I think that the table top roleplaying community would be better in general if it was expected/encouraged/borderline...

I think that the table top roleplaying community would be better in general if it was expected/encouraged/borderline mandatory that new players give running their own game a try after they've got a few sessions as a player under their belt to get a handle on the rules and flow of the game. Even if a person only runs it a few times before deciding they don't like it/arn't good at it and revert back to being a player, I think that having that experience fosters a better understanding and appreciation of the game/GM which leads to being a better player overall.

Just a thought. Am I just pointing out the obvious? I'm considering implementing this kind of policy with my groups. Good idea, or do you think getting on people's cases about this will just scare players off.

i mean, i think youre right and that youre pointing out the obvious but there are a fair number of players who are entitled assholes and think they are either above gming, hate it without trying it, or dont care enough about the game to learn even if they were willing to run a game.

i say go for the implementation it might scare some players but just reassure them that everything will be fine and their turn at the helm will be over soon if they dont like it.

The observation that running a game improves a player's appreciation for the game is true, but any kind of enforcement mechanism to encourage this would have the reverse effect, so I don't recommend it.

You are correct, but the majority of players would rather just not play than GM. With that kind of attitude, it’s really hard to convince them to give it a shot.

Definitely. There's tons of bad GMing advice here that permaplayers give out based on what they think GMing is like

The principle is correct, but I don't think any form of enforcement would really help.

I think the advent of rules light RPG's and systems built for one shots or short campaigns actually helps. Even if they won't keep your interest long term, that a player can dive into GMing and experience a truncated form of it is probably the best way of encouraging people to gain that level of understanding of the GM's role. Really, the only way to make this more common is to try and encourage people to give it a try, rather than forcing people to do something they don't want to.

In the last few years I’ve seen a lot of casual interest in tabletop RPGs from the general population but they just want a taste. They can’t be bothered to you know actually read the rules or read the background material. Much less know enough to run the game. I don’t know if it is merely an infusion of filthy casuals looking to dip their toe in the nerd pool or if it is a socetial shift due to our minuscule attention spans filled my 24/7 electronic media
Fatigue.

I once toyed with the idea of a rotating GMs game with a more episodic structure where each player would be strongly encouraged to run their own scenario as part of the campaign, in a sort of Road Trip concept.

People flaked pretty fast in the group I was trying to build for it, but I haven't given up on the concept.

No. Let players be players. Once I had DMed a bit I basically could not enjoy being a player anymore. The "magic" was gone.

>I don't have anything relevant to add
>but fucking normies reeeee, amirite?

Same. I think it being on Big Bang Theory and Stranger Things has gotten a lot of people interested, but they take a look, try it, then remember why it was "uncool" for so long, because it involves being passionate about something besides anal sex, weed, and getting "totally wasted, man." 5e being incredibly dumbed down was part of it (gotta love how they removed size-based AC modifiers, so hitting an ant from 100 feet with a longbow is not any more difficult than hitting a goblin at 20 feet), although the simplified rules were a good thing overall, especially the action economy, condition rules, immunities/resistances/vulnerabilities, and damage types. But you can tell a lot of stuff was removed. And even with that, I was at my FLGS a few nights ago when some chicks were asking one of the other players to help them figure out their stats for next level. Because even 5e is too complicated for some reason.

You could do what my group does. Someone runs a game in a system of their choice. When the story is over, someone else steps up to the plate with a story of their own, choosing their own system along the way.

You can even do this without changing systems every time.

i somewhat agree but a lot that was removed was bloat or things added to make the game "more realistic" which i think has little place in such a high fantasy game. maybe some of them as optional rules in a dmg or setting guide but as rules over the game as a whole i dont think things like size based ac as having much value.

That takes a special type of group. I would encourage rotating GMs, each with their own campaign that they run. My group usually has 2 or 3 games running concurrently, which is good for when certain people can't make it, or one GM has nothing prepared because of outside concerns, Build that group up for a while, encourage everyone to GM and get a feel for it. After everyone's confidence and abilities have been built up, then pitch your idea.

I honestly as someone who has been on both sides of the metaphorical player/GM fence I believe if this were implemented the community would collapse or stagnate and here's why.

1. Too many seasoned veterans (neck beards) would shit all over new players for even attempting, leaving a bad taste in most new players' mouths.

2. The amount of time to set up a good session, is prohibitive to most new players due to time constraints and real life obligations.

3. Being a first time GM to a group of experienced players can be intimidating. New players are going to want to make a good impression and the fear of failure in social situations can be crippling especially if the majority or entirety of the group are people you only just met.

Yeah, finding a good system that can easily run different genres helps a ton. I use a system my old DM made himself drawing on 40 years experience in AD&D, Gurps, and cyberpunk. It's a good generic system that we've so far run high and low fantasy, modern spies, modern superheroes, space opera, Hunter X Hunter, and Pokemon successfully by fiddling with the rules.

A big part of that problem is neckbeard hazing. If you're DM, don't tolerate shit like that. I have kicked a guy from a session for trying it before.

Really? For me it was the opposite experience. I walked away from it with a better understanding of the game's mechanics, structure, pacing, and how to identify the GM's cues to keep the game moving. All that stuff, plus it helped me move on from my "Here's my 20 page autistic novel of a backstory that has no relevance to the game at hand" mindset into being a more collaborative roleplayer that works with both the GM and other players to create characters that make for a more interesting game. Knowing the kinds of stuff that go into making a good oneshot/campaign made me a better roleplayer. When I'm not running my own game now, I actively go out of my way to be the player that I'd want to have in my own game.

That mutual understanding of each role at the table helps build a respect for the overall craft/game. At least in my own anecdotal experience anyway. All of the best players I've had are GMs, and all of the worst foreverplayers.

Different strokes for different folks of course, but I think I lot of the borderline That Guys I've played with over the years could be corrected by walking in the GM's shoes for a little while.

True, but the topic is about making new players run a session or two as an entry bar for playing. This would make the new player the DM for those sessions. As for stopping neck beards, its all well and good to say shut them down to the groups main DM, but given the amount of them that exist, its obvious that there are a lot of DMs who are intentionally overlooking the problem and giving them a free pass.

Why are people so caught up on the obligation/implementation aspect of it? OP never suggested you'd get hauled in by the neckbeard police if you didn't GM. More that running a game be considered a rite of passage. The question wasn't "Should people be forced to do things?" It's "Would games be better if most/all of the players had at least a little GMing experience?"

>Because even 5e is too complicated for some reason.
From what I've observed, there are two things at work here.

>Social activity
For some people, the game is about spending time with and interacting with friends. There's no reason not to extend that to the preparation phase.

>Expectation of complexity
Regardless of whether or not the system has been simplified, it has a long-lived reputation as being a nerd hobby with piles of books associated with it. People expect complexity, so they ask for help in advance so they don't screw up. When it's easy, either they're surprised or they assume that it was that easy because of the person helping them.

See, for me, that's all true. I walked away with a better understanding of the system, group dynamic, and roleplaying in general. I'm more helpful at the table to the DM and to the other players, and my main concern is always keeping the game healthy.

And that's just it. It became entirely about the mechanics and the dynamic. The magic that let me immerse myself in my character and the story just up and died. I don't care that much about my characters, their goals, or their relationships, because they exist primarily to facilitate me assisting with the game.

>expected/encouraged/borderline mandatory that new players give running their own game a try after they've got a few sessions as a player under their belt
OP says it in his statement, expected and borderline mandatory seem pretty forceful to me. If I'm wrong I'll admit to misunderstanding but OP almost seems to be stating that its an entry bar to continued access to play.

Lol go fuck yourself pal. If you can’t be bothered to learn the rules of the game because you are too dumb/lazy to crack a book that is hardly me being an elitist.

Yeah, I probably could have worded that better.

I meant it more as looking at GM aspect of the game as integral part of the [insert game here] experience that all players should be encouraged to try at least once if they want to get the most out of the game, as opposed to a separate thing that only the most hardcore of players get into. Even if it's something simple like a one shot dungeon crawl.

"Rite of passage", as that other user put it, is a good way to phrase it.

No, but it does make you an idiot who barges into perfectly innocent threads and whines about unrelated topics

First rpg I ever saw was D&D B/X in 1983. I was 10 years old. I got it for my birthday after begging mom to buy it for me from the B. Dalton Books at Lakeforest Mall. I didn’t know anyone else who played so I started reading and learned the rules I’ve been DMing (dare I say I’m a forever DM) for my friends ever since. I think many players are intimidated. They are worried about forgetting or misapplying a rule in front of others. The secret to DMing is that the rules are the least impotant part of the game.

The two are directly related. Many players don’t want to GM because they are filithy casuals at heart and don’t actually know the rules and setting well enough to confidently run a game. Most are only half way paying attention while they fuck around on their phones. You can’t fuck around on your phone if your the GM. You are all in. A lot of people like the romanticized idea of playing the perfect tabletop game (ala critical role) more than reality.

>I think many players are intimidated. They are worried about forgetting or misapplying a rule in front of others. The secret to DMing is that the rules are the least impotant part of the game.

I think a big key to getting something like OP's post to work would be addressing this stuff right here. Make it seem like less of a big deal, and more of a normal thing. Make DMing a simple game more of a casual thing, making sure the new player knows that it's a judgment free zone because it's his/her first time. Let it be know that the more experience players are there to help/POLITELY (this is key) correct them if they are having trouble with some of the rule stuff, and that even if it ends up being loosey goosey mechanically it's fine as long as we're all having fun together.

Frame it as a learning environment that will both improve them as a player and potentially spark an interest in running more of their own games. That kind of setup would make it more approachable to more people imo. Although, I admit it might be hard if you've got a bunch of asshole neckbeards and rules lawyers in your group.

Also, nice trips.

I don't know. I'm a foreverGM with a big pool of players rotating in my game, and 80% have tried running at least one game. They either flake out after two sessions tops or just plain suck, and I can't say I've noticed improvements in their gaming style (but they were already good enough, I'm quite selective in my games).
Appreciation improves in the short term, but it rebounds soon.

I guess i never had much issue with roleplaying. I knew what I wanted to do and took initiative. Given my brother and I "roleplayed" when we played as little kids with our army man characters, the concept was not at all foreign to us. I guess that's cause I have autism though.

It is better than being the GM for the 1st Time occur naturally and early on. When everyone is new to the game. Players and GMs alike. You can learn together and laugh about how you screwed so many things up.

The problem is many people come to an existing gaming group as noobs wanting to play. I see a lot of new players who were not comfortable with introducing the game to their existing friends. Too self conscious I suppose. It was never an issue for me so I can’t say. Maybe they didn’t have friends? So they sought out strangers who are already playing and seek to join an established group. This noob player isn’t going to feel comfortable challenging the social structure (some GMs don’t want to ever share the reins) of an existing group.

In the olden days before the internet, if you knew no other gamers you had no options but to form a group yourself. Now when people want to play it’s much easier to find a group on Roll20, at a FLGS, online want ads, all the Cons.

Has anyone considered that this kind of idea would work much better if there was a system that facilitated running the game for the first time without as many pitfalls as the ones people usually play? DnD 5e is pretty simple, sure, but that's with the aid of a ton of assumptions I've been taught to make by its predecessors and other systems, and the same goes for most OSR. I would never want to see a new GM suffer the nightmare that running a PbtA game for the first time is like, and trying to get someone to buy into generic systems is pretty difficult when there's so many moving parts to them they'll be anxious they could fuck them up.

What system would you recommend, in these circumstances? Risus? Is there something with a little more meat (maybe under 15 pages, to be arbitrary) that can run for a good experience without total mastery?

>trying to get someone to buy into generic systems is pretty difficult when there's so many moving parts to them they'll be anxious they could fuck them up.
Not everyone generic system is GURPS. Actually I can't think of any that are like GURPS. GURPS has the GURPS market cornered.
>What system would you recommend, in these circumstances? Risus? Is there something with a little more meat (maybe under 15 pages, to be arbitrary) that can run for a good experience without total mastery?
Savage Worlds Test Drive is only 16, pretty functional, and not very fiddly. Is there some other reason it can't be a generic system besides complexity?

>DnD 5e is pretty simple, sure
It's rules medium and hundreds of pages, so not an ideal noob game on that basis alone. And then there are the underlying assumptions you referenced.

>What system would you recommend, in these circumstances?
Barbarians of Lemuria is pretty good for a full-length game, but it's ~100 or 200 pages, depending on the edition you look at (granted, the important stuff is just a fraction of that). Sadly, I don't know of any good games of the sort that you seem to be looking for. There are a ton of 1-4 page deals, but they're necessarily very skeletal and improv-heavy. Personally, I think somewhere in the 10-30 page range would be ideal.

>Savage Worlds Test Drive is only 16, pretty functional, and not very fiddly.
It's really only 12 pages of rules, if you don't count the title page, the setting advertisement page, or the explosion templates. Still, those 12 pages are pretty dense with rules. It's not a terrible place to start, but the size of the skill and boon/hindrance systems is a bit large for a dozen-page game, and you tell it's a downsized sort of thing.

>user asks for that isn't OSR and is under 15 pages
>Suggest 100+ page OSR game

Barbarians of Lemuria isn't OSR. Hell I'd recommend it over any iteration of D&D because it's so straightforward, but I don't think it's laid out in a good way for new players and GMs to properly read through and grok it without having played it before.

That what my friends did in high-school. took place in a city that was a bunch of rafts and towers strung together around some small islands.
We switched gm every 3-6 sessions, with each one involving solving a self-contained quest, usually in an island that is never brought-up ever again.

I did say "but it's ~100 or 200 pages" to indicate that that is as close of a game as I've got, but it doesn't fit because of how long it is. But just to put things in perspective, v2 of BoL is only 43 pages, and really all the mechanics are in the first 23 pages. It's just that the rules (and presentation) are less refined than in later editions. But other than lacking boons (an admittedly important difference), it's not like the rules are dramatically different or anything. Most of the additional length of later editions is fleshing things out and adding setting information. Also, BoL is definitely not OSR. OSR has D&D classes and levels. BoL has neither, and doesn't even have D&D stats. Hell, it doesn't even use a d20, saving throws, or armor classes.

Agreed. I push all of my players to GM after 3-6 months of play. Most of them really get into it. Meaning none of us aren't forever DM, and we always have a pool of available players who aren't shitbirds.

It is more difficult as you'd have disadvantage on the roll....

i made this experience with the "scheming" guy of my gaming group. This player was heavy on derailing plots and adventure hook solely on his unaware desire of the spotlight, so once he gm'd for the first time i couldn't help myself on going full-henson up on his carefull prepared adventure plot. At the end of that session he scrapped away his notes saying that 'being a gm is fucking hard'. Obviously i encouraged him saying that yes, that's true, but it surely was a lot of fun even on his part and it hasn't to be necessarily always that way. From that point he improved a lot as a player.

Maybe you were thinking of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea (which is OSR) and not Barbarians of Lemuria (which isn't)?

>so hitting an ant from 100 feet with a longbow is not any more difficult than hitting a goblin at 20 feet),
The ant is so small it benefits from 3/4s ( +5 AC ) to total cover ( can't be targeted at all ) from the environmental flora. Give the player disadvantage too and then that ant becomes a lot harder to hit (15 AC, player has disadvantage so I think it's effectively 20 AC? )

But the problem now lies with you, the DM, having to create rules and say that the player has disadvantage on their attack. Nothing in the rules exists to adjudicate slaying an ant with a longbow, because 5e is so pants-shittingly scared of pluses and minuses that everything is boiled down to advantage and disadvantage.

The cover rule still stands so it's not as much of a problem as you are stating.

I concur. I started out DM'ing recently because I couldn't find a game to join. I've since had the chance to be a player, and I consciously try to follow plot hooks and the DM's cues. I know the work he puts into the game, and I am more than happy to follow the story and see where we end up. It has also helped me ask better questions, I think, at least considering what I otherwise might ask.

I think it's a great shame that so many players don't appreciate the DM, and don't even give enough of a shit about the hobby to try DM'ing. It's been extremely rewarding for me to DM, and while I'd like to play more, I'm also super excited about DM'ing stuff like Curse of Strahd because I'm curious to see how players handle the different challenges.

As far as I am concerned, foreverplayers who proclaim to love the hobby are willfully lazy.

This.

>This player was heavy on derailing plots and adventure hook solely on his unaware desire of the spotlight

I think this is a true and good observation. "If I do something fucking idiotic, I'll have the spotlight!"

>Tfw will never have the mental capacity to run a coherent tabletop game

Where do I find my forever gm to prevent me from getting bored and trying to run games?

What's the statblock for an ant?

I've been playing TTRPGs for about a year and recently started running sessions. It has certainly given me a better appreciation for the work that goes into running a game. And honestly I think I've enjoyed it a bit more than playing.

>"running sessions"