DM doesn't prepare for any session ever

>berates others for standing up to their problem members
>advocates for doing the exact same thing

If a micro-meteorite fell from the sky and killed you I would feel bad that the meteorite missed the opportunity to kill someone important.

I understand that "everyone deserves a second chance" is a popular thing to teach children, but realistically they're almost always a waste of time/ Communication is great... if you think that it's a problem that can be solved just by pointing it out to a reasonable. The person the OP described doesn't sound reasonable, and it doesn't sound like it's worth giving him a second chance which he could use to just shit things up more and engage in more player sabotage.

I was more berating the attitude and absolute lack of empathy of someone in an awkward situation. You'll note that I said to just rip the band-aid off, not to lay out every little thing the guy did wrong and say "You're shit and no one is having fun, shape up or get the fuck out".

>I've sorta wanted to start DMing but I have no experience with it.
If everyone used this excuse there would be no DMs.

If you were, you'd have resolved this already. Suck it up.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Veeky Forums is just as autistic as it has always been, but now it's autistic in a different direction. People that screech about telling players, GMs, and annoying observers off in the most blunt and aggressive fashion possible are wholly ignorant of things like standard subtleties of social interaction. Yes, keeping quiet forever or passive-aggressive destroying a campaign isn't a solution, but holy shit you 'tards are just as oblivious about how to act like a normal human being.

Check out Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering as well as the Five-Room Dungeon design framework. These are good starting points for first-time GMs that struggle with the workload. Keep those in mind along with the sins of your current GM so you know what to avoid. With all that, you should still prepare for your first game to be pretty bad. Learn from your mistakes and improve for the next session. Take time to reflect on what went wrong and what went right. Be honest with your players and your expectations.

The only retard here is the one who is coming to Veeky Forums, of all places, for advice. And besides, he and the first reply are objectively correct. If OP cannot talk to this person about how bad they are, they can't grow as a GM. And if OP cannot talk to them because they refuse to listen, he'll just have to go elsewhere and be the GM himself. That's how life works when you're an adult.

Having a DM like that is why I tried my hand at it and never looked back. He was more or less like the one described in the OP, had kind of erratic ideas, didn't organize very well, etc etc He came about being the DM because he wanted to play tabletop but didn't want to throw the idea out there then tell someone else "okay well.. get to work on that world lol".

I didn't approach it with hostility or anything but I did sit down with him and talk about the problems with the game. Dude basically told me he actually hated being DM but thought everyone else was having such a good time that he didn't want to be the buzzkill. If nobody would have communicated in that situation we could have played for a month with no one having a good time but thinking everyone else is and not saying anything.

I'd say you have some first hand experience in "what not to do and why". I would encourage you to start doing it. If you have time to kill and want some pointers youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8

fpbp

>Don't bother giving the current DM another chance, just bite the bullet and tell him that it's just not working out so he has to go
Because a person is either a kick-ass DM from session 1 or utter trash that couldn't possibly improve when made aware of their shortcomings, right?

Personally I wouldn't bother, but if OP feels like it's worth a shot, then that's his prerogative.

>DM never prepares for anything
>All battlemaps are blank 8x11" sheets of paper
>Takes 20 minute breaks several times per session to prepare for what's next

"Hey, i'm working on a campaign, mind if i take over for a bit after we do (Story Thing)"
If he refuses, then bail and run the game in your own time
if he says yes, the congrats.
If he says yes and you can't be fucked to DM then you're a faggot who deserves a shit Dm in the first place.

Just run your own game. Invite two other players and try dming a one shot game for them.

Just get your feet wet. No big campaign. Just a one shot. Invite the two players you think will be the most encouraging.

Do this a second time.

Then invite everyone you want and start a campaign.

There is no need to insult your current dm. There is no positive for you in that. If you want to be helpful then give advice or suggestions in a positive way. Failing hat just leave and go nogame.

But don’t be a jerk to the guy until you got your own thing going.

>Personally I wouldn't bother
If you wouldn't bother taking effort to improve your gaming experience, I personally don't think you deserve one.

But finding a new GM is taking effort

Don't trip over yourself in your rush to judge me, user. I have taken the effort to improve my gaming experience, and it's because I wanted to improve it for everyone that I told the problem member it just wasn't working out and I went to find another DM. It's not like he was my friend that I exiled from our circle of friends, he was some dude who we weren't getting along with and was negatively affecting our games in ways I didn't consider to be improvable problems.

Yes, finding a new GM is taking effort... but it is effort to make your gaming experience different - which is not necessarily an improvement.

And presumably, if the new GM isn't already bad-ass, dude is just gonna shuffle on to the next different-but-not-necessarily-improved GM, and keep the attitude that it's the GM(s) that need to change rather than his approach if the gaming experience is ever going to actually get better on purpose (rather than by absolute happenstance of luckily finding a GM that is both new AND better than the old one)

>I wanted to improve it for everyone
Everyone? Nah... subtract one from that because fuck that guy that you decided sucked so bad at DMing you shouldn't even mention what you didn't like about what they were doing because burning potential DMs and potentially leading people to quit the hobby entirely don't occur to you as long term possibilities that could affect your own gaming later in life - especially if you happen to be picky about your DMs, which would seem likely given how easily you declare shit to be unfixable.

>I've sorta wanted to start DMing but I have no experience with it. What do?

This is such a nigger excuse. Do you think we DMs started with tons of experience? Christ in fucking heaven. I'm with you that your current DM is an idiot, but why in the name of shit don't you just fucking try it yourself, you lazy cunt. DM'ing is a lot of fun and really satisfying. Besides, now that you can identify several things that make a DM shitty, there's a good chance you'll do a lot better.

It's just story telling. Use your words and brain. DM'ing isn't that hard.

This is the correct answer. We had a similar DM, though not as bad. At first we began pressing the question of when is this campaign / story coming to an end. And when it became clear that he was wasting everyone's time another member set up his own campaign. Our original DM is having a blast as a player. Some people just aren't cut out for being DM

Ryan Reynolds is a good DM?
>you will never play ttrpg with stars
>you will never play in John Manganiello TTRPG dungeon cave

The new DM is actually pretty badass. We really lucked out. He's experienced, loves creating, and we all get on famously. You act like I unilaterally gave someone the boot because I have incredibly high standards that weren't being met. That's not the case. The game the guy was running was quite frankly shit, and I checked with the other members beforehand, and they all felt the same way, so I found another DM and told the problem member it wasn't working out, because it fucking wasn't. I also didn't lead him to quit the hobby, you fucking retard. He took it alright because I assume he didn't like us any better than we were liking him, and he was a player in another group. Why are you so mad? Have you been kicked before and you're still salty about it?

>Creeps on the one girl in the session heavily
>Killed off someone's character in his session when they said "You're not the DM" in a one shot where he wasn't the DM and kept trying to boss the DM around.

If your DM is a shit person that doesn't care about how their behavior makes other people feel, just bail/cut them out of your life mercilessly because they aren't worth being around even if they run mediocre games and you're too pathetic and selfish to take on the responsibility yourself.

Here's what you do if your DM is a decent person but a bad DM... Talk to you DM about how they feel about the campaign and bring up your criticisms in a constructive way.

Ask your DM about what inspires them about the media they're currently into and what kind of stories they tell (or if they're just cool mechanics, that's fine too). Ask them about their expectations and talk about yours in return (as a group). It isn't an adversarial relationship and with a bit of open honesty & constructive criticism it will generally go well.

The vast majority of players are garbage, just the worst kind of trash. Making them care about their characters is difficult because they usually don't know what they want and their answer to "backstory" is to blink, say "dunno" and then just play a more sociopathic self-insert with amnesia but luckily in most systems, there are usually small details the players are forced to choose to make a character that the DM can exploit in prep.

For helping to make PC's care, here's a chart that I find very handy for when I write adventures. I make the "opening scene" & "crises" nodes "encounter events" that happen during the course of a campaign. Each node should have a social, mental or physical aspect to the encounter (or mixed). Each node should have an encounter objectives that raises the stakes by exploiting one or more of a character's trait (in 5e, this is the characters bond, trait & flaw, in nWOD the character "concept").

...

>Ask your DM about what inspires them about the media they're currently into
What if they tell you they can't explain?

Worse, what if it's because of all the sexy children?

If you're not enjoying the game then you should stop playing, and if you hate that guy you should stop hanging out with him. Anything else is being stupid and a pushover.

Sometimes there are toxic people in your life. It hurts, but it's best to cut them out earlier rather than later.

That is a very good point actually

>Why are you so mad? Have you been kicked before and you're still salty about it?
Nah, it's not about me getting kicked and getting salty about it...

It's about me basically never getting to sit at a table as a player because of the compounding factors of A) "You're a better DM than this DM, so we'd all rather you just run all the games instead of this other DM ever actually getting the chance to get better" B) "Nah, I don't know any other good DMs... guy I used to play under sucked, that's why I was looking to join a group when you met me." C) "D&D? Yeah, I played that a long time ago... have no interest in it anymore because [tells story about either a DM that wasn't awesome and permanently ruined the entire idea of the game for them, or about their friends 'just losing interest and not coming over to play it anymore' which when they describe their play experiences sounds a whole lot like their old players all had the "this guy's not a great DM, so let's just bail without giving any useful feedback to him" conversation)

And other such shit that people in the ttrpg hobby community do which inhibits the growth and improvement of said community without even so much as a passing thought about what their behavior means for anyone other than them selves. Especially if those things are any of the various factors which make it continue to be a thing that far too goddamn many members of the ttrpg community legitimately believe they can't be a good DM