Be told for years I am a good DM and believe it

Different user, sorry. But even if she had a bf, do you remember anyone who was unimpressed with the campaign as a whole who still came because of her, or anyone who let their neckbeard gaze linger a little too long?

>be told I am a good GM
>be told the campaign is doing great
>players stop showing up

>be told that I am a terrible GM
>be told the campaign is going straight in the trash
>players keep showing up, like beaten wives

>Strive to improve
>Keep recording to sessions
>Keep trying t note where you improved, and where you didn't
>Get better over time
>Feeling of accomplishment
>Small, satisfied smile
>Everywhere you walk, flowers bloom

From the sound of things, I'd exchange my current DM for you.

>My voice is spergy, my roleplaying of NPCs is honestly awkward a lot of times.

Maybe give this podcast a listen:

peachesandhotsauce.com/podcasts/11-voicing-characters

My gaze lingered a bit but I tried really hard not to because she was really nice, she also wasn't that pretty, but she was a non-fat non-deformed female so for FLGS standards that counts. She actually did a really good job of DMing in my mind but part of that has to do with her voice being somewhat engaging as opposed to an autistic drawl, she ran Curse of Strahd pretty well. Her boyfriend had a huge miniatures collection. I brought mine thinking I would amaze people with my collection of ~200, but he had something like 1,000 miniatures with him.

But I see your point, I rambled offtopic there, sorry. I don't think anyone came because of her but I can definitely see that stuff happening.

Would you guys be willing to give me a critique if I upload a clip of my GMing?

Totally

Sure, just make sure no one is referred to by a full name.

Ok thanks. Gimme a few minutes.

ok here you go. Like you can see my group gets off-topic a bit. My GMing here was REALLY bad, IMO, it was one of the most awkward starts to a session I've had. Partly because it took like 15 minutes for people to settle down and stop talking and I was kinda fading by then. But I figured if you can see me at my worst it will help more. I won't say much else because I don't want to color your critiques of me. I will say I do kind of go for that Apocalypse World style of GMing where you give a lot of things to the PCs straight, almost like you are one of the players, like you will notice I advise them to hold onto a book, and to deal with some orcs to the south of the city.

clyp.it/u5qq44tv

Sorry the clip doesn't have too much of me actually GMing, I will try to get something better to upload later.

sure, but be warned, you seriously DO NOT need to be a decent voice actor or writer to be a great DM. Its just not needed. DMing is a hobby not a profession. You don't need to do all the component parts all that well. Also, writing skills from nearly any other medium WILL NOT carry over to ttrpg. (but you knew that already. You sounded quite experienced and skilled.)

The game being good/competent comes from the DM. If you are doing that then you are fine. GREAT games are made by the players. The best DM ever can't make crud players have an amazing game. Its a multi person creative endeavor. The groups creates wonderful madness that no one member could alone.
Also, voice acting/regular acting are really really hard to do well. Especially due to the improv nature of conversing in character. Even pros have a hard time with that.

In the end, your audience and yourself are the only critics worth a damn and your audience is satisfied. But I commend your spirit of improvement.

Thanks user, that means a lot.

>DMing is a hobby not a profession

But I have nothing else, and my job isn't worth being proud of.

You want to improve, and you have specific ideas as to how you can improve. What's not to like?

>And I am reminded of how often my group goes off-topic and completely destroys the immersion of the game because I am too beta to make them shut the fuck up and get back into character.
Are you me?

Doesn't sound too bad so far. You say um quite a bit, but that doesn't really reflect badly on your skill as a GM and is more just public speaking inexperience.

I'm at the same spot you are OP. I don't think it's an issue about being shitty so much as you're holding yourself to a higher standard than your players are. You'll notice your own flaws easier than they will, and you'll be less likely to forgive any mistakes you make.

I think it's just a point that many GMs reach once they've been in the hobby for a while. I've been playing rpgs for about a decade now and GMing for most of that time, and after a while the urge to improve yourself really takes hold. It's just harder to do so since there's no surefire way to really improve as a GM since the definition of a good GM varies from playgroup to playgroup.

You sound fine, your players sound fine, it seems like a typical RPG group.

Don't beat yourself up just because you're not Matt Mercer or some other RPG celebrity. I would enjoy playing in this game.

>Are you me?

Possibly. But I think there are quite a few of us out there.

Thanks senpai.

>be told I am a good campaign
>be told the players are doing great
>GM stops showing up

This is a good point you should take into account, OP. Your players' imaginations are the thing they probably are noticing the most, your exact delivery and wordings are likely background to them.

At least, that's how it's been for me the few times I've gotten to actually play.

If you're willing to DM and people want you to DM then you are at least an OK DM.

If nobody wants you to DM you're a bad DM.

If you absolutely hate to DM but do it anyways and players find it ok you're an average DM.

>act as a hobby
>perform in plays at a local theatre
>when it comes to voicing my own character is just can't do it on the spot
>realise the only reason I can act is because I have a script

>Be told I am a good player
>Be told I am doing great
>Campaign stops showing up

I AT LEAST HAD THE BACKBONE TO DENY YOU ROWAN

I'll give this a listen in a bit.

You're just fine user!

That happened to me too just a month ago. I still record them though, in the interests of self improvement

I think the best advice I could give would be to keep things moving along and avoid long winded periods of low energy banter, maybe interjecting an NPC with a pointer or something like that just to get the party moving and stop excessive time over-discussing things and set them afoot with something new and interesting and start up more RP between characters.
Other than that, I'd say it sounds fine.

>Not realizing that being able to self evaluate and wanting to do a good job puts you in the upper 10%

Now that I've had time to listen, this is fine. You opened a lot stronger than you were by the time the session started properly, but IMO my gut feeling from listening to this is that you are mainly suffering the inevitable consequences of having mostly shit players.

I couldn't GM any better than you in these circumstances, but my response would be to just not invite the people fucking with my flow and needing to be spoonfed constantly back to the next campaign, and replace them with newcomers or people I know are legit from prior experience.

I know this isn't a viable option for everyone since not everyone gets to choose who they play with, and not everyone is willing to laugh in the face of players getting upset when you GM a new game without them in it.

I'd worry that you aren't very creative, but there's very little information to draw that from, honestly I can't see any actual substantive mis-steps you made. You have a nice voice, its a shame you don't have good presence but I've only ever met one GM in a dozen who had that shit downpat.

Get better? I don't know what you are here for.

>Be GM 80% of the time
>good, memorable sessions.
>everyone has fun
>draw custom tokens for all players, NPCs, enemies. Draw custom maps
>would trade all of my creative /GMing ability to be a cute girl.

IMO the sign of an intelligent or skilled person is the ability to recognize their weaknesses. It's not always obvious when you're in the moment, but if you're able to identify what's wrong from another perspective, that's good.

If you really want to gauge yourself, though, just acknowledge that your friends want you to run the game. You might fall below your own standards, because you're aware of how much better things can be. But, you're still probably leagues above plenty of other DMs.

Yeah, I'm trying to cut down on the "ums." I was even going to add that as a disclaimer but I didn't want to bias people, I wanted to see if they noticed it themselves.

Thanks, friend!

Yeah the session actually got moving pretty well after that. I was about to bring in an NPC but the characters decided to pursue a different plotline from a previous session instead.

>I'd worry that you aren't very creative, but there's very little information to draw that from, honestly I can't see any actual substantive mis-steps you made.

Honestly, insubstantive mis-steps work fine, too. I'm not too insecure about my creativity, though in my case I have more quantity than quality sometimes.

In other words, does the campaign sound too cliche? I can greentext it real quick and people can rate it.

>group rescues alchemist who is father of one of the dancers at the tavern they all work at
>find cult mixing weird poisons and collecting strange beasts
>destroy a few cultist outposts
>disease starts sweeping city, clearly weaponized
>characters go on mission for cure
>find orcs gathering south of the city
>run into demons controlled by cult
>finally get scrolls of ancient necromancer so the herbalist can make the cure
>now the dwarf in the group wants to leave to reclaim his ancestral home (player-initiated adventure, which I like. He gets shit from the rest of the group but at least in this campaign he is probably the best roleplayer).

I like the idea of doing something weirder but honestly between having a large group and running Pathfinder there wasn't much I could do.

>doing something weirder
Dwarf goes on quest to reclaim ancestral home.
It's a section of the Ork Underground in Seattle.
Campaign was Shadowrun all along.

That's because you know what you're doing wrong. The players don't, and don't care/

>be forever DM for the same group fir years
>be told you're great at it and believe it
>change group, start being a player too
>realize you're a shit player, think it's because you're more comfortable DMing and start directing a campaign
>realize with the new group that you're a shit DM and basically shit at your favourite hobby

Fuck off roastie.