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!)
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!
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 tried setting up our game so that other people could take over and DM it and take turns. Alas, I am the forever DM. I enjoy DMing, but missed playing.
But about a year ago I got to join an OSRIC campaign. It’s been fun getting to play again!
Fucking love that my group is basically all the second guy. We’ve all taken the GM spot at one point.
That’s our group, we all swap out duties. Some people want to do longer-form campaigns, some just run til they’re bored, some (like me), specifically do shorter one-shots. We have to actually schedule things beforehand they’re so many people wanting to run stuff.
Same here. There’s the main game which has been going on for 4 years, and then whenever the DM is a little burnt out we all take turns. The result is years of steady dnd sessions with no burnout, despite playing online over text with no planned schedule and timezones literally across the world from each other
Me when I want to be a player but the guest DM is doing it wrong:
