I'm the only one of my friends who cares enough about the hobby to invest significant time in it out of game. I have the best understanding of the rules, because I'm the only one who is willing to read beyond the PHB, and I have most of the PHB memorized, or at least the index. I've also invested a lot of spare time here and in other places honing my skills as a GM, gathering tips, advice, techniques, and anything I could to improve my ability. After all, GMing is supposed to be the ultimate end to understanding and mastering a system, right? So, I've learned many things about how to do it, and I try to apply them all. I spend the week worrying about whether combat is balanced and interesting, and whether the NPCs are believable and enjoyable to interact with, and how they might take the plot as it is and how it might advance. I stress about it, and it becomes another requirement of my time, alongside work and classes. I need to get it done well, or else I'll disappoint my friends and the whole thing will go belly up, right? Especially since I'm the only one passionate about learning and improving our games.
(Continued)
How do you enjoy GMing?
Then Sunday comes along and we play, and I still get no satisfaction. I've spent the entire week getting things right and ready to go, and the players all say they enjoy it, but I don't enjoy the process at all. I spend half of the session standing up so I can manipulate the map, and I'm keeping track of dozens of numbers at a single time, as well as details like appearance, personality, tools, goals...I can't catch a single break until the session is over, and then I'm just tired, like I spent a 5 hour presentation talking about my research for the week and already am starting to think about how the things the players changed will affect the next week.
Hell, I don't even know if I enjoy playing, because I got my group into the game out of a vague interest and a starter set, and I've been DMing since. The several times I've tried to play the groups have fallen apart due to bad scheduling or been unenjoyable Official League games.
But I know for a fact that I'm not currently enjoying DMing, even though I wish I could have fun and keep enabling my friends to do so, and it's adding greatly to my stress and draining my limited time.
How do you enjoy GMing?
I don't enjoy GMing. I do it because it gives our imaginative yet slow main GM a chance to plan for "long enough". I just run glorified dungeon crawls so we get it over with. I hate every other weekend being a wasted session. Not to mention when people cancel and he calls off the whole session over one person.
Fuck you, Travis.[/slow]
The answer is - you stop overpreparing. Apart from some autistic manchildren on Veeky Forums, no one expects you to have a myriad encounters planned out and all deviations due to players' actions accounted for. There's great pleasure in improvising and letting your players go wild, with you tagging along to see how far you can take it without breaking it.
Before the session I usually have a few possible clusters of NPCs, locations and plot hooks in mind (none of it too detailed) as well as a few statblocks in case my players to ask for trouble and start some combat. And that's it - none of that overpreparing and worrying nonsense.
A good trick to know is that combat is, ironically, your best friend. Confused as to the direction in which your players are dragging the plot? Throw something to kill at them. While they are throwing dice at it, you have some time to process potential plot progression.
>I can't catch a single break until the session is over
You're the GM. All you have to say is "guys, 15 minutes break y'all, go grab a drink". The party won't go on without you.
Additionally, quantity does not necessarily equal quality. Instead of describing an NPC in detail, especially if he's unimportant, just give him one-two quirks and traits that stand out. They are much more likely to be memorable while reducing the load on you.
I enjoy improvising a session off the back of my hand a lot. But that's the way I like to run my games. Have bullet points of ideas of how the session will go, but don't go sperglord levels of detail and complication.
I also like preparing world building a lot. I love making lingual styles for each culture and I like making subdivisions of how different cultures work and define themselves. I love studying the world and its history and then taking the best pieces and making something new from it.
What I hate is when I have to improvise worldbuilding and plan out sessions.
I do prepare in clusters. I don't have a long detailed thing planned out, unless the last session ended with the players at the entrance to a dungeon, and even then I mostly just pile up some sensory descriptions and quick sketches of the rooms and the monsters in them.
Even when I improvise, I can only come up with things so far. A random interaction on the streets isn't a problem to improvise, but an entire session, let alone 'adventure' is hard to do when I'm trying to hit a logical progression of investigation and revealing things about the setting. And eventually, it *does* break, despite how many clusters I have to toss at them.
Combat doesn't help me as a time to slow down, because I need to come up with why something's fighting them, limit them to that option, then manage a bunch of statblocks. That takes up all of my thought, let alone trying to write ahead- I'm controlling multiple creatures while the players all have one that they've had plenty of time to memorize the ins and outs of.
I know I can call breaks, and I do at times, but I can't call for them constantly, and even then it feels more like a slight reprieve than a satisfying opportunity to get a leg up.
And I do stick to quirks, but maintaining those can be troublesome when I've got a host of NPCs and I've got to swap between different voices (not bad impressions or falsettos, but tones and diction)
Despite employing a lot of these and feeling where it makes GMing a bit easier and more successful, it just isn't fun.
I'm a new GM. I just want to be a fair arbiter and give the players serious challenges. I want them to lose sometimes, not have everything go their way, but not because I fudged it to be so. I want it to be 100% clear that they can fail. If and when they find success, beat the monster, save the princess, get the treasure, they will own it. I want them to EARN that success because I know it will be so much sweeter then.
That's what I always wanted as a player. I wanted to fight and earn my losses, scars, and victories, not have everything handed to me with no risk as a masturbatory participation trophy.
I feel like my players could do it if they could just get past this casual rut, accept they don't start out as superheroes, that combat is a dangerous thing, that real heroism would emerge from their actions in the face of adversity, not from picking out low-hanging fruit. The real difference between an "adventurer" and a hero isn't in power level, how many bad guys you can sweep away in ten seconds, but in what they do when times are tough and the odds aren't so good.
Then keep it smaller. You've got dozens of NPCs to keep track of? Make the next adventure on a smaller scale and instead of a plethora of NPCs focus on very few, but in detail.
From my experience, players tend to do most of the work for you - most good improvisation is reactive. Just take what they throw at you and take it to its logical conclusion. This way the clusters won't break.
For the combat, ditch the actual statblocks for something simplistic and "automate" your thinking - plan mooks' movements few turns ahead. Keep interesting, complex statblocks for pivotal encounters. The real fun comes from environmental and inter-PC interactions anyway, not statblocks.
On a slightly side note, going back to a line you said:
>I mostly just pile up some sensory descriptions and quick sketches of the rooms and the monsters in them.
I just keep getting this impression that you overcrowd your dungeons, forgive me if I'm wrong. One of my most successful dungeons had literally ONE combat encounter despite being rather large. The players loved it because instead of pointless details and distracting encounters to fill the place up, I stuck to building up atmosphere and allowing for some fun plot options in the dungeon. This also allowed the actual encounter to be extremely deadly and complex. Again, quantity =/= quality.
Here are the rules I stick by for GMing
>Rough ideas only
Other posters already went over this. Be able to improvise. Only prepare the tools you need to improvise.
>Small Adventures
Honestly, if you have good players, a single dungeon crawl or bounty hunt or charting an unknown territory can be just as fun and compelling as a big SAVE THE WORLD FROM A DEMON INVASION plotline... and is alot less complicated to run a game for. Plus you can run smaller adventures repeatedly with the same group of characters without feeling like you constantly have to up the stakes higher and higher.
>Small Party Size
Never run for more than 3 players. Absolute MAX of 4. Once you get more than 4 players, everything becomes a clusterfuck where it becomes hard to make everyone feel important or keep the game moving quickly. Yes, it's hard to make a balanced party from 3 characters. That's fine, the party shouldn't be able to handle everything alone. The party having composition gaps leaves room to introduce helpful NPCs from time to time and help direct the plot through those NPCs without feeling super railroady.
>Restrict Casters
This is kind of a DnD-specific thing. But like... if you have a wizard, restrict them to nothing above level 1 spells except in their specialty school. If you have sorcerers, restrict their power to things that are thematic with their bloodline. Restrict clerics to their domains, ect. The caster who can do everything ruins the game for everyone else.
>Pre-established parties
Make sure all the players character's already know eachother. Make them part of the same guild or organization. This helps party trust and cohesion sooo much more than "You all meet in an inn". Furthermore the goals of the organization, if the players are invested in the organization. can help keep the plot moving forward even when the players might not necessarily be a position to pursue their own personal goals.
>Keep it fun
Grimderp seriousness sucks.
Usually, I take my anti-depression medicine. That tends to help.
I know your pain, OP, and I don't even run the numbers for everything, just most of the things.
Usually I bank on the fact that I get an emotional payout on people enjoying my DMing. But when I'm not able to get their feedback immediately, it gets a whole lot harder. DMing play by post is probably the worst best decision Veeky Forums-related decision I've ever made.
Swear to God I'm going to have a heart attack before the campaign ends.
To add to my previous points, this user also has a few good ones:
>Small Party Size
I can't stress enough how important this is, not only for you but also for your players. Anything more than 4 players and individual players won't get enough attention to make it fun for them. Hell, I do agree that 3 is in fact a better number.
>Restrict casters
I disagree with this one, players should not be punished for choosing a character option. That being said, I run OSR or 5e when I'm forced to run fantasy games - it's not as big a problem there.
>Pre-established parties
A very good point.
For overstuffing dungeons, maybe. I probably need to space out the 'advanced' techniques and mechanical mixups, so they stand out more amongst the 'standard' battles. The problem is finding a reason for enough of these battles to tax their resources, due to the campaign style.
On the side of keeping encounters and party small, I'd love to, but I've got 6 people in a friend circle who all want to play, and the only other time one has tried to take up reigns DMing failed spectacularly, even with a module.
This then leads to needing larger encounters to match the party, OR splitting them so some players zone out of the game and have nothing to do. Not to mention, they're in a metropolis, so there are a lot of characters I need to keep track of, even if it's just the ones the players interact with (I don't bother with the machinations of them until the players meet them, because they wouldn't know the difference anyways)
They're also part of an organization- to be specific, an Inquisitive agency, which may be where part of my trouble is coming from. I need to plan ahead, to a degree, because I need to seed mysteries for them to uncover, unless I can get good at creating a mystery as they solve it and bullshitting everything.
I try to keep things chipper on occasion because if I didn't tip it off with the campaign style, they're in Eberron, and the occasional witty ray of sunshine is vital to that pulp feel. For that matter I might even be making the game not serious enough by having too many jokes and 'funny' characters.
On the topic of small parties, aside from just making the game move faster, I sorta run games with this philosophy that the GM's job is to "Let the players define their own characters". Like, it's cool if your character can single handedly defeat a minotaur or whatever, but the real interesting part of Roleplaying is finding out what those character's quirks are. Their ambitions. Their flaws. How they act when they're NOT killing stuff.
In order to do any of this, you need to drop those characters in a variety of situations, some almost "slice-of-life" scenarios. Trying to do this with a large party is nearly impossible, it slows the game down too much and makes everyone get impatient while they wait for their turn to arrive. However with a party of 3, you can do this and keep the downtime between player spotlight short enough that everyone actually pays attention and gets involved in eachother's characters (if they're good roleplayers and not rollplayers). Plus it's easier for everyone to jump in and become a part of those scenes when it's not half a dozen characters trying to crowd into the same moment.
A lot of anons are giving "how to make the most of prep time" and "how to make running sessions easier" advice. Most of it is good advice, but OP is asking how to have fun GMing.
>I'm the only one who cares enough [to GM]
That's a bad sign. To enjoy GMing you need to love worldbuilding, improv acting, tactical combat (if your group is into that, you're playing DnD so I guess you are) and you need to love watching PCs get into shenanigans. The last one is most important, you're there to highlight their fictional lives. Sometimes you describe their low points, since all good stories have low points, but you're always there to make their story awesome.
If you're not naturally inclined to enjoy any of that you're probably not ever going to enjoy GMing.
Smaller parties, play oneshots and rules light systems are more hotfixes to make it less stressful and to increase GM skill.
>To enjoy GMing you need to love worldbuilding
I actually disagree with this to some extent. A good GM builds the adventure, not the entire world. I've been in far too many campaigns where the GM dumps a novel's worth of world information on me at the start about what gods are fighting eachother, and how a demon invasion is happening, and how cosmic entropy is killing the universe, and what the lineage of every world is for 10 generations back and what the cultures are like on 20 different continents and all their countries all while being super tryhard and attempting to be unique and different purely for the sake of being unique and different... and meanwhile I'm like "Fuck this, I just wana go raid a dungeon, I don't give a shit about ANY of this. Can we just play the game and maybe make some of this stuff up as we go or it becomes relevant?"
World-Builders are the worst GMs sometimes. Alot of the time I'd rather get slapped in the face with tried and true cliches than overly-complicated tryhard.
>>I'm the only one of my friends who cares enough about the hobby to invest significant time in it out of game
tfw I know these feels more than any other feels i have ever felt.
The short answer is, you don't ever enjoy it. It's a thankless job. You do it because someone needs to do it otherwise there is no game. You might POSSIBLY enjoy it because you made a story weaving your player's backgrounds and want to see where it goes. But it usually involves your towns being burnt to the ground because a guard looked at a PC the wrong way.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say table top RPGs aren't for you and your friends.
This is REALLY one of those things everyone needs to be on the same page for which is next to impossible. I know everyone is gonna disagree with me and say I'm full of shit but this is the truth for running a successful ongoing game.
The opposite of this is players dicking around on the phones while waiting for you to move 8 things around the grid and bringing up stupid reddit shit they saw. Then asking "is it my turn? What should I do guys?". They LITERALLY don't care about your story, their character, or what is going on.
They are just there for social interaction, which is fine, but you are there to run the game, not talk. So in effect, everyone is having fun but you, because you are running the GAME.
>oh but user, it's up to the DM to keep everyone into it
I can ONLY do so fucking much. I need people to pay attention and remember the basic rules to keep the game flowing.
My only other advice is just throw out ALL of your planning and go full on "lolrandumb" since I promise you your players will remember all the stupid shit that happens rather than your carefully planned NPC encounter with King "whatshisface" to get his "somethingorother" back from "thatonebadguy".
I'm a lazy GM who tries to do the least prep possible. I once prep'd the next city over from where the PCs were, they went the other way and I vowed to never over-worldbuild ever again.
But to be able to improv successfully and direct a fun scenario you need some world building to serve as a seed for everything else. You could work off pre-established settings but its the little interactions and consequences between setting details that makes a location or NPC shine. To notice and want to show the other players that, you need to be in love with worldbuilding.
I love cliches, the only bad cliche is a boringly-executed one.
This guy gets it. I keep to the same principles and it works wonderfully.
>Most of it is good advice, but OP is asking how to have fun GMing.
True. But a lot of people who "didn't have fun" GMing, in my opinion, just didn't approach it with the right mindset - which is something that this advice can help. I loathe the idea of just telling the guy "welp, maybe GMing is just not for you". Everyone can GM, not exceptions. It's not rocket science.
>you need to love worldbuilding
I think it's better to say "love setting things in context". Autismal write-up of a kingdom''s story and lore for every brick in a city won't help you be a good gm; understanding how all of the above can affect a party and its adventure will.
But what is true is that without love it can't be seen you can't be a good GM. You need to love your players, love your game, love your NPCs, as cheesy as it sounds. Hence why I initially started giving up advice on prep - the love is difficult to nourish if you're bogged down by pointless minutiae.
This user gets it. People underestimate how important downtime and chill scenarios are. Although maybe it's just me - I can't take grimderp even remotely seriously.
It may sound harsh, but I think your party size is the core of all your problems. The way you're describing it, I don't think you will manage to enjoy it without cutting it down or splitting it into two separate games.
I want to add to this I am currently in a 5 player D&D game and it's a clusterfuck.
We have 4 spellcasters and 1 melee in our group and the DM rips his hair out trying to balance combat. Also combat lasts 2-3 hours on average. It's so boring.
During social parts, it's like whoever responds fastest gets to talk. Some people are like "No, don't say that to the NPC" but WHOOPS TOO LATE NOW. Or maybe they wanted to further add something to the conversation but some event got triggered and now we have to leave.
Then those players get frustrated and just stop getting involved.
I've read a phrase once in a gaming journal long, long time ago which has since then become my motto for GMing (and in fact - any activity requiring improvisation) - "Good improvisation is impossible without a well-prepared working space".
>During social parts, it's like whoever responds fastest gets to talk
The fairly common scene of the entire party talking to a single NPC is pretty silly and encourages metagaming. I try to make it so social scenes there's multiple NPCs talking to different PCs at once and we go around in a kind of turn order. It leads to some interesting dynamics, but most importantly it isn't just the "fastest talking" PC in the spotlight in social situations.
>worldbuilding
I was using the term in a different way than the usual Veeky Forums connotation. I'm not advocating writing extensive metaphysical systems or anything.
I'm a fresh-out-of-the-garden DM with a two player group. They've literally never played tabletop games but they love RPGs and adventure stories.
We play 80% homebrew Ryuutama in very short sessions (two hours or less).
Over the past two months they've visited one city beyond the starting town, explored a forest and a spooky cave that might lead to the spirit world, and challenged every NPC they've met to card games.
It's nice.
Maybe you should stop playing games with shit rules.
Speaking of extensive metaphysical systems, I do enjoy making them. I just never force them on my players. It's there, I build adventures based on them, but unless a PC asks me a question on it, it won't get in the way. I also leave a primer for everyone to access but always stress that it's not obligatory and you can read it for entertainment if you wish, but shouldn't force yourself. My players love it and always bug me to write more
Man, that sounds comfy as fuck.
I almost want to play a Yugioh campaign, but I don't know how I'd do that without just meeting up with people and playing Yugioh.
>brb looking up Yugioh RPG.
Out of curiosity what your players bring to the table? As a general rule play should be player driven, with the GM responding to their antics and maybe nudging them towards the right direction at times. If you try to do entertaining six people all by yourself then of course you're going to get tired.
The games they play use poker cards for brevity. Games like Mao and 99. The older player chose a deck of cards as a cherished deck during character creation and they just ran with it from there. I wouldn't be surprised if they challenged a magical beast to Old Maid when they finally get around to encountering one.
Bringing YGO in might be cool. Something simplified, maybe using the DT rules to keep things from dragging on. That might be a good idea, especially if it's going to be your main means of conflict resolution.
Sounds like your friends are kind of just taking advantage of your willingness to run the game.
Heh. Maybe something like a pointbuy for BESM?
>Each card is like a lesser ally, with specific abilities and requirements for use
>20 cards at first, rather than 40
>etc.
Oh damn OP I know that feel of mad worry its what keeps me from even trying.
>Also combat lasts 2-3 hours on average.
Do your casters spend ten minutes looking up spells every time their turn comes up? Its the only way I imagine lasting that long with a party like yours.
A thing that helped me get into GMing was this.
>Every campaign, eventually introduce a young inexperienced character the party has to escort, work for, otherwise be around.
>Parties hate escorts, so here's what you do. As time goes on, imply the character has certain natural talents if the party is willing to invest the time into enriching those talents.
>Let the party wizard teach the character to cast magic, or the fighter teach him to use a weapon, then put your own spin on it as the character develops.
>Suddenly the annoying brat has become the party's cool little brother.
>When this NPC comes up with cool things that saves the party's asses later, they feel like it was their own doing, instead of yours.
>This character is secretly your player character as the GM.
There's less paperwork if you treat the game literally as the real game with the only restrictions being thematic or for equipment (deck as a whole, maybe duel disk). You could also use pack restriction to encourage variety, like player A can use cards from Dark Beginnings 1, B can use Dark Beginnings 2, and so on. Battle Packs if they want newer cards.
I think you can do a good job integrating YGO into your sessions and I hope you have fun doing so.
Multi-paragraph summoning chants and mid-battle speeches from both sides.
>I know everyone is gonna disagree with me and say I'm full of shit but this is the truth for running a successful ongoing game.
Nah, I'm going to agree with "everybody at the table must be into the game" and the paragraph following it.
I AM going to disagree with "The short answer is, you don't ever enjoy it. It's a thankless job."
I do ENJOY playing my supervillains and running crazy schemes and pulling out sudden surprises for the heroes to deal with.
I enjoy it more than playing heroes. I enjoy it more than playing villains under some other schmuck GM's restraints.
Time them to quarter or half a minute (yes that is still generous as fuck talktime for the usual defined length of a round) or their turn is skipped.
I enjoy GMing a great deal, much more than playing the game.
1. What system are you playing? Sometimes a change in this regard can help a lot and alleviate GM fatigue a ton. If you like D&D, try a lighter old-school variant like Basic/Expert. Consider using another dicepool system for Shadowrun. Use
2. Consider doing a less detail-oriented or less ambitious campaign. It sounds like you spend a great deal of time doing campaign prep on a campaign of vast scope.
Start with a more tightly focused campaign - for something like D&D, just do a series of dungeoncrawls without too much thought to overaching save the world plots
3. Use existing material - usually an option if you're playing with a major published ruleset. Even if you aren't, it's not hard to retrofit modules of similar genre. Many classic modules can still be a lot of fun today and will be complete surprises to most people - take White Plume Mountain (pictured).
4. Consider setting a strict time limit on the amount of prep you will do in a week and the length of each game session. You're the GM - dictating this is your privilege.
Other things that you can do are delegating tasks well. Some things can be delegated to paper - NPC personalities and appearances can be written on index cards, for example, along with item descriptions. If you run games online, a saved chat log can help immensely with keeping details consistent.
Other things can be handled by your players - things like updating the map, tracking encumbrance, intiative, and so forth. If you can't trust your players to follow the rules then the game will get exhausting very quickly.
If they're the sort that would cheat on a tabletop RPG where everything is just a game of pretend... seriously, why are you playing with them?
GMing is fun when the game you're playing is designed to be fun to GM.
Try various games, see what you like.
How GM friendly is FATAL?
As for "how to have fun" - honestly this depends a lot on the game.
When I'm GMing (old-school) D&D, a lot of the fun is in creating a dungeon and then watching the players take apart my creation with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, often with hilarious effects and horrible deaths.
When I'm GMing something more plot-oriented, sometimes it's watching the crazy twists the plot takes as the result of PC decisions (like deciding to cap their employer in Shadowrun which results in a cascade of decisions that take the story in places I never expected).
If you don't enjoy this sort of creative destruction then RPGs may not be the right hobby for you.
It's great in the way that huffing paint is great. Just forget about the loss of your own brain cells and there are plenty of laughs to be had.
>dmpc
Absolutely disgusting.
The worst part of having a dmpc is that you got inside knowledge of the campaign, so not only do you have to constantly micromanage your dmpc, you also have to constantly tiptoe with him so he doesn't come off as too smart/knowing/"the guy who tells us what to do".
dmpc:s are cancer.
Its not. Not even if you just use the random chargen program for everything.
Not the guy you're replying to, but there are right ways and wrong ways to run a DMPC. As a player I personally don't mind them as long as they're not overshadowing the rest of the own party. I'd be perfectly fine with seeing an NPC the party trained be an occasional hero, as long as the rest of us were having our moments too.
You gotta buy into the illusion of the story, because at the end of the day the DM is in charge of everything, whether there are DMPCs present or not.
Alot of people here have made good points
If you new to GMing keep it small; both in party and scope. People can run games for larger parties but it depends on the system and the players
SYSTEM! - it is said many times on this board but have you considered running something other then D&D, im enjoying 5e but man there is alot to keep track of; play something which is simple and straight forward; a way of dealing with a large and/or new group of players is to run a combat heavy game so I would suggest something like Savage Worlds.
Steal from everything, dont bother spending hours designing a enviroment, rip cool scenes and eviroments from movies and books, better yet watch those movies with the players so they mentally fill in the gaps. A very good setting for a combat campaign is World War 2, there are movies everywhere, books, pictures; the enviroments strech from the cold mountains of Norway to the hot sands of North Africa to the dense forests in Germany, France and Belgium, to the urban eviroments of the London blitz or the stalingrade encirclement.
Keep it simple, stick to the rule of 3;
Each session have 3 different encounters or problems (combat or not); every 2-3 sessions give the players some new toy ie level up; have 3 arcs or chapters to the campaign. Have 3 major NPCs, their boss, their enemy and their freind/rival.
For enemies dont be teathered to their stat block have in mind the a generic statblock the proves easy, moderate and difficult for the PCs to overcome. For example in Only War i know that and easy NPC will soak maybe 4 damage, hit and dodge 30% of the time, and take 15 damage to be removed from the fight; a moderate opponent will be twice that and a hard enemy will be twice that again (roughly).
If you do have a large party, limit turn time and communication, for most RPGs each turn is less then 10 secounds, if a player is spending their turn looking for a spell or working out how their character works then they are slowing down the game.
>villain
Absolutely disgusting.
The worst part of having a villain is that you got inside knowledge of the campaign, so not only do you have to constantly micromanage your villain, you also have to constantly tiptoe with him so he doesn't come off as too smart/knowing/"the guy who tells us he's gonna kill us".
villains are cancer.
Oh I don't worry about that, knowing everything is a portion of villain's capabilities anyway.
I like to force people to confront unpleasant themes and see how they handle it.
This is so adorable in crying
See wayyy back here
">Keep it fun
Grimderp seriousness sucks."
If this is the kind of game your players want, then cool. But never do this to new players and never set up your campaigns to go there regardless of what the players do, it will come off as creepy and vindictive, and it might kill the feel of the game for some of your players. Personally I don't play DnD for the whole "Everything sucks and people are shit." angle. I've got Shadowrun for that.
I don't.
God, I don't. It's my first time GMing, and I've followed plenty of advice from you guys before jumping in, and I think I'm prepared, and I just don't enjoy it. It's so stressful to begin a session, even when I have tokens and notes and everything ready for the party. One of these days I'm going to fuck it up, I know it. The party is blissfully unaware of the chasm they're balancing on the edge of, between the things I have prepared and things I don't. One of these days they're gonna ask a question I don't know the answer to and that'll be it.
The worst part? They like it. Not in an amazing way, but they have fun talking to the NPCs and buying extra blankets to pad their shop basement with (it's a pretty non-violent campaign despite being Pathfinder), and they skype each other every week to ask if everyone's ready for the session tomorrow. They're having fun, but for me it's an emotional roller-coaster, except the coaster is Mr. Bones' Wild Ride and it's just one steep stressful slope downhill into the fiery gates of Impostor Syndrome hell.
I don't want to disappoint the players because they're a nice bunch and they're enjoying the game, but this 5 hour block is the most stressful part of my week. I don't get how you guys do it.
Sounds like you're preparing way too much still.
>you have to micromanage a villain
>You can't have him come off as too smart
He's a villain, not their gay lover.
>That guy who makes his game all about rape and torture (magical realm) because Game of Thrones did it.
The thing about grimderp is that it's sort of really silly.
Human humor is one tenacious son of a bitch, and this make it that any extended vacation in Grimderp county starts to seriously strain on your suspension of disbelief, because people literally can't be that grimderpy all the time.
To remain believable, the campaign must have humor. It doesn't need to be slapstick comedy, but the characters in the campaign must have a capability of humor. First then does your dark and mature story become believable instead of "grimderp".
This is exactly why grimdark is often mocked as grimderp by the way. Because it literally becomes derpy by trying to take itself too serious.
look I will be straight with you.
You
Will
Fuck
Up
its a fact of the world, you will make mistakes; wipe out the party or have a boss get steam rolled, fail to remember character names.
And you know what, it doesn't matter, your players will understand. it is after all just a game of pretend; you can go "hey guys I fucked up" and either roll it back next session, push forward and see where the world takes you or just start a new game.
Rule 0 of table top: have fun (it applies to you as well)
All the knowledge in the world cannot beat practical hands on experience that is seared into your brain by mistakes you make. Your first time GMing will always be the most harrowing (just like your first time with a girlfriend, or your first time public speaking, or your first job). Keep at it and the fear will lessen.
Also
>5 hours block
Hell this is way too long. Cut your session to 3 hours and stick strictly by the time limit. I say this not just as a preference matter but a practical matter - you are making your best decisions and rulings in the first hour and they will only get progressively worse as a session drags on.
it really depends on how frequent the game is; if its is weekly then 3 hours is great, but if the game is fortnightly then I find 5 hours allows for a suitable pace across sessions.
Also
Games should be scheduled between a week and a fortnight apart; daily is ok if you have a small set adventure to run through but you and teh players will get tired of the game/characters really quickly. monthly is on the edge of being too long as it means players need to remember what happened and get back into their character/the system.
also consider what happens if a session doesn't run, what happens if it doesn't run a second time in a row? I will generally cancel games if they don't run 3 sessions is a row
DMing can be embarrassing, frustrating, inconvenient, and many times just plain old not fun.
But there are those moments I totally live for when I DM and it's when just little flavor shit I throw out there becomes the focus of players and they make a whole story out of it and I get to kinda sit back and just make decisions on the fly.
And this is why every single motherfucker in Dark Souls laughs all the time.
I'm going to take these one at a time with my own approach.
>I spend the week worrying about whether combat is balanced and interesting
lolno. Enemies in my games have stat blocks that look something like "+10 to hit, 1d10+5 damage, +5 to skills, 30 hp" and that's it. MAYBE I'll stat out the captain and give him a gimmick like being a spellcaster, but most of the time the thing I do to make combat interesting is wacky environmental effects and unique encounter mechanics stolen from MMOs, and the best thing about those is that they can be interesting at any level with minimal preparation because they exist in a realm parallel to your parties bonuses to skill modifiers and can only be interacted with by their creative thinking.
>whether the NPCs are believable and enjoyable to interact with, and how they might take the plot as it is and how it might advance
I mean I'm not sure how I can help you there except to say that you really shouldn't stress about it at all. When I run, I usually try to "read the crowd" as to how the adventure will go and justify how it went that way only if necessary - like if my players start faffing about establishing a magic item shop in town, then I guess the story this week is getting undercut by a gnome who has the money to drive out competition. Players will generally give you a pretty strong indication as to what they want to do next, usually by telling you up front what their character plans on doing next.
> I need to get it done well, or else I'll disappoint my friends and the whole thing will go belly up, right?
You're starting to sound like you have an anxiety disorder. Watch some ASMR videos on YouTube and relax - trust me, if your group is actually friends with each other they'll find ways to have fun no matter how well you do, and they'll be thankful to you for taking on the brunt of GMing.
(continued)
Time to change. What makes me satisfied with a session is a fantastical element. Anything like a monster, a location or a magical item. If this fantastical element doesn't come up or is not interacted with in a session, it feels like an itch that isn't scratched, a joke without a punchline, sex without the climax, etc. So, it's time for you to figure out what makes you satisfied in a session? A realistic reference to medieval times? Irrelevant social interaction? Talking as if you are a plant or an animal? Try something new every session (from Lego my Ego by Chris Perkins) and don't disappoint yourself not to fail. See which ones were good for you and which ones the players liked. Ask for feedback but remember that you are a player at the table, too.
Switch between an amount of improv and prep. Trust both skills when you do so. Sometimes you can get more fun out of improv. Some swear by 100% of one or the other but that hardly works for me.
See if you can make something that feels like Paint-by-Numbers. If you have a template for yourself it will save you prep time and the rest is for filling in the blanks. You can't fill all the blanks, but at least it makes improv better when you have solid guidelines: Story structures (3 act, 4 act, or 5 act sessions?). I try to give a puzzle with each session and the first one of the campaign has a magic item that invites creativity.
What I'm feeling is that you want to do things by the book and don't want to deviate from it because everything in the book is all you need to know and knowledge, skill, and experience is finite when it comes to RPGs. I'd say; Nope.
Lastly, perhaps the campaign was doomed to bore you from the start as it had poor management. If your players like all the stuff in the campaign, but you don't, you didn't take your wishes into consideration.
For more info:
- Never Unprepared by Phil Vecchione
- Odyssey by Phil Vecchione and Walt Ciechanowski
- Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering
>I've spent the entire week getting things right and ready to go, and the players all say they enjoy it, but I don't enjoy the process at all.
The process is a means to an end, hans. If you weren't playing a TTRPG you'd all be drinking and smoking.
>I spend half of the session standing up so I can manipulate the map,
Fuck that noise. Whoever's closest can move miniatures and draw lines on the map. Alternately, I had a friend who GMed with these tiny white boards shaped like puzzle pieces, and he'd ask us to pass him pieces we weren't using, draw the next segment of map we needed, then tell us where to put it, all without leaving his chair. I had another group where we set up a projector on the ceiling pointing down (this was in his garage), and he ran the game on his computer using some RPG program. Point is there are solutions to this problem.
>and I'm keeping track of dozens of numbers at a single time, as well as details like appearance, personality, tools, goals...
Note cards, also remember when I said in the previous post how simple my NPC stat blocks were. The players don't need to know the corners you're cutting to stay on your feet. Also one of your players should be tracking initiative - or better yet, switch your group to a simpler system that runs faster, like "everyone who beat the NPCs goes, then the NPCs, then the entire party goes, then the NPCs... etc." Switching to a simpler system that runs faster is advice that's universal to everything in every RPG you'll ever play/run that's even slightly clunky.
>I can't catch a single break until the session is over,
You're the DM. The group can damn well take a smoke break when you need one, kay?
>and then I'm just tired, like I spent a 5 hour presentation talking about my research for the week and already am starting to think about how the things the players changed will affect the next week.
(cont)
>the process is a means to an end
Ultimately, playing an RPG should be a lot like smoking and joking with your boys. I'm not saying that you shouldn't prepare, but preparing for a session should be no more stressful than stocking up on beer and firing up the grill for a super bowl cookout. If you're not fired up for what's about to happen in the game, then introduce something you are fired up about. Maybe high politics in King Arthur's court isn't nearly as interesting as you imagined it, so suddenly an invading lich kingdom throws a bone into the whole mess.
I'm not sure what you or your group like, so I can't be any more specific than that - me personally, I like military shit and wargames, so almost every game I run eventually gets to a big setpiece battle with the PCs in command of (or at least acting as agents of) one side versus me controlling the other, and that's something I get excited over. The thought of two or four sessions from now opening my giant miniature carrier keeps me interested in the NPCs, and that keeps me making them interesting. It keeps me invested in the PC's story, and that keeps me flush with ideas to make it a kickass story. I'm far from perfect as far as GMs go, but I always go into a game with something I'm looking forward to doing, and that makes the games I run pretty damn good.
And even when a session is a dud, it aint no big thing, because at least me and my friends got to spend the evening laughing at jokes we stole from Monty Python. That part right there is what being a nerd is all about.
I extremely enjoy GMing. I don't like being a player. Can't round players up for a game because either real life rolls by and shits on my parade or some fuckwit decides he has a better use out of all our times.
Absolutely. If I don't run a game, I have no game. Of course I'll run one in order to have one, even if I hate it. "No game is better than a bad game" my ass.
...
I need help, my friends keep forcing me to DM but I've got nothing planned and I just can't seem to write anything.
I cancel most weeks but they are insisting that I run a session tomorrow. They don't even care if I railroad but I don't know how to continue the campaign.
What do I do?
Read a module, butcher it, run it.
If they persist, read another module, butcher, run.
About 5 modules is a whole campaign, you'll be ok.
I don't
fuck my life
The problem is that you're playing D&D. Play something else.
This is how I feel.
But my group a) doesn't know or want to learn the rules for anything else and b) wants to play D&D.
And they force me to run it because they also don't want to DM.
This guy is right. Try something more simple, like Savage Worlds.
Also, as the go-to GM of my group, a lot of the advice in this thread is good, but I think the main issue is this: You're taking it too seriously and doing too much work.
I spend maybe an hour a week prepping an adventure (less if I'm using a module). I try and take a break every hour or so (a lot of us smoke, so no complaints) and I expect the players to know the rules.
Also, good players help make it more fun. Last session we spent almost an hour just introducing our characters in Deadlands and talking in terrible accents.
Also, don't play fucking D&D it's shit.
well there's your problem
you don't treat it as its own game, but as a job
Fuck that noise, you're the GM. Yes, listening to your players desires is good, but not when it's no fun for you.
That just defeats the whole purpose.
from
You don't have to cater to the group. You're the one who does all the work. Players need to tailor their desires and expectations to your ability to have fun running ths show, not the other way around.
Look for the book: 100 Things You Will Never Find by Daniel Smith. Or watch three episodes of Star Trek.
If you need a session quick: make a Five Room Dungeon which is good for 1 session: roleplayingtips.com
To give yourself more time, grab a theme like Wizards and brainstorm what you associate with wizards. Make a dungeon, or a house, or a laboratory or whatever and come up with possible rooms based on your brainstorm. More rooms = more work = more time next session when the first session needs to stop before bedtime. Strike out the rooms you won't use and come up with measurements for each room you have, then add description text and stuff to each room. You have a place, now wreck it with a conflict. Let them explore the rest.
If you have time left, draw a crude map with symbols. If you have a lot of time left, draw a more detailed map. If you can't make it in time, try this method in sequence. You can always improvise and use Theatre of the Mind and call it something experimental.
>The problem is that you're playing D&D.
This could certainly be a contributing factor, especially if you're playing 3.x.
>But my group a) doesn't know or want to learn the rules for anything else
Play a rules-light game and there isn't much to learn, something like Barbarians of Lemuria. Besides, you're the only one who has to have more than a passing knowledge of the way things work.
>and b) wants to play D&D.
That's nice. Then they can run it. Or, if you want to take a softer route, play Moldvay Basic. It's minimalist old school D&D that's a fucking breeze compared to anything new school. If you want something a little more familiar to modern eyes, try Castles & Crusades. It's a streamlined AD&D that uses the unified d20 mechanic of new school D&D.
But seriously don't continue to do something you don't enjoy and which stresses you out. You'll make yourself miserable, your adventures won't be as fun, and you'll ultimately burn out and stop running the game, so everybody loses.
Alien invasion
If they've got an NPC hanger-on make him into a body snatcher
i think its because you need to be more aware of what is fun to you in a game.
probably you should read about the 8 kinds of fun
angrydm.com
or simplified versions like youtube.com
I am in a similar position than yours.
i like to prepare a lot. i don't mind it, i Enjoy. i have made whole maps and discarded them because the players went left instead of right. i don't mind.
but what my players want from the game are very different from what i want from it.
it bogged down. to me wanting to Play the game.
my players like roleplaying they play their characters a lot talk and interact with each other almost 80% of the time. but then when i ask for a roll they frown. and it frustrates me. i want to play the game. throw the dice and move minis on a grid. is not that i dont like role-playing is just about priorities.
I simplified the explanation into the 3 leters of RPG
Role (Fantasy and Pretending)
Playing (Social Activity)
Game (Dice minies, and rules)
My priorities in order are Game first, Play second, and Role Third.
While i trough observation found out that my players have a mentality of Role First, Game on a low almost matched for 3rd place, and Play for 3rd.
so despite the game looking as a good game for any spectator. it is not fun in the way i want it to be.
i made the campaign first to play a game, meet new friends and do some role-playing.
my players want to Role-play then Fuck the rules, and fuck making friends.
my advice is to become more away of what you find fun in RPG and try to look for player with Similar mentalities.
And why they all wear incredibly stupid hats.
hours block
>Hell this is way too long.
Nigga, what? Are you high? Back in the old days, I was disappointed when I couldn't get at least 6 hours for a session, but that was back when we were in school and had a shitload more free time than we do now. So I've had to settle for 3-4 hour sessions, but it's not by choice, and you really don't get that much play in, especially when it's at the low end of that time. People joke around and socialize, and it takes a while to get into the swing of things. It might not be until you're an hour and half or two hours in that things really start popping, and when you're at the 4 or 5 hour mark, you can build on stuff that happened earlier, building momentum (and sure, you can build on stuff that happened in previous sessions, but that's not fresh in everybody's minds).
I suffer from this issue as well.
I think one of the reasons it occurs is the lack of good feedback and positive affirmation. When you give an actual lecture for example you might be graded or get feedback from actual professionals and critics within the field.
You say your players enjoyed the game but the truth we both know is that their opinions are meaningless. Most players are pretty stupid and will happily shovel any shit the GM gives them into their greedy mouths because most only care about hanging out.
So they don't know or appreciate the difference between some GM who doesn't care and a GM who puts good effort in like you do.
Sadly the only way to get the positive feedback you need is to play with a fellow GM who can give you it, somehow find an intelligent player , or post your sessions online for the internet to provide feedback but sadly most sessions, even good ones, arent interesting when recorded and the internet is fickle at best. ( Critical roles inexplicable popularity is evidence of this)
I've recently found a player who is the exception to this and really intelligently been able to give feedback and the amount of prep ive done has been vastly reduced while my overall satisfaction for the game has improved.
Beyond that I'd echo the suggestions of less prep, frankly your players don't deserve it , as a rule of thumb you shouldnt be doing more prep than you're playing , one hour a week is more than enough.
>play Moldvay Basic
do this anyways. Moldvay Basic is the best version of D&D.
I am/was in pretty much the same boat and here's my 2 cents.
If these people are truly your friends i'd suggest being open about it. Say you're burned out from all you're DMing and ask one of them to take over for a while.
They probably won't hold out for very long but the experience of DMing will make them better more involved players. Which should take some stress away from you, because they are better at making their own entertaining situations.
Alternatively if they really are only there for social interaction cut out the rpg stuff. Just crack open some beers and play catan or something.
I get that you love roleplaying and aren't willing to give it up. But if your hobby only makes you more stressful and doesn't satisfy you, you should stop chasing it. At least for a while.
Who knows, maybe a good system comes along in a year or so that really clicks with you. Or maybe you find other more interested players.
Don't let your hobby become a source of stress it makes your life so much harder.
>This could certainly be a contributing factor, especially if you're playing 3.x.
It's hard to overemphasize how much more of a chore it is to prepare an adventure for 3.5 than it is for most--or at least many--other games. You simply do not have to wrestle with the numbers in the same way for games that aren't rules-heavy. There are less of them, and they are less sensitive to being out of whack. In 3.5, the majority of your time is spent statting things out, and making sure you've got your numbers right. In many games, the stats are almost an afterthought, with much more of your time being spent on the actual concepts, plot hooks and so forth.
And because rules-light systems are much more manageable, you can do a lot more on the fly. You don't have to have everything carefully calculated out beforehand, allowing you to fly by the seat of your pants. I've quite often gone into a session with only the basic concept and literally nothing statted out, and had things work out well.
I don't, man. I just lurk Veeky Forums, play Final Fantasy romhacks and create a headcanon setting for fun by myself.
I enjoy it because it's my only outlet for my sexual frustration and the players (who this year are all str8 males) don't mind, because it's usually not overt how I'm doing it and where it is they find it funny.
>it will be less funny this year cause we're doing Only War and if the first combat of the campaign is anything to go by therewillbeblood.jpg
is there some kind of exemplary D&D podcast that shows you how to be a great DM?
An outlet for your sexual frustration?
What are you doing as a GM?
There were frequent hallucinogens and orgies in Space 1889, and scandalous-yet-effective tight armour, strange Martian marital customs involving wife hostaging and other stuff I could go on about.
I was exaggerating, it's just kind of a running joke. The world is generally at least somewhat tinged by my magical realm, but I swing between MR and trying to actually challenge/kill my players--normally they plan things out so well in advance and I don't throw dangerous enough things at them but now that I'm trying to break off any magical realm-iness for this space opera campaign...
Well, the critical hit table is enough for me for now, I incorporate 1st ed Dark Heresy alongside the tables for OnlyWar.
I used to run an explicit porn campaign on roll20 but no time now that school is back.
You can be either a world building Gm or a Structure building Gm
both have benefits, both have drawbacks
>World building
pros: everything is laid out, and your players can pick where they want to start
>Oh the big bad demon army is building in another nation? Succession issues in the Kingdom? Bandits in the country side? We're gonna go do that last one
con: info dumps can be a bad thing, depending on how massive you make the world you may have to print out a (sanitized) version of your notes so that they don't get lost
>Structure building
Pros: the players do the hard work, your just building the adventure around them and each adventure can turn into a unique experience
>Players in a City? "hello adventures! we need some assistance with a matter most dire!" Old Ruins? "that strange orb emits a fearful glow. Were the creatures here defending it? or a letter on the corpse of a fallen NPC
Con: Depending on your skill, the adventures can be very Ad hoc. requires a bit of thought and imagination into how to build off any and all encounters
double post
Structure building is a bit like the old Age of Empires games where you had the fog of war, you didn't know what something was like til you were there.
World building is Age of Empires withe fog turned off and and the world is "illuminated"
There is no shame mixing parts of both together, just don't go overboard and have fun.
I enjoy it mostly because I go into it never knowing what's going to happen. That always excites me before a session. I don't plan for things to happen in a certain order or really for anything to happen at all. I'll just spend my freetime building/adding to the world. Some days I spend populating a village. Other days I'll spend making a villain and figuring out his schemes and goals. I've got multiple key forces (heroes, bad guys, nobles, mundane NPCs, monsters, and fiends) made up all doing their own thing to further their agendas. I made an in game calendar to keep track of their activities (Namely how long it will take them to accomplish something) and will roll a bit outside of the game to see if, for example, any of them happened across each other and what happened. Did a hero win a battle with a villain? Did the hero meet up with another hero and join forces? Did an important item being shipped to another kingdom get intercepted and stolen? It's fun to see how my players influence or don't influence these things. A story will follow whatever they do, there's no need to prep "They go to A then B where they meet C." or really any sort of plot. That'll be the result of the game. As far as balancing encounters goes, I'm pretty anti that as well. If something that'll straight up kick your ass lives in the Whatever Swamps, then don't go there. Not to mention there's gotta be a few other guys in the world that are just plain better than the PCs (Initially). Just don't start your session with any expectations, thinking on your feet and responding to all the nonsense your players will throw your way is the fun part.
I know a lot of people are telling you to either cut back or have your players help you out. I think the improv tip is very useful. Think of it in terms of "everything the players touch is like the hand of midas." The players are the hand and you are the magic that details everything. Every person they interact with, every object, give it life. Give it personality. Dive into it on the spot, no prep needed, borrow from everything and anything that is out there.
One thing I do is to keep everything player focused using bullet points and only one page. So I limit myself to ONLY that one page for the session for prep, and ONLY the players are in the notes. Granted, I'm running Phandelver at the moment so that helps with all the heavy lifting, but limiting myself to one page and font size is incredibly useful. You only put in the important stuff, and it's character centric. Then I can go back with my notes from the sesh and literally I force myself to use ONLY what the players did last session in this campaign. Meaning fuck all the "background" junk I got going on, unless it's super important, I don't use it, and instead use what my players give me. Like if during the last session they obsess over some person or object, that becomes the focus for the next or sessions after.
also, honestly, your players are much more impressed with how little you prep regardless.
>podcast
I think Matthew Colville's running the game youtube videos are really good.
I fucking love to GM, I honestly can't understand how someone can get as much joy out of playing as I do from running the game.
If I could somehow make a career out of being a GM I'd be happy for the rest of my life.
Ah the curse of over-preparation. I still can't get over doing that. Its like I'm worried that if I don't meticulously plan out every single thing the entire game will collapse.
Its not true, of course. My players often shove their turgid cocks right into my plans and I end up throwing half my notes away or having to drastically alter plans.
Still, the planning goes on.
I will second that using a simpler rule system like Savage Worlds helps out a lot though. These days I hardly even have to think about crunch, just different situations and NPCs the PCs might encounter.
Saving Pic, Thanks user