been playing for 46 years. This vid hits all the nails squarely on the head. Thank you.
As an, almost, forever DM I feel most of what you expressed here, I spend hours thinking up storylines and arc for my players, build and create a living world for them to inhabit with history and a future often moulded by my players actions in various campaigns, I try to plan ahead for every eventuality and conversations with NPC and yes the players still find a way to go "off Piste". I would posit one more reason for the shortage of DMs, and it's that there are probably as many if not more DMs than ever before but the number of potential players has grown exponentially as a result of popular entertainment resulting in a "perceived" or "apparent" shortage of GMs. The advantage for me as a DM dealing with this glut of players is that I can very very choosy as to who I wish to have sitting around my table, currently I have three long-term players from when I got back into running D&D in 4E, and 3 newer players who are the distillation of 6 players, one I had to ask to leave due to attitude, one who left giving no reason and one who moved across the country unexpectedly. I happen to be lucky to live on the outskirts of a mega city (London) so all I ever need do is put a post out on various social media platforms to garner a large number of responses from players wishing to join my games. So I would suggest that if you are happy to get rid of players that don't suit your table, and that in itself is a skill acquired over many years dealing with people, then this is one of the best times to be a GM as you should rarely be short of potential players, even if like me you insist on only round-the-table, face-to-face play.
Yeah dealing with an adversarial player at the moment. I get I was one too but, I choose a home-brew summoner as a wizard. Sure I had NPC’s but, I folded like paper when the DM needed me to and if I lost concentration I lost my summons. I walked into a black pudding to buy my group some time, my character not knowing oozes, ect ect.
And after two years I am quitting my group as DM before the friendship turns sour to the point of friendship death. I taught my group that my homebrew was wine to the modules beer. Both good in own right but, you don’t just get to run me over as a DM.
Thanks for your comment. Sorry to hear that about the group, but that might be the wisest thing to do. Friends are hard to come by these days.
When I was starting to get back into the idea of revisiting my old campaign that started in the 80's I looked into the idea of running 5E...
I got myself on Roll20 and started looking at the various social media sites that dealt with online gaming.
I would NEVER in my darkest hour dream of putting myself through the Hell of DMing for the majority of people who seem to be complaining about a lack of DMs.
Apparently, everything I ever did and still do as a DM is wrong.
I start characters at first level... I don't offer an allowance to spend on Magic Items...
I tell my players to not write protracted back stories and whatever they do write they should not expect me to use them as the basis for anything more than background... they are "Background" stories after all, and not "This is what I want you to write specifically for my character" stories. I spend the days, weeks and usually months writing the plot and the adventures... so you'll allow me the freedom to choose what that is.
That brings me to "Railroading."
Apparently having a series of adventures linked by a common thread is "Railroading" and that is bad.
What a DM is expected to do is wait for the players to come to a group decision as to whose bullshit backstory they want to pursue first, and I am then supposed to contrive a suitable adventure. Then when that is over that player is likely to leave when their story is done and they get bored of not being the centre of attention, and the remaining players who didn't leave because they wanted to be the centre of attention will eventually disband and blame the DM for not focusing enough them.
When I was younger, in my late teens I longed for the notion that one could become a "Professional" DM and play D&D for a living.
But looking at the bullshit that modern 5E DM s have to put up with pandering to the whiny little shits who've been playing three weeks and think they know how an RPG should be run... it would probably turn out to be one ofthe most soul destroying jobs I could imagine having to do.
I settled back into AD&D 1&2E hybrid, and do not play with anyone I have not vetted. Most are as old as me, or near enough, and we have a wonderful time. No one talks about "Optimised Builds" or "Min-Maxing" and no one demands to be the centre of attention.
I haven't played 5E enough to come to a decision as to whether I like it or not... but the reason those players can't find a DM is simple. They are too entitled, too self important and generally too stuck up their own arse to realise that ANY one of THEM could be the DM
Listing briefly my experience as a 5e DM
I started out running at my local hobby store (pre-covid) and the amount of players that rocks up treats me like a punching bag to test out their OP build that was taken from the internet (they wouldn't admit it but I knew, because I do watch those same build guides because I do enjoy picking those builds a part and oh boi, are most of those builds soo flawed) was immense! But those people are not invited back by me.
I'd say it took about a year running games there weekly, just churning through players until I got the group I have now, they have become my closest friends now, we have moved onto playing on VTTs and/or in person and we haven't returned to playing in store (not that we can a our local hobby store went out of business thanks to covid 😢)
As for context, I love to run more narrative style of game but I still enjoy some of the crunch but I have always been on the look out for a new system and honestly Pathfinder 2e is a strong contender!
thanks for the comment. Covid killed the hobby store where we used to play as well.
Been DMing for many years. I erased a lot of the expectations from a typically 5E group I DM for by using my entirely custom system lol. Believe it or not they actually like the system and it allows for me to give them challenges without insane complaints about stuff. But yeah 5E players are hard to DM for typically.
Thanks for the comment. Sounds like you got a good thing going there.
I've experienced this too: once you move to another system and start out with a good enough one shot that encapsulates what you're going for, even 5e longtime players break out of their habits and expectations, though your mileage will vary on this
This video encapsulates my idea of the game so well.
In my most recent campaign, I spoke with my players beforehand on the type of game I enjoy running: a low-magic sword and sorcery type of campaign. They were fine with it and I imposed some heavy restrictions on class and race. So far, it is one of the best campaigns I have ever run and my players seem to love playing in it. It is enjoyable to have players actively working with myself and each other to make an incredible story unfold.
I am happy that this video popped up as a suggestion from the YT algorithm. I definitely share the feeling that there is a toxic push towards not trusting the DMs in the 5e community. Why so much content targeted towards becoming a better DM and so little to toward becoming a better player? The not-so veiled assumption is that the DM responsibility is to entertain the players.
I started DM AD&D back in the mid-80's and stopped with version 3.5 when it got to the point where there was just too much material to know. I used to be able to run an AD&D game from my DMG & PH, with an occasional reference to MM, MM2 or FF.
When AD&D Unearth Arcana dropped, it was a very big deal and it took a while to incorporate the classes, spells and other changes into our games... and some DM's didn't want to even allow it.
Now from what I'm seeing 5e had books and other supplements that come out on a very regular basis, and players (in general) seem to want to use their newest "X" because it does "Y" to benefit them. And heaven forbid if you are not familiar enough with "X" to allow it in your game or you feel that "X" is overpowered and is part of the power creep that seems to be prevalent in gaming.
In my opinion, gathered from what I see at our local Con and talking with the players, there is too much for a Good DM to be fluent in... it has to be intimidating for the fledgling DM.
I am absolutely guilty of the crazy absurd combo monster characters. However, I also walk the DM through it, and most importantly, explain how to shut it down. My current combo monster, Eliza, is a PF1e Spheres of Power build that is an aura stacking, debuffing beast of a character. She's also critically weak to being stunned, true striked, and anti-magic effects. The DM knows this. I know the DM knows this. In universe characters know this. And when she dueled an NPC who knew her, the first thing that NPC did was break out Spheres of Power's equivalent to True Strike. That wasn't toxic, or metagaming, or anything of the sort. The character knew how Eliza fought, and adapted accordingly. I only won because of some VERY lucky rolls, and by all accounts, should have lost. And this led to some great character development from the results.
If you're gonna build some crazy combo build, make sure the DM knows what you're doing and how to interact with it. And if the DM interacts with it in a way that shuts that down, accept it. And make damn sure the build is your own, and not something you pulled off the internet just to feel strong. Because it's okay to want to make a powerful, mechanically intensive character. And it's okay to want some custom stuff if it fits and it is interesting. But there are a bunch of other people, including, yes, the DM, at the table. And everyone deserves to have fun.
high responsibility low authority for GMspaired with the elevation of adversarial players as virtuous model gamers is a great point thst hits the nail so squarely. I used to enjoy prep too, now 5e prep is just pain
Thanks for the comment.
I've actually never run into any problems described in this video. My session prep runs an hour or two at most if I'm making a new map, but usually less. I find 5e rules simple and easy to understand. And if there are lots of adversarial players, I haven't met them.
Setting aside game mechanics, I don't find running a game to be much different than when I first did it back in the late 80s. Except we never used maps back then.
I DM'd a table up to level 20. By level 12, it started to become impossible to actually challenge the group.
I think of that as the "Final Challenge" for DM Academy; kind of like picking up the hot iron bowl with your forearms in Kung-Fu.
I've DMed a D&D5 campaign for 2.5 years, up to level 20.
My conclusion: after 12+ level, do not try to challenge your players. Instead, give them leave to run wild and gently direct them to make things move forward.
DM is not the player's enemy, he/she is their co-conspirator. He is the fan of their characters. It's about changing one's mindset.
Lol, that fits with what I read in the rules. The game ends at level 10, I only use the higher level rules for enemies...
@@BouncingTribbles that's why there is almost no official support for high tier play. Most DMs don't have what it takes to run a high-octane lvl 20 D&D game.
@@arcanefeline most players don't either. People forget what they can do as soon as it takes multiple sheets to track, it's remarkable. Makes me miss playing level 15+ 3rd edition with my 2 DM buddies. It goes both ways, if a player wants to run a country or command an army you both need to be able to work through the logistics and problems. Same with multidimensional travel, though that falls more directly on the DM having multiple settings ready. The real reason high level play is hard to do is because it's just complicated: you don't just have to prep the encounter, you need to have a whole multiverse at your fingertips, or at the very least a whole world with plots and motivations.
The video makes an important point: a lot of players view their DM as a meat computer, but they are another player of the game. When I wanted to lead a troop of 100 soldiers to occupy the fort of a lich I didn't ask the DM to figure that out, I asked to borrow the book with troop rules and wrote everything out myself. You're not going to get high level play out of an average player, you're going to get average play
Ironically the term homebrew has a lot of love up here in the Pacific Northwest where D&D has been homed for the past 23 years.
We love our one man shop microbreweries and micro cideries and micro wineries xD
Why would anyone not 'homebrew' their setting and adventures? I've never seen the enjoyment in just reading the game out of a book.
@@davidmorgan6896 Most GMs homebrew, whether they start out that way or branch into it.
The video creator just has distaste for the term homebrew in relation to homemade content, but he is very pro custom content
@@priestesslucy I hate the term too. It implies, to me, that it is somehow less than commercial products. Less clichéd and less railroady perhaps, but that's all. Maybe handmade could catch on.
@@davidmorgan6896 Feels like a cultural dissonance.
Like I said up here in this part of the country we love homebrew. Sure beats commercialized swill
I've been in the Pacific Northwest, and the micros are pretty good. The term homebrew probably means something different up there. I get that. Thanks for the comment.
I found your video in my recommendation. I addressed this in a video of my own a while back. And one thing that has always frustrated me is that a lot of the new content is made for players. So DMs have to constantly keep up to date on new rules and errata and administer that in their game. Or if not, there is a feeling of pressure even when you don't include those new rules. This focus on the player (because it makes WOTC profit) can be a herculean task for new GMs or players who don't respect the GMs time and energy.
It’s funny you said you had problems with players pushing back against your home brew.
I had a similar problem except I was using the actual rules. Rules like Darkvision still gives you disadvantage or -5 to your perception/passive perception and my players thought I was pulling this stuff out of thin air and only trying to make their life harder.
When I pointed it out to them that this was in the core rules, they apparently decided it messed with their head canon too much “If I’m playing a Dwarf and I’ve had darkvision my whole life I should be able to see perfectly in the dark! I don’t need a torch”. Definitely a major factor why I don’t DM anymore…the 45 minute long arguments over the rules in the middle of a session when their should be 0 interpretive wiggle room. Especially when the first few pages of the Players handbook states “Ultimately, the Dungeon Master is the authority on the campaign and its setting, even if the setting is a published world.”
Oddly enough, bathtub gin distilled through an old radiator somewhat fits the 5e homebrew process...
That's insulting to bathtub gin
Thanks for the comment. It can be.
For good or for ill, I'm the Forever DM, and have been since I first started playing in 1978 or so. My campaign has always been comprised of (at first) my like-minded college friends and (later) my husband and children. For that reason, I believe I've been mostly insulated from toxic players; and since I'm the Forever DM, I've rarely had a chance to be a player, though there have been opportunities for me to pass the responsibility to someone else. And yes, I have seen, over the years, some examples of toxic players and DMs. So to answer your point, "would I run a D&D 5e campaign?" Yes. I already am. I have segued from the original white box of books through all editions except 4th. I've dabbled in Pathfinder as a player. I'm now running a 5e campaign, and I'm teaching my younger son (who is now 33) to be a DM. I think playing within the family and close friends has kept the "bad players" at bay. But what it really boils down to is communication. This is my campaign, and I'm the DM, but I'm also a person playing the game, and it's my right to have as much fun as my players. I'm the one who has set up the world and who decides what will be allowed with respect to levels of techonology/magic and race/class; I'm the one with the story to tell, but my players are the ones telling it. Their adventures, and how they comport themselves, determines which direction the story will go. I can draw on all the experience that 40+ years of being a DM has given me to adjudicate the rules, but I never forget that it is their character that these rules affect. It's not a matter of DM vs. player, and it never has been. If you're stressing out over your campaign, re-examine how you approach the game, talk with your players, and work out solutions. It really is as simple as that.
I think it really depends on your group. I forever DM for my best friend, his brother, son, cousin, and another close friend. I like to homebrew around modules and get a lot of feedback from my players so I know what works and what doesn’t. I also delegate responsibility to my veteran players. One is the “scribe” or note keeper, another has their bag of holding and manages their storage unit inventory (lol). After 1-1/2 years they’re about to wrap up Mines of Phandelver at lvl6. Granted my newer players /did/ have some Skyrim moments, but the whiplash of the consequences corrected that behavior fairly quick (with my vets smirking at each other). Communication is key, as are managing expectations. None of my players foster the “gotcha!” culture of surprising or “beating” the DM. They understand good play/decisions = good rewards/experience. I believe very much in the Rule of Cool, but my players also understand “I won’t kill you, but I won’t stop you from killing yourself”
I've always played 4e, but some friends on discord got into dnd recently and asked me if I would be willing to dm for them as they know I play and have DMed before. It is 5e. I prefer 4e, but man DMing brand new players who have no TTRPG experience and most of whom hardly play games beyond minecraft (they just aren't very big on games, they aren't kids), it has been such a blast. I can wing it with remembering the different names for stuff in 5e and dumb down combat to not even doing opportunity attacks because they're still rereading their sheets to attack or figure out if they have a skill or spell they'd like to use. They get giddy about rolling their d20. I dread the fact I only have oh so long before they've learned how to RP, they've learned combat, learned to not take everything at face value with a single solution. I want to teach them and slowly help them get better but man am I gonna miss these days once we get there and I won't wanna DM as much because it really does become a pain. At least currently it takes them so long to get through stuff that a decently long one shot I made ended up taking 3 sessions to complete. I feel far more rewarded for the time I put in than I deserve, but that will dissipate oh so soon into nothing but a fond memory. The culture is a problem, and 5e characters becoming far too varied in utility is also a problem I totally agree.
Thanks for the comment. Noobs can be fun, especially if they treat your world like a real place and make decisions without knowing what the "man behind the curtain" does.
Good to see someone who loves 4e. It really is a very good system. I played it for some time before 5e when I got back into it. Once everyone moved on to 5e I fort of had no choice. 5e is still good. enjoy it.
@@SomoneTookMyName agree. If people like tactical combat, or big set piece sort of fights, it's very good.
It awkwardly needs exactly enough prep that you can't be instantly ready for a party randomly starting a fight in town for no reason, but a planned encounter goes much faster and yields a better experience than 5Es fairly boring enemies.
A shame it got memed to death when it came out.
As someone who is wrapping up his last 5e game for now i couldn't agree more on the rules and prep side, while i take some issues with your points to the culture they are very much understandable and explain a part of the problem.
The main reason i am stopping to run 5e is because i finally looked over the horizon at other games and found some that actually cater to how i want to run the game much better, and with 5e's lack of help i see no reason to stick with it at all.
we still play 3.5 and switch off dming duties. we've talked about switching to 5e but never actually have 😂 kinda glad we've stayed stuck in the past!
I haven't learned 5th yet, but I have read a lot about it and spoken to people irl who play it.
As far as I can tell 3rd edition is just a better game in general, particularly if you include all three sub editions (3.0, 3.5 and Pf1) like my group does.
The only merit I've found in 5e is that it's simpler for a brand new roleplaying neophyte to pick up without any guidance from an experienced player
Thanks for the comment. We switch between DMs in our group as well.
First vid of yours I was ever recommended. I have to say I love the name. It's both iconic and funny.
Why funny? 'Grog' is a type of alcohol. 'Nard' is slang for 'a testicle'. "Old Beerball" is just hilarious to me.
From what I understand, it comes from the French word for "grumbler" , but I like "Beerball" better.
@@oldgrognardsays Oh, that's where the disconnect was. So it should be pronounced like Gron-yard rather than Grog nard like I was doing? That makes much more sense. But yeah, either way, I guess. I like both.
I'm a tabletop novice and I've been DMing pathfinder 2e for a few sessions now, and it has been going incredible. The sheer ammount of build variation and creativity my players are allowed has made me actually excited to DM. I wonder if i would have felt like this playing 5e. Honestly i dread to even think about how it is to run this game
Game I'm currently in as a player actually had a moment that highlighted this.
Two of our players jumped down the DM's throat for giving an enemy Spellcaster access to third level spells, specifically fireball.
We have had access to fourth level spells at this point for about 3 months now mind you.
I like the group on the whole but this specific blowup pissed me off because despite my OWN wizard making active use of the spell, and REGULARLY Counterspelling fucking everything, the guys we're fighting slip one thing past me and we have to hear a 5 minute rant on why fireball isnt allowed on NPCs because its "Been Overpowered since second edition"
To anyone who believes that spell is BS name for me a spell of that level or lower outside of Lightning bolt because it's just "fireball but line effect" that has so much variance on its damage that it can - when cast at level - do either 48 damage... or *TWO* damage for the low low cost of burning literally 1/3rd of the resources of the guy casting the spell and making a pitifully easy Dex save.
Hell I even mentioned that even if I had known that was coming, I'd have STILL Counterspelled the single target charm instead because the last thing we need is our own fighter being turned against us at worst, or simply inactive - at best - for potentially 3+ rounds.
My point in all of this? Yes, this video is accurate in that players have their own ideas of what's fun and the "community" 100% is encouraged to lay all responsibility for differing definitions of that word at the DMs feet and be complete twatgoblins when there is a clash between the two.
I've been a DM myself since 3rd edition and I sure as shit dont wanna DM 5 witnessing this level of a *basic* breach in protocol being seen as fine.
Thanks for the comment. I do think a lot of the problems with 5e aren't actually with 5e, but with the culture surrounding it. Your story exemplifies this.
I plan on finding an excuse to use the word "twatgoblin" as soon as possible.
The more I hear stories like your the more I never want to GM for a game of 5e for randos. Running 3.5e, and my friends do not complain at all when I throw enemy wizards dropping Cloudkills and Black Tentacles, and supporting them with Frontline disarming or tripping Warblades. I run hard games, I can't stand that sort of entitlement.
Well to be super clear, these guys arent some random people, these *are* friends, and they're NORMALLY fine, until something happens that goes against what their definition of "balance" is. After that event however I talked privately with the DM and asked his permission to run a single fight built at half the expected ECL for a party of our level for the purpose of making a point, and he agreed.
This dude has never DMd before, and he's not doing a bad job.
I dont know WHEN he's going to tag me in for the proposed encounter as of yet, and told him I dont wanna know and to just do it when he feels the timing is fine. But I'm interested to see what they think of game balance after they receive a 15 year DM deliberately going full-tilt at half their on-paper power level *once*
Though as amusing as that thought is, I DO worry if I'm the asshole going a little far.
@@Rebellions That's fair, to be clear on my own reply I specified randos because I have complete faith in my friends to take things as they come. My encounters tend to be full-tilt desperate struggles, and they've accepted it and roll with the punches.
As for your situation, I really understand the frustration, but I think springing something on them like that out of nowhere will only make things worse and get them mad without really getting your point across. I think you should be direct and forthright with them if it's that much of an issue. Afterwards, you are free to run your encounter.
I fully understand the temptation though, I have had a couple of obnoxious-ass players I could tell many a story about.
There... Are players like that? Wut?
Did the DM just sit there and take that? That's a one-warning > Ban in my books.
I've always preferred DMing, myself. I just think its so fun to get to set up the story and help the players write their own ending. I also really like all the work I do for prep and the challenge of having to think on my feet when the players do something unexpected. I've been very fortunate to have an awesome group of players.
The influence of video games is a BIG thing I noticed when 5e came out and I took the hobby up again after a twenty year break. Not just the way players interact with the game's systems, but the way they interact with the game world. The world isn't a place the characters inhabit, it's another system that is there to provide them with quests and story and NPCs to interact with, and give them a sandbox in which they can do anything they want without significant consequences. I've had players genuinely surprised that after they insulted the Duke, went on a drunken rampage, and spent the night sobering up in a cell, the world didn't just 'reset' the next morning and let them go about their business as usual.
I DM for a group a campaign set in a specific hex-grid (10x12). With two major cities and a lot of significant monsters with their “area of effects” that then, causes the minor encounters. There's a total of 6 major “entities” and 12 randomly placed “power-sources” around the land - some of them in the same space of the entities. I took around a day to draw the Map (all time spent added) but could've gone for a premade. I used only one day worth of free time to prepare and tie it all together. DM'ed around 20 sessions of it and still don't need more than reading my notes (written during play) and background points on specific places, to run the game. Probably won't have to prepare nothing on 20+ more sessions.
I mean, it took me a WAY LESS to prepare than I played. It only happens because I'm a experienced DM, I know what I really need to prepare, what I can do on the fly and, mostly important, what I can let the players create - yeah, you can go and tell the players “Well, that shop you want, how do you imagine it ? What's the shop keeper's name ? Ok. That's it.”
What I understand is causing that massive DM shortage is the books not teaching the DM to prepare, only the rules they want you to play by. The DM work is not on the Rules Book.
I DM 5e, and started about a year ago. I recognise most of your points. 5e players on social media are incredibly toxic.
Great video, I agree 100%. I've been playing since 1978 and lately have been trying to figure out broadly what the difference is in the games I play in now, or DM in now, compared to those of the late 70s and early through mid 80s. I've been trying to think of it outside of the system, outside of the rules, to see if I can identify a sort of "meta" difference in my personal experiences.
I came to a conclusion that is totally in line with your points, I just used different language to describe them. As a starting point, as I was reflecting about this the early games I played in way back in the early 80s were focused on the campaign. The PCs supported the campaign. They certainly had their own stories within the campaign about their adventures and such, but everyone at the table was focused on the campaign, with the PCs being used to bring the campaign to life. We all played multiple characters, characters died all the time, etc., which of course prompted a focus on the campaign because it was the only constant. Most of the games I play in now focus on the characters, not the campaign. It's almost as if the campaign world does not exist outside of the experiences of the PCs. I'm honestly not trying to say one approach is necessarily better than the other, but I am saying that these different world views create a VERY different playing experience, both for the players and the DM.
I came to another realization that is related to your point about having all the responsibility but none of the authority, I just came to a slightly different conclusion. By adopting this second worldview/approach of the game world existing in terms of the PCs' experiences and perceptions as I described above, this has essentially taken the DM's "character" away from them. The campaign now primarily exists in relation to the PCs, it is less of its own free-standing "character" played by the DM like it was in the earlier games. As a player in the early 80s I remember experiencing the game as a great unknown and exploring to see what it was like, much like how we experience the real world. Just as I had created my character who was free to do what I wanted, the DM had created a game world that had its own goals, expectations, and freedoms to act and change in response to what I did as it saw fit. Few things were actually that predictable back then. But in the games I am playing now, the DM is indeed a "meat computer" as you put it without getting much opportunity to develop and advance their "character" (the game world). Players always focus on the importance of player agency, and rightly so. But the cultural expectations now, ironically, have reduced the agency of the DM by taking away their "character." The DM is not encouraged to create an encounter or room in a dungeon in a way that is consistent with how they believe it would be given the world they have created, having it fit together into some larger aspect of the world that the players may not even ever know about. Instead, the DM is constrained by things like challenge ratings. Interestingly, the very things like challenge ratings that are seemingly intended to reduce "competition" between the players and the DM only draw attention to it, because if the PCs encounter something that is beyond their expectations given their level and such, the DM is "cheating" and is therefore playing against them. Comments that I have read in other forums say things like, "the DM should make the players feel like their PCs are going to fail, and then at the last minute they succeed." If I am a player in a game like this, assuming I don't know that this is being directed by the DM behind the scenes, this does sound exciting, and I do appreciate the mindset of trying to create an exciting game for the players. But if I'm the DM in these games, it doesn't sound like much fun. But it is important to note that this is NOT because I would be catering to the wishes of my players per se, but instead because I have little agency outside of the experiences of the players to "run" my "character."
I'm not sure that taking away the DM's character in this way is that much different of an undesirable process than a DM railroading a player into only one action during a game. Seems quite similar to me. And as you said ... who wants to play that game?
A shortage of 5e DMs means it’s the DMs that have the power to play the game they want. I have introduced a number house rules to temper the power of players and make my life easier. Yes was a little grumbling about not liking some of my choices by some of my players, but I just let all that wash off my back. Guess what, the players don’t quit to join a game more suited to what they want, because where are they going to go? There’s a shortage of DMs after all.
Want a DM? Honestly, treat it like you would organize any team. Help the DM in ways that you would want. ASK WHAT THEY NEED!
Offer and follow through with help in coordinating, communicating, and setting up games and hosting.
When making a request for a game, keep your expectations of commitment low. Ask for short games and campaigns.
In-play, share your resources and rules expertise. Offer help to other players. Step up against bad play/behaviour.
Remember to reinforce good play behaviour & cheer on the DMs & other players.
If the group gels and the DM and players are having fun, the scope might expand naturally.
Thanks for the comment. Managing expectations, communicating, and being helpful can mitigate a lot of problems.
What a great video. Dude, that was perfect. I'm a DM and you are 1000% spot on.
Yep, you've certainly identified much of the problem. I am guilty of perpetuating the problem myself. I used to be able to run games at the drop of a hat. Those were the days when we played in person, in real life around a physical table. We'd have a vinyl mat and watercolor markers, some dice and a box of figurines. Drawling a few lines on the mat and describing the dungeon was sufficient, no prep work required frankly. Nowadays I'd have to learn all the intricacies of a table top simulator which is frankly daunting. I'd have to scout the web for map and prop resources, know what resources I've acquired and where to find them in a labyrinth of folders, get expert at piecing all these details together. I'd have to spend hours putting together character and NPC sheets sufficient for that TTS to actually play, and none of this permits the sort of seat of the pants play I used to be able to do in the meat world.
As down as so many talking heads on UA-cam have been about AI DMs of late, I really do think this is part of the solution. Not because the AI will supplant the DM, they won't, at least not anytime soon. Rather they will provide tools for GMs to largely remove the impediments I mentioned above...
"AI, give me a small underground lair in the forest populated by a bandit gang of orcs sufficient for a one evening adventure for my existing gaming group of average difficulty." Presto, nice map, character sheets for NPCs ready, a dozen unique Orc tokens on the map, and some adventure twists in notes for the GM. Play starts in five minutes.
I already get part of my Player Fix (Semi Forever DM here) playing with an AI DM.
Requires some DM Assistant work from the player to summarize the story and keep it fresh in the AI's context space, but it works well
wow you really hit the nail on the head. I love DMing like Fate or OSR but hate DMing 5e but couldn’t put a finger on the culture aspect of it.
Yeah D&D just has that toxic rules lawyer mentality to it. I see it at pretty much every group I've played in.
Yeah, there's a DM shortage. To be fair, there have always been more players than DMs, but it wasn't always a problem.
Someone recently described 5e's design purpose as "to protect their brand." I think this directly contributes to the problem. Characters in 5e are *powerful,* and building stories and encounters around them is surprisingly difficult compared to other game systems. Either the players steamroll through whatever the GM planned, or things go horribly wrong and suddenly a TPK is on the table.
I think this is intentional. There's clearly a way to build encounters in a "safe" way, and that way is demonstrated in the published modules. Map design, encounter design, character builds and advancement... All of it follows a hidden proscription that you don't notice at first, but it's there.
I usually only run 5e if a group specifically asks for it. Mostly, I prefer to run systems that prompt players to look up from their character sheets and think about their situation critically. That's usually due to either a crunchier system with lots of weird options or a very loose system that doesn't give you a box that your character acts from. For 5e, I can get the same results by telling the players during Session 0 that "I don't balance my encounters." The knowledge that they can easily walk off the map and into an ancient red dragon's lair at level 2 is usually enough, but that's what it takes.
Thanks for the comment. I agree with the last bit you said about encounter balance. I was even going to do a video about it. I might still.
I agree that all the issues you bring up affect the willingness of players to transition to DMing, but the answer is more likely the simple fact that D&D 5e is still growing rapidly. This means the ratio of new players to experienced players is pretty high, and new players will be resistant to DMing.
Because D&D is the main introductory game for the RPG hobby, it’s basically the only system where players are looking for DMs. Every non-D&D table starts with a GM who wants to run something different and goes looking for players, or an existing table with a GM/DM that wants to try something different.
Does anyone know how many 5E DMs create their own worlds these days? That was a big part of the fun and I could see how running someone else's modules in someone else's world (official or not) would lose a lot of that.
I do… but because it’s easier than using something premade, not because it’s more enjoyable.
I have ran both. l'm honestly enjoying running the forgotten realms more, for 5e at least. The amount of depth in the setting gives me years' worth of content. I will probably run my own setting when I want to play some weirder fantasy though
Forever DM for 30 years, have never run a single module, always my own worlds and creations. Will use official modules for ideas at most.
Thank you. Succinct & excellent.
I might add, we have a generation of compliant and timid people, programmed by my generation [X] and Millenials, that have difficulty accepting the reins of power & authority and "ruling" the table as a DM. They are too afraid of becoming unpopular and subsequently alone.
Being a DM means sometimes walking alone.
Idk. Prep can take up a lot of time, but that's mostly system agnostic stuff once you know the rules and basic concepts.
When it comes to the cultural part, I have a feeling this might be a problem the DM's are creating for themselves or it might even be a US thing. I have yet to meet a player who doesn't respect the DM's ruling and I have been playing and GMing two to three times a week for the last couple of years. Then again, we don't have a DM shortage over here. Actually, it is much harder to find GMs who will run even slightly less popular systems.
I've seen a lot of the Matt Mercer Effect (new 5E players demanding that their DM be a clone of Matt Mercer while ignoring that he's a professional voice actor "running a game" for a bunch of other professional voice actors)
Thanks for the comment. A lot of the cultural issues may very well be a US thing.
Right there your statement "instead of giving the DM tools to challenge the players. They gave the players tools to challenge the DM" sums up what I've been thinking for a bit now really succinctly.
Thank you.
I have been a dungeon master since around 2015 and these are all the exact same thoughts that I came to about a year ago. And now anytime I try and bring up other systems people get scared that they're going to have to have some responsibilities when running a game instead of just kick back and let the DM do everything
From 87 -
Rules - Player Handbook, DMG & Monster Manual
Culture - Everybody had to DM at some point. (3 years at college, everybody got to DM a lot).
Yeah, I hear you. I DM for my son and a few of his friends and it isn’t fun for me. 5e is so nerfed, yet also power gamey, that it’s just exhausting for me as the DM.
Because I understand the balance of the game much better, I don't that many issues as a DM (I essentially had to help the DM as a player numerous times, so I learned the DM side of things in a no-risk situation).
But I totally get it. If a newer DM gets a proficient player such as myself, I will only cause them problems, as I could leverage my greater understanding against them.
This was why I had to help my DM. They were new, and a player was running amok due to understanding the rules better. I also knew the rules better than the DM and didn't like this other player running amok.
The reason I don't DM more is that, well, even if I have an intuitive sense of the game balance, the ability to write good stories, the memory to account for player abilities, the time to prepare, the ability to improvise, and more, I just. Don't go beyond my circle of friends.
I understand them. I know what they like to play, I know what they like to do, I know how they interact. I can easily account for them, for their benefit, my benefit, and the story's benefit.
There is a level of unknown with players you don't know. Are they new and don't know things? Are they experienced and know how to play? Are they a powerbuilder who wants to be annoying as heck? Who all is in my party, what is their ability with the game, and what is it they seek out of the game, what is it they seek out of me?
With my friends, I know them, and can intuit numerous things due to it, and can adjust based on them. With randoms, I have to learn them first.
And that's yet another thing to add to the pile of work a DM does.
I've been playing for over 30 years now, and most of the group is still the same from 2nd edition. And I feel all of the same things with the current edition. I consider myself a pretty experient DM, but everytime I want to block something "official", mostly because of scenario fitting and avoiding "goofy" stuff, I heard complains. Most of the material I homebrew is left there without use, unless is something obviously broken (I did that once just to check if the players were at least reading my stuff). And even 3rd party publishers that I tried to use are also discarded and never used. Also the scale is so tipped to the side of the players that it took me 8 sessions of almost non-stop combat to reduce their resources to a point where they start to feel challenged. It's hard to challenge your players in this situations. I agree 100% percent with your analysis.
its definitely a culture issue. my group formed independently just after 5e with us not really playing before with me as the DM, and thanks to the influence of old grogs i knew and how i ran the game, each of my 18 players became there own DM.
5e had some issues that they promised to address in the beginning and yet never have and now never will with the recent decisions making it clear how little they want us to fix it ourselves.
You're probably right, and I preffere 3.5, but that being said, this is what session zero is for, tell your potential players what your game and GM style is, with any homebrew, or official optional rules. If after hashing everything out in session zero they still want to play, great, if not, time for them to find a different GM who IS running the sort of game they want. I purely run dark Fantasy and horror on toril (because I'm clearly a sadomasochist lol), so if I allow a common starting magic item, sorry that Eberon rifle ain't gonna fly. I also run the more grueling rest rules who's name escapes me where a short rest is 8hrs and a long rest is a week (or in torils case, ren days). I run milestone so no point in murder hoboing, and on the rare chance I run xp, dealing with the threat gives xp, not killing monsters (so bribing the goblins is actually more resource efficient sometimes). Also, alignment has nuance, chaotic evil does not mean stupid and suicidal. You will get ambushed by four goblin archer in a tower holding action. I will toy with your emotions so if I still can't hurt your super hero, you bet you'll still feel when beloved characters get hurt (last night, one of a gay polar bear couple that pull the PCs wagon almost died in an epic battle, the PCs rushed to defend Derek because it would have destroyed Dave (if you have speak with animals, use it for drama, not comedy)). I also run flanking
I'm a first time DM starting in September 22. I have been running a campaign for 3 different groups every week. First group has 11 people, 2nd and 3rd have about 6 and 8. Anyway, the most challenging part for me has definitely been creating encounters. I have fairly low level characters dealing 60 points of damage in an encounter and defeating higher level monsters with ease. It's honestly a tad bit discouraging when I am not challenging my players and it's mostly because PCs in 5e are akin to demi-gods. Another problem I've noticed is huge " main character syndrome ". Every player wants to feel important, which is good and should absolutely be encouraged and given their time to shine, however, it's not fun when everyone wants their time to shine constantly. Nobody works together because they want to be the most important person in the group at every point possible. Again, it's very demi-god like when everyone believes their PC to be god's gift to the planet. The combination of these two things make D&D a little less fun for the DM and other players too
I can only imagine the disaster of main character syndrome in a group with 11 players....
I don't know how you handle a group that size so new into DMing, I feel like I would have run for the hills with a group over six during my first decade lol.
Granted I've heard in the old old days, back in Basic or 1st Edition huge tables like that were common. They even had a tradition of a single spokesplayer Calling out the group's decisions to the DM
@@priestesslucy Believe me, I was scared shitless when I first started. I still am every week haha. However I feel like it's honestly been a pretty positive experience. The only thing I could do without is that much chaos because these are a bunch of teenage boys so the chaos is at a level 100/10
Thanks for the comment, 11 people in a group, dang.
@@oldgrognardsays It's been insane, but also super fun and honestly I think it was a great intro to DMing. It's definitely overwhelming but it keeps me on my toes. Today I was playing with my last group of the week and I let one of the kids take oved DMing for the day and he had a blast! For the rest of the school year I'm going to let the kids try DMing because it makes me happy to see kids younger than me so passionate about a game I'm passionate about
11 people. Nightmare. I wouldn't even try unless that was a very rules-light system.
I completely agree with most of your points there. I've been DMing for about 40 years, and like you I started playing 5E in 2014 with the starter set, and thought 5E was great, and it is good. Its very simple on the surface but there is a lot of hidden complexity. There is a rather toxic trend online for 'killer character combos', and a lot of players do subscribe to this sort of thing. The DM is a leadership position, and too many 'want to be' DMs either refuse to accept this fact, or are unaware of it... Good DMs take a bit of time to mature. The game doesn't really allow for this 'maturity phase'. That said, even as an experienced DM, quite a few of the abilities caught me off guard and it took me awhile to really adjust to the style needed to genuinely provide a challenge for the players.
The included monsters, as written in the manual are absolute fodder for most PCs.
The toxic "Killer builds" were back in 1E too. I seen players try to play the "Jester" from one the April issues of Dragon mag. There was the Dorc. Half Dwarf Half Orc take the best of both races but drop all the drawn backs.
It started in 2nd Edition for me - I would have players that would refuse to play anything less than a Demigod. If they got an "average" set of stats, they would take their ball and go home if I wouldn't let them reroll. It finally got to a point where I was just like "F it, just write down whatever you want for your stats!" Of course this led to ALL 18's with them MAYBE putting a 16 or a 17 for stats that their class largely didn't need, ya know...to not appear biased or anything. One guy even insisted on playing his custom race of catfolk with a natural Dex of 21 and a natural Charisma of 19, because you know...kitty cats are naturally agile and cute, and everybody wubs them.
And let me guess... these games were crazy boring? A game that's not challenging is just a game of make believe. And that's fine if you like that, but for many people that gets boring really fast. There needs to be thread of danger, difficult things to accomplish, to keep the game interesting for more than a few sessions.
@@HereComeMrCee-Jay are stats really so impactful that all 18s would make 2e boring with zero risk?
I'm running a gestalt 3.P game right now, where the players had a choice of 18, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10 or 16 across the board and last session there were three times where a character dropped unconscious in a single encounter.
@@HereComeMrCee-Jay I'm pretty creative and eccentric in my DM'ing so I was able to make them fun, but yeah the encounters were trivial to where all I could do was to make the BBEG an HP sponge.
Thanks for the comment. I played in a short series of adventures in the early 90's that were like that. It was fun, but we didn't do it again after we got it out of our system.
I’m so lucky to be dming my friends in 3.5.
Thanks for the comment. It's great when you get a group/ system combo that works.
I’m in a P2E group and it’s actually hard to run a campaign because we all want to DM one and tell our stories.
Two of my worst experiences as a 5e DM has been centered around lopsided parties in terms of optimization. When the group as a whole is mostly interested in roleplaying or if the group as a whole is interested in min/maxing and challenging combat, it's fine. You just scale the difficulty to the degree of optimization for the party.
When you have a roleplay focus group with 1 min/maxer, however, things get messy on a mechanical level because you lose either way. Either the game's mechanical side is geared towards the roleplayers and the min/maxer will likely trivialize everything, or the game takes the power of the min/maxer into account and the roleplayers are punished for not being optimized. The nature of min/maxing in 5e means there isn't a middleground that the min/maxer won't trivialize or that won't punish the roleplayers. It's one or the other.
This is further complicated by the fact that people who know how to optimize, even if they are "holding back", can easily end up invalidating certain character classes even when they're not min/maxing. The "Rangers are bad meme" was always just a meme and even a PHB Ranger will invalidate any Rogue as a martial utility character when put in the hands of someone who understand the spellcasting feature in 5e. Pass Without Trace alone is a better stealth feature than anything a Rogue can do. Other examples are Monks not being able to benefit from feats to optimize martial combat, or the fact that having spellcasting (full-, half- or third-) is pretty much always better than not having it.
My first properly bad experience was around lvl 4. A fun roleplaying party, with a dwarven fighter (standard array), a goblin bard pretending to be a halfling (standard array), an elven druid constantly high on mushrooms (standard array), an elven ranger (standard array. More Legolas than Drizzt) and... a variant human Polearm Master/Sentinel Hexblade Warlock (point buy) with Devil Sight and the Darkness spell. It was fucking impossible to balance anything for that party and I was pretty new to DMing.
My second experience was a one shot at lvl 13, which is a lvl I am unlikely to ever revisit again. The party was also more roleplay than min/maxing with a Battlemaster Fighter, Vengeance Paladin, Soul Blade Rogue, Draconic blasting Sorcerer... and an optimized armor dipped Abjurer Wizard with a strong emphasis on defense, dmg and control. The Wizard was basically immortal and did more to solve every encounter / challenge than the rest of the party combined. And the Paladin did much more than the Fighter or Rogue ever could thanks to their spellcasting.
I've been in that situation as a player of a roleplayer with an optimized combo-oriented min-maxer in the group. It was incredibly frustrating. That player regularly argued with our DM too.
@@marchmaps I can assure you, it isn't fun from behind the DM screen either. I try to be very upfront about what sort of campaign we are going into with my players and that I am not above taking action to keep players in the party balanced.
For the broken combos thing I always warn my players up front that if they are bringing that sort of thing, their enemies will be bringing it right back at them. Usually that's enough to get the point across.
I honestly agree with the majority of what you said, but I would argue that this problem only erupts with new players.
When I was a new GM, I was flooded with new players that saw me as the obstacle, but I also saw them as the same.
As I've grown in experience, refined my players, and got more picky with how I set up my games, my games got more enjoyable, and my players began to play more fairly.
I think the reason why there is a lack of GMs is not due to the facts you outlined, but that GMs have a hefty weight on their shoulders in designing the game. Most people would prefer to be the actors of the story, a much easier job, compared to the playwright and director (which is what a GM is).
Thanks for the comment. I think it is most prevalent with new players.
Being the DM is always a hefty weight, regardless of system. In 5e they just thought it would be a good idea to make it heavier for some reason.
@@oldgrognardsays 5e is a failure of a system.
There is a huge, huge emphasis in 5 to have the GM make it all themselves. Because the rules are so loose, there is tremendous pressure on the GM.
Its a unique problem to 5e, I find. Other games, a great example being Stars Without Number, where there are lots of small, easy rules than can be picked and chosen.
5e is a good beginner system, but its a bad system
The mighty algorithm be praised! I would have never found your channel otherwise.
Just seeing the titles of your other videos I know I'm in for good here, and I love the video's style.
100%. 5e dumps more work on the DM, and it's not necessarily fun work. The statblocks are bloated and the options for players get ridiculous. Worst of all, there's an expecation from many 5e players for the DM to provide not only entertainment, but a 'balanced' experience where everyone gets to shine, everyone gets to win but paradoxically only where failure seems like an option, (but not really). I'm generalizing of course, but I have seen it a lot with 5e players.
Great breakdown of current issues with the current environment! Looking forward to more of your videos ❤❤
Thanks for the comment. My video schedule is in the community tab. I word the titles so they are plainly worded to tell what the episode is about. That way you can skip it if it's something you aren't interested in.
This is literally why I've dropped running 5E and gone back to PF 1E. Players complain that it's too complicated, but I can literally spend 1/4 the time prepping and create something great (not to mention that the worst adventure path is a legend compared with almost any published D&D adventure of the last 10 years.) And yes, I am aware of PF 2E. I've gotten the core book and looking it over.
This video is far more important than 99% of other D&D content on youtube. Thank you for sumarizing what has been my thoughts about 5e and current D&D culuture for a long time. You are appreciated.
this hit hard, exspecially when i am putting alot of work to make my custom games work, it is a hassle to have to prep for 2 days min for 1 level and then have players complain about the game, or the options they want but i don't let them have (exspecailly if i have listed it in session 0 or it just adds more prep work for me)
I’m pretty sure most players were still playing Pathfinder when 5e came out, not 3.5, considering Pathfinder had been outselling 4e for years by that point. And I predict that Pathfinder 2e will begin to outsell the next edition of D&D again. WOTC is betting on there not being an interest in other TTRPGs as if that hasn’t been an issue for them in the past.
Sadly unless 6E really drops the ball, I doubt we'll ever see Pathfinder get supreme against D&D. So long as D&D plays it safe, brand recognition alone will carry it. 4E was really a special exception because it was so different from prior editions. I seriously doubt WotC will ever take that route again.
Excellent insight. I'm designing my own rpg system and I'm going to take another hard look at it and see how many player side exceptions I've built in, and if I actually need them.
That stuff about the DM getting flak for ad hoc adjudications is so true. I ran a game of Dragonlance once with a player that refused to respect the 'cutscenes' so I had set a princess kidnapping set piece way off in the distance and got fussed at for giving the kidnapper a potion of speed to feed to his mount to ensure they got away when the player described how he caught up with them quickly and would have overtaken and stopped them. Player knew it was a cutscene to kick off the next section of plot, player figured I only gave the bad guy the potion once he was going to stop the cutscene, but player still kicked up a fuss about how "unfair" it was even after other players pointed out that it was something they'd likely have. It was like that one scene from The Gamers when the elf shoots the Bandit King with an arrow in the middle of his speech just because the surprise round 'timed out'. Some of my players just outright didn't accept anything but by-the-books as being balanced and wonder why I rarely if ever DM anymore...
I run 3.5 and I can make up an adventure from scratch in like... A few hours, a lot of that comes from decades long familiarity with that system I'm sure, because a lot of people seem to describe running 3.whatever as a logistical headache (which has not been my experience but I digress) my primary exposure to 5e comes from being excited people were finally talking about planescape again, and old cutter like myself can remember the 2e books being on the shelves, and so I read the basic rules for 5e and read the planescape supplement and... It felt like a hardcover magazine article about planescape, a summary, a metaphor even, for Planescape. I have much the same impression with the Van-Ricthen guide to the heavily abbreviated and uncannily separated domains of Ravenloft... So I came to view 5e as a bit of a casual gamer version of DnD, which is fine, but of very little interest to me from the get go. Now fast forward to me finding DnD nerds to talk to on social media only for them to A utterly dismiss any idea that doesn't come from 5e (as you mentioned) and B the moment I let slip that I am a DM by choice it's as if I've painted a target on my back and... I don't even play DnD with these MF. Once I answered a question someone had about customizing their druid, and I mentioned something about a fungus-zombie "necromancer" without referencing any game system, just pure fluff, and somebody came along to tell me 5e had something like that, I said like oh cool, I don't run 5e and people started to feel sorry for me...? I will never run 5e based off of my experiences with the culture surrounding it.
While I don't agree with some of the concepts here, the concept of "adversarial players" is an interesting concept to explore. I also strongly agree on starting DMs feeling pressured that they will make "bad D&D". I routinely run beginner's D&D adventurers to let people try out the hobby, and often, people will mention how they want to DM. They are almost always worried they will be poor at it. I usually tell them three things:
1. NO ONE knows all the rules. You learn what you can, then make notes on problems to look up later.
2. I usually tell them to browse combat well, have a list of skills in front of them, and use the 10, 15, 20 DC checks to make it easier.
3. You don't get better at things by avoiding them. Everyone starts somewhere. Give it a few sessions and, if you still are struggling or don't like it, take a break. After a little time, try again. Don't give up.
Excellent video, Grognard. Puts words on some things I have struggled with myself.
I'm really lucky to have a close personal friend who is very open to experimentation with gaming. His family are all board game nuts, so he's always happy to change rules, follow rules as best he can, and provide good positive feedback. When I moved to playing old school editions of D&D to make DMing easier and to challenge my players, none of my friends wanted to earnestly follow except for him.
I think I can say you've brought up a lot of excellent points regarding peoples hesitancy to take up the DM/GM mantel.
A big part of being a hero is the risk that you could easily end up dead. I'm not advocating for stacking the deck maliciously, but my biggest take away from old editions regarding situations you can't win is the "Rabbit of Caerbannog" tactic, AKA run and comeback if you aren't on a time crunch. Sometimes it's better to just loot and scoot rather than kick in the door and turn a B&E into a battle.
If you're quest is elimination of a threat, the lead up should be discovery and information gathering. It's usually not as fun if there's no challenge in the hunt.
And beyond all that, most people who played back in the early days didn't have anything other than the books for reference on how best to play. The DM was ultimately the judge of what did and didn't go down in a game. "Yes and..." Is a good tool for gaming but sometimes you also do just need to have the freedom to veto.
You can't really create anything for anyone if they're constantly trying to dictate how it's made.
There isn’t a DM shortage, there is a surplus of people no one wants to DM for.
As a forever DM I love my group of 3 years. They never try to ruin the game for me and embrace the storylines.
Only ever been a player, but I recently started DM'ing for some younger family members. I didn't expect to enjoy it so much. I'm not particularly good at it yet, but it's been its own kind of fun
You absolutely nailed my problems with the culture surrounding 5e. I feel like my concerns as a DM are addressed extremely well here. Often times when I introduce something unique or give a ruling, it's met with arguments or displeasure from the players. It gets frustrating and I'm glad that someone finally addressed this.
Wow...I don't know who you are playing 5E with, but having been a DM for 28 years, I haven't seen this philosophy of which you speak. There is always a lack of DM's because being DM is a HUGE undertaking and quite intimidating. It doesn't matter the edition. Wherever I go, I end up being DM. And I don't mind, as long as the players don't expect me to keep track of their characters abilities.
I haven't been at it as long as Grognard, but even with my little experience, 5e very much makes me not want to GM, and for several (if not all) of the reasons he listed. All the abilities the players get ruin it for me the most, and I am by no means a power trippin GM. I just like to have a semi-decent story with some interesting characters.
I thought maybe the whole TTRPG thing just wasn't for me, until I got into some other TTRPGs. Turns out it was just 5e.
4e never had this problem. It took 5 minutes to build an encounter and they were always perfectly balanced and easy to run. 5E takes hours and half the time the actual gameplay sucks. That's why I quit playing 5E.
Thanks for the comment. I think individual experiences vary, and I am glad that yours was good.
I don't like keeping track of player abilities either.
@@savevsdeath I run 3.P in a similar manner. I expect the players to use their abilities to deal with the shit I throw at them and my focus is just on stringing it together into a solid narrative without thinking specifically about what they can do.
I'd love to learn more about how to prep for hours and run for days.
I feel like I've started to grasp it running a very basic dnd rule set (basically just the 6 ability scores and player imagination) for some folks I go to church with, but I'm not quite there yet.
As one recently fallen out of love with 5e, this resonates.
Can you explain more what you mean by exception based rules? I think I get the gist, bit the way you brought it up sort of implies that prior editions did it differently? Is there an alternative within D&D tradition?
You are correct that those exceptions did not start with 5e.
Here is an example of what I think he is talking about. In 5e, an optional rule is to allow feats. There are lots of different feats that you can have, bringing flavor but also complexity to the game. In a way, each feat is an exception to the standard rules of combat.
In contrast, the game Dungeon Crawl Classics has a mechanic called a Mighty Deed that applies to fighters. You tell your Judge (DM) something crazy you want to do... "I jump from the balcony to the chandelier, then as I'm swinging I throw my dagger into the monster's eye in an attempt to blind him". If the Judge thinks that's feasible for a character at your level, you role your Deed die and you roll to hit... if both are successful, you did it!
So DCC has created one simple mechanic in the place of hundreds of Feats and in fact it can cover anything you can dream of. So that's a standard, consistent way to handle an aspect of the game... as opposed to have hundreds of feats, each one an exception to the normal rules. Make sense?
I think this is what he is getting at, anyway. Another way to think about it... crunch = complexity and it reduces the speed of the game and makes more things for the DM and players to manage. Crunch can be fun, but there are tradeoffs for sure. Games with fewer rules and fewer exceptions to rules tend to be faster and easier to play.
Cee-Jay got a point, but I also think it has to do with the fact that players are given SO MUCH stuff to do and each player/character can have WIDELY different mechanics compared to others. This puts a large pressure on the DM to not only conform to the base rules, but also to every single thing a PC can do. When you have 4 or more players each with numerous different abilities and mechanics that create more and more exceptions to those base rules and which might override each other and so on and so forth, things become very complex, very fast. This basically makes it almost impossible to balance or prepare in any sane amount of time. Unless you're being paid to DM (Hi Matt), then you're not going to want to spend the time necessary to run a group in that system that's actually fun (challenging but rewarding).
@@Thunderous333my game of choice ( 3rd edition and PF1) has incredibly wide arrays of things characters can do as well.
A GM would drive themselves insane trying to plan around their players abilities, and at the end of the day.... Players choose those abilities because they want to use them to solve challenges.
So why bother? Just have fun crafting diverse and imaginative adventures and encounters and let the players figure out how to use their abilities to handle it or how to gtfo if they can't
@@priestesslucy True. I was in the throes of emotion rather than reason. 5e can be prepared and balanced. Still, 5e and systems like it with their endless "This is the rule... UNLESS" drives me insane.
@@HereComeMrCee-Jay I don't think I fully agree with this. There is a difference between the rules-heavy rules-light dichotomy and exception based rules. Exception based rules are more about different objects of the game world running by different rulesets or having a light rule core, which is expanded by options and exceptions. You can have a heavy rule core like PF2e or 4e, though, and have a lot of options and crunch based on that heavy rule core without them becoming exceptions to the rule. I'd argue exception based rules happen, when you want to have the initial simplicity of a rules-light system AND the crunch of a rules-heavy system. Since the simple rules do not allow for crunch you have to make exceptions. So to solve that problem you gotta go rules-light like DCC/Savage Worlds and remove the crunch or go rules-heavy like PF2e and fully embrace the crunch. Having it both ways like 5e is great for players and terrible for DMs.
All good and valid points imo. I think the internet and online community have a LOT to do with the lack of those willing to run the game. "Living up too," imo, is one of the biggest problems in the community. Personally I would point out that those "great" GM's have great players and that most of the players making the demands are nowhere near that level of player, it runs both ways.
Great arguments but I have always felt that there was a shortage of gm/dm's in ttrpg in general. I feel your points along with the surge of new players has just added to the problem. Professional DM's aside dming can be a lot of work.
Deeply insightful! I’ll be watching more of your content for sure.
Thanks. I plan on making more content.
Forever DM here, you really hit the nail on the head here
Interesting points. I can see this being a basis for many DMs. Personally, I don't have these problems as I set up rule number 1 before new players play in our game. The DM has the final call on what's permitted. This isn't done in an authoritative way, and I even let my players know when I've made a particularly good or bad call as a way to demonstrate how to recover if bad or how it enhanced things if good. For example, just last week, a player had to make a saving throw. It was the standard full damage and a condition upon failure, or half damage if successful. The player rolled, got a pretty good roll against an extremely powerful foe. I didn't have the DC directly in front of me, so I just said, "I'll check the DC when we take a break, but we'll call that a pass for now." I assured everyone that I wouldn't retcon damage if the DC was actually higher and reminded them about rule 1. We took a break, I checked the DC and it turns out the player would have failed rather significantly (by like 5 points or so). I told them the proper DC going forward as the battle is expected to go on for several rounds but showed how my making the call kept things going and the action engaging. They all agreed. I also made a bad call in the same campaign of letting the druid wildshape into a beast we encountered as he technically met the criteria within the rules as written. However, the beast was from a 3rd party supplement and it's DC was a bit lower and stats a bit higher than they should be if aligning to other "official" beast stats. This became apparent when the druid wildshaped and threw the balance of the encounter off significantly. After the session, I took the time to explain my mistake to the group and how I was going to amend the wildshape rule to only allow for those beasts published in the official books. Everyone agreed that the beast was OP and the druid admitted how he felt like he was cheating using that form. As long as the DM lays out their role for running the gaming and sets the tone properly, I think 5e works rather well. It's a lot easier than AD&D (1e), which was my preferred edition until I had kids old enough to play. I've noticed that my kids run some games as well as their friends who've played in my games. They take the same position for being the DM and even have to take turns at the helm because they all want to run their own games. Now, if I could just get them to accept me as a player. They're too used to me being the DM and say I'm way to much of a ham when I get to run my own player character.
The problem is the rules. We're in an era of Magict the Gathering D&D like, that turned it into a combo game for powerfull players. There is no space for role play. The system is broke. That's why people are going after Odl School RPG, even old D&D, like BECMI, AD&D 1e or 2e (the TSR era).
Great video, I'm my groups forever dm and it has burned me out so bad that we barely play anymore and we only play Like 3 session campaigns. No one wants to even try dming and they all say it's too much work. They don't even realize that the worst part is that no one even tries to see where you are going with the story before they do whatever they can to derail the session! I've had session 1s where the players won't even sit still long enough for me to organically introduce them to each other
I'm a very lucky person. I've been GMing for the same group for over a decade now, and I don't ever have any of the culture problems because I found a great group, and so I have fun GMing every session. Shoutout to my players, who have shared my moments of greatest storytelling and also suffered through some real stinkers.
It is sort of hard to think back 40 years ago when I ran my first game.It was a bit easier I guess, enormous dungeon crawls were what people expected, and once you have drawn the map, and a random encounter table, it was just them mapping, exploring, avoiding traps and solving puzzles, and lots of monster slaying.Maybe new people’s expectations are too high? After 40 years of gaming across dozens of games, I have a lot of experience to draw from, which gives me the confidence I guess, something new DMs will only get through practice, running games. I don’t even NEED books anymore, just pick a combat and skill system, or make one up on the spot, and improv. Some of the best games I have participated in as both player and gm alike were completely improv, just out camping, and decided to play. Flipping coins because we didn’t even have dice! It’s all about having fun, and if a DM is not having fun too, they won’t want to do it anymore.
What a pleasant surprise to have stumbled upon this in the recommends beneath a Zee Bashew video... an excellent piece, and something that I concede I and my friends have mused about from time to time.
I played predominantly in the 3.5 era myself and while I appreciate how many options there are for players in 5e I frankly find it sort of suffocating... there's not just a ton of stuff that players can do, there's almost *too* much they can do, and of questionable utility oftentimes as well.