Not really! I love being a DM. But then unlike my two friends I wasn’t the regular DM weekly for 12 years. So there’s that.
For forever DMs out there. Do you ever get to play?
Do you take regular breaks?
How does DMing work for you?
And thanks. I see you.
🙏❤️
Don’t tell my friends, but I actually like GMing more than playing now. It’s fun to have the galaxy-brain “always on” feeling and multitask information. (And it’s always your turn in combat!)
How to accomplish with peanut brain?
Practice makes perfect!
I’d say the most important thing is knowing who your NPCs are and what they want. That’s what you should prepare outside of sessions. Once you have that, it’s a lot easier to deal with players throwing curveballs.
A constrained scope helps as well. Give the group a prompt like “make characters who want revenge on the Lich Queen” or “make characters who care about the city of Korvosa.”
Use a different, simpler system.
DnD and PF are on the crunchier side of the spectrum for ttrpgs, as much as I love PF2. There are tons of great systems you can learn all the rules to in a matter of minutes and run awesome campaigns in without all the crunch. Personally, I love the crunch but it’s not for everyone so you shouldn’t force it if it’s not for you. Simple doesn’t mean dumb either, a great example is the newer system Shadowdark. Dungeon Crawl Classics is another solid choice, there are a bunch of others though. Like the indie system The Electrum Archive or TEA. The rules are free, simple, but engaging (with inspiration from Morrowind and Dune so bonus points from me).
Don’t confine yourself!
I get that, but then I also love that sense of figuring out a creative solution to some social interaction or encounter. I only ever played once, but man I had a blast.
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I like DMing, so I’m always DM.
When Hercules visited King Eurystheus, he told Hercules he would need to complete 12 difficult labors for him. One of those labors was to steal the golden apples that belonged to Zeus. These apples were in a garden and guarded by a hundred-headed dragon and the Hesperides sea nymphs. Hercules did not know how he was going to get past these guards to steal the golden apples, so he sought the help of Atlas at the advice of Prometheus.
Hercules visited Atlas and proposed a deal: if Atlas fetched the golden apples, Hercules would hold up the earth. Atlas hated holding up the earth, so he willfully agreed. After Atlas had retrieved the apples, he returned to Hercules and told him that he would take the apples to King Eurystheus himself. After all, Atlas did not want to return to holding up the earth.
Hercules could not let Atlas do that but also didn’t know how to give him back the earth, so Hercules came up with a plan. Hercules asked Atlas to take the earth for a moment while he placed some soft padding on his shoulders to help him hold the earth. When Atlas agreed and took the earth back on his shoulders, Hercules grabbed the apples and left Atlas at the edge of the earth holding the world like he had done for so many years before.
I’m the forever GM, but my players also insist I play a PC in the party, so I kinda still get to play. I think they know otherwise I’d never be a player. LOL
My group’s had a pretty good thing going for 6ish years now. 3 out of the 6 if us all love DMing, and so we rotate beween new campaigns every couple years and all of us get a chance to play. We actually have 2 going on right now, and I’m a player in both. My last campaign ended in 2021 and I’ll be taking over for one of the campaigns in a couple months
Fucking love that my group is basically all the second guy. We’ve all taken the GM spot at one point.
This is why my group has like four different games going. I run one, and three of the others also run their own. I get to play twice a week and run a game every other week.
You might be the dumbest man alive but Laura Les sure is the dumbest girl alive !
Yuuup. Hey, look at this cool We Be Goblins adventure Paizo did for Free RPG Day. Why don’t I run that? What’s this? An adventure hook in the back of it for one of their Adventure Paths? Sure, I’ll run that. Skip to five years later and I’m half-way through running another Adventure Path and I’ve done several other shorter adventures besides.
That said, I’m not the only member of our group that GMs, just the most reliable.
I just wish I had the creativity, ability to improvise, and dedication necessary to DM. It’s the fact that I’m lacking in all three that keeps me out of that position.
Forever DM since DnD 3.0. I averaged roughly one played session per two years. Until when I transitioned to PF2 I got 2 sessions of beginner box and 2 sessions of AP run by a volunteer. It was greatly appreciated and helped a lot with the transition.
RE DMing, I phase it in and out. Its mostly a winter thing for me - too many good-weather-dependent hobbies in summer complicate scheduling so things need to wrap up in spring. I’m preparing to start back up in a month or two, probably every-other-weekly roughly September to April/May-ish.
Also, Baldurs Gate 3. It’s so good (it makes me wish for a PF2 ruleset adaption mod, but even under 5e-ish rules it’s great).
Hello! Thanks so much for sharing this. Please, can you speak more about Baldur’s Gate 3? How did the classes play? And is there environmental interaction like the studios other games?
Thanks again!