Is GMing/DMing a huge waste of my time? Should I Quit Playing RPGs?

[EightBitEngine]

I want to know what you guys think about this. It seems to me the level of hard work I put into dming is both never appreciated or respected by my players and the payoff is woefully inadequate to the amount of work I put in.

The following is both my experiences being a dm as well as my thoughts on dming and the player dm relationship in general.

PART ONE: On Paper I Like Tabletop Rpgs

There are few things as frustrating or as completely overwhelming as when a d&d game goes bad.
When a d&d game does go bad it can feel like getting lost or drowning meaning it can be hard or down right impossible to fix the problem or to even know what to do next.
Much like losing a game of monopoly when a d&d game goes bad you can often start to feel it a long time before it finally hits critical mass, especially if you have as much experience with games going bad as I do.

On paper I like tabletop rpgs. I played my first game of D&D at 11 but I was also raised on tales of my dad’s old d&d games so d&d has always been a part of my life and on paper I like tabletop roleplaying games but in practice… well that's another story altogether. In my personal experience with the hobby something always goes wrong and usually does so very early but as I said before much like losing a game of monopoly the downfall of a tabletop rpg game is often a slow, painful, agonizing, downfall the reasons for which are often out of your control.

I’ll try to explain what I mean. In all my years of playing tabletop rpgs I’ve only had maybe one game that you could describe as being successful (and for the purposes of this post I am defining a successful game as one that went all the way to it’s story conclusion and didn’t end prematurely or go on forever.)

That ONE count it ONE successful game was a game of “Vampire the Masquerade.” Everyone had fun no one got into a fight or hogged the spotlight all the players were cooperating and seemed to fully understand the setting… and the party actually saw the end of the story (imagine that. Big shocker I know.)

But that game was the outlier of all outliers because ever ****ing tabletop rpg game I have ever been in ether is clearly destined for disaster before it even starts or in the rare case it starts off promising it still always ends in disaster eventually.
I’m willing to except the fact that some of the games I’ve been in have ended poorly because at the time of those games I was an inexperienced GM but we won’t be discussing those games here. No these are going to be stories about player douchebaggery.

Seriously I’m not joking nothing is worse for the health of a d&d game then a selfish player character, For how much the cooperative aspect of these games is constantly being beat over the player’s head it surprises me that tabletop rpgs even attract selfish players at the frankly staggering rate that they do.
I wonder what these players think they are going to get out of one of these games when working together is such a large focus of their game design.

But let's move on before I start ranting.

Now comes the part where I give you all real life examples.

PART TWO: The Horror Stories I Could Tell You

This first story is one I like to call
“But my ex girlfriend doesn’t play in your game.”

In this game I was running a pathfinder module called “Hollow’s Last Hope.”
Great module by the way I really recommend it.
This game started off great, the players understood the hook and got started on the adventure right away.
In fact it was going better then any d&d game I’ve ever DMed. I’m not joking players where getting so invested in the setting that some of them even joined the city watch out of a simple desire to keep their hometown safe…
caring about the safety and wellbeing of random npcs and townsfolk is something I had never seen a player do before this game and I’ll be honest I was super excited about it. They took the time to learn the town’s structure and where things were even going as far as to remember the names of the different districts in the town. One player got married to a tavern girl who worked at their favorite tavern.
The player’s were getting invested and actually we're excited to find out what happens next.

Then the god damned wizard starts up a second game on the side, so he can NO JOKE spend time with his ex girlfriend who is married and completely uninterested in him in any way
but a guaranteed strike out was more important to him then my game was.
But that’s not even close to the worst part… not only did he drop out of my game in the middle completely ruining it but in order to have enough players to play in his side game that was really only an excuse to try and hit on his ex he took all the players from my group leaving me with no one to play with.
Later when I went to ask my old players to play in a new game they said and I quote. “Look man I just don’t have the time to play two d&d games at once.”

Hay mister horny ex chasing wizard ….. “Choke on taint! You ****head!”


This next story I call “It took me 4 years to build this homebrew setting and I’m very proud of it…. What's that? You’re all gonna build the most metagamed munchkined characters I’ve ever seen…. No that's cool.”

As I said above I spent 4 years of my free time piecing together a homebrew d&d setting that I was very proud of. I then invited a few newbies and one veteran player to come and play test it for me.
Well unknown to me the one veteran player sat down with the 2 newbies and built them characters so metagamed that any dm would take one look at them and shoot themself in the face.
You think I’m exaggerating but I’m not, each of the players were playing a class that was infamous in the system we were using for being ridiculously overpowered and each player had at least one 20 in an attribute… you heard me right a ****ing 20.
They munchkined out every part of the character creation process. Races that gave pluses to 3 attributes or crazy high plusses to 2 and no negatives, they cross referenced each other’s character sheets to makes sure no one took a skill someone else had so collectively they could do anything, they didn’t ask me which approche I wanted them to use for rolling stats ether by the way, these characters were un****ing believable and they steamrolled every single encounter and made a mockery out of me and my setting.


This last story is one I like to call “Dungeons & Dragons is about me mother****er nobody else.”
(I have lots more but I feel like I’ve made my point now)

In this game I had set up a ridiculous hook. Essentially there was a festival in town that had classic medieval games setup, Jousting, sparing, hammer tossing, pie eating, horse racing, ect ,ect
And placing in the top 5 of any of these games awarded the players tickets that they could exchange for magic items at a ticket counter 80’s arcade style. Well at one point in the game I described a scene in which the players witnessed an npc leaving the ticket counter with an item the party really wanted... In the hopes of getting the players to do a little roleplaying and maybe talk the npc into giving it to them or maybe sneaking into the npc’s tent and stealing it,
do something in game to solve the problem.
I guess that was asking to much though because the player who wanted the item immediately after I finished describing the npc walking away with the item punched the d&d table with his fist yelled some obscenities then glared at me with a look like he wanted me to burst into flames… then he spent the rest of the night giving the other players the silent treatment and refusing to engage in the game at all or even look at anyone for that matter with his arms crossed the whole time. This was enough to make all the other players decide to stop coming to the games, because they understably didn't want to spend time with this ****heel.

This is the **** I have to deal with as a DM. Not to mention just general disrespect like mocking plot critical npcs in game directly to their faces, I remember one time when a player pointed to an overworld map I drew and said “Hey look the caves look like buttholes. This place is now called The Butthole Coast.”, not to mention any failures any of my parties have ever had they blame on me because hey it couldn’t possibly ever be their fault, and my personal favorite is when players are constantly correcting my narration which diminishes my authority as the storyteller and sets up a reality were anything I say can be argued with… usually using rules for justification for the disruption saying things like “Giant spiders can’t move that fast the book says their speed is blank.”, or “Mage’s disjunction should work according to the rules in the book so I don’t care what you say.” and many many more.

My personal experience as a dm/gm has almost universally been to work unbelievably hard on a game only to have a bunch of selfish egocentric adult children come in and **** all over my hard work.
Frankly at this point I have so many awful experiences with this hobby every time I look at my bookshelf and see all my d&d, shadowrun, Vampire, Starwars and Deadlands books it makes me want to run screaming and it makes me feel like I’m going to puke. Can a bad rpg traumatize someone?

Seriously though does anyone share in my pain or is my universally negative experience with this hobby just some freak occurrence.

[Goaty14]

https://imgur.com/EwiChyD


“But my ex girlfriend doesn’t play in your game.”

In this game I was running a pathfinder module called “Hollow’s Last Hope.”
Great module by the way I really recommend it.
This game started off great, the players understood the hook and got started on the adventure right away.
In fact it was going better then any d&d game I’ve ever DMed. I’m not joking players where getting so invested in the setting that some of them even joined the city watch out of a simple desire to keep their hometown safe…
caring about the safety and wellbeing of random npcs and townsfolk is something I had never seen a player do before this game and I’ll be honest I was super excited about it. They took the time to learn the town’s structure and where things were even going as far as to remember the names of the different districts in the town. One player got married to a tavern girl who worked at their favorite tavern.
The player’s were getting invested and actually we're excited to find out what happens next.

Then the god damned wizard starts up a second game on the side, so he can NO JOKE spend time with his ex girlfriend who is married and completely uninterested in him in any way but a guaranteed strike out was more important to him then my game was. But that’s not even close to the worst part… not only did he drop out of my game in the middle completely ruining it but in order to have enough players to play in his side game that was really only an excuse to try and hit on his ex he took all the players from my group leaving me with no one to play with. Later when I went to ask my old players to play in a new game they said and I quote. “Look man I just don’t have the time to play two d&d games at once.”

Hay mister horny ex chasing wizard ….. “Choke on taint! You ****head!”
(???^)

You're playing a great game and the wizard goes off and starts a new, completely different game so he can hit on his ex-girlfriend. That last part is pretty irrelevant, but you're just mad that your players did both your game and your friend's game so you couldn't start your 2nd game with them? You also could've gone with them to play in that game too, but how you like to play games is beyond me.


This next story I call “It took me 4 years to build this homebrew setting and I’m very proud of it…. What's that? You’re all gonna build the most metagamed munchkined characters I’ve ever seen…. No that's cool.”

As I said above I spent 4 years of my free time piecing together a homebrew d&d setting that I was very proud of. I then invited a few newbies and one veteran player to come and play test it for me.
Well unknown to me the one veteran player sat down with the 2 newbies and built them characters so metagamed that any dm would take one look at them and shoot themself in the face.
You think I’m exaggerating but I’m not, each of the players were playing a class that was infamous in the system we were using for being ridiculously overpowered and each player had at least one 20 in an attribute… you heard me right a ****ing 20.
They munchkined out every part of the character creation process. Races that gave pluses to 3 attributes or crazy high plusses to 2 and no negatives, they cross referenced each other’s character sheets to makes sure no one took a skill someone else had so collectively they could do anything, they didn’t ask me which approche I wanted them to use for rolling stats ether by the way, these characters were un****ing believable and they steamrolled every single encounter and made a mockery out of me and my setting.

If your players are going nuts, talk to them. If they are all roughly the same strength, then heighten the difficulty (raising the difficulty would normally be bad if they weren't the same power level). Or just use the famous "session 0" that is all the rage these days (if you don't know, it's basically the DM helping the party make appropriate characters before the first session).

I'd rule: freak occurrence with a large helping of paranoia/confusion. So what if your player wants to name something "butthole coast"? Your player is likely not a cartographer and is probably bad at geography (in game). The NPCs will take note, and you should move on. Player failure? Blame dice and/or WotC. RAW arguments are RAW arguments, and are one of those things that you need to be prepared for, but just compensate, but ideally shouldn't be giving players big walls that say "NO" in their path (Your mage's disjunction was counterspelled! Kill the enemy mage first. This isn't just any spider! This spider is wearing "Boots of speed +20"! (ok, maybe that looks like GM fiat, but you get the point), etc, etc, etc).

TL;DR Your problem is that you have a hard time adapting to things not going the way you imagine them.

[EightBitEngine]

https://imgur.com/EwiChyD


(???^)

You're playing a great game and the wizard goes off and starts a new, completely different game so he can hit on his ex-girlfriend. That last part is pretty irrelevant, but you're just mad that your players did both your game and your friend's game so you couldn't start your 2nd game with them? You also could've gone with them to play in that game too, but how you like to play games is beyond me.



In what way is any of this helpful exactly?

The player playing the wizard told me directly that he was "starting the second game so he could spend more time with his ex"
His words not mine but yes I agree the reason he did it is irrelevant. The point is that the entire group got left out to dry because one player couldn't be bothered to care how his actions would effect the rest of the party. Every one was very upset when he said he wanted to stop coming to the game. Every one was frustrated with this guy not just me.
Also the first game didn't continue it came to a screeching halt when our wizard left and left only a 2 players to try and take on a 4 player story all on their own.

But yeah your 100% right I'm some paranoid ignorant lunatic making stretches of the imagination to try and justify my frustrations with my players. That is definitely what's happening.

[EightBitEngine]

And I definitely do not have a problem with things not going the way I expected them to improvisation is one of my favorite parts of being a DM and often times players come up with better ideas than I do.

[RazorChain]

First: There will always be jerk players that think only about themselves. You might even get lucky and just get that one git that doesn't mesh with your style and just wants to kill monsters while you are running a game of Call of Cthulhu.

"Just go ahead Bob, grab your shotgun and go Byakhee hunting. Good luck with that" He'll come around eventually or just drop out of the game.

The way to run a successful game is to minimize the impact of such players or just not include him in your group. Why stick with this guy? Sometimes he is a friend and kept on a tight leash he can work in the group.


Second: If this one guy manages to entice the whole group into another game then you can't have been doing a great job as a GM. Every experienced roleplayer knows a great game is worth it's....weight? in gold. For every great game I've played there are dozen good, mediocre and even flat out bad games. If you can deliver good playing experience consistently then you'll have gamers lining up to your games (if the roleplaying scene is big enough) Then the players will be abandoning other peoples game to join yours.

Third: Not all games are successful and it migh be not be anyones fault. Sometimes campaigns just fall apart, what looked good on paper just didn't engage the players or the GM. It can be myriad of things, like poor execution, the players weren't that interested, people were busy with their lives at that exact moment and nobody had time, bad blood happened between two players and it ruined the mood. The GM suffered from a burnout from running all the games all the time.

Fourth: Not all games end.....in fact from my experience most games just peter out. People lose interest and want to play something else, you take a break and never start the game again or the most common...there was no ending planned and the game never got wrapped up you just started playing something else.

Take a break, play something as a player. Hone your skills as a GM and get back into the saddle.

[Tanarii]

In the last twenty of my thirty years of playing D&D and other RPGs, I've never had a single party game last more than three months before the players flaked out. So far as I can tell this hasn't been due to a failing on my part as a DM, but rather because almost all people are flakes who want instant gratification and something new and exciting right now, then lose interest after a little while unless it's a constantly new thing. Finding a single group of dedicated players who will do something long term is HARD. And it's incredibly frustrating.

Personally, instead of quitting, I started running official play instead.

But if you do decide to quit, don't forget to flip the table on the way out. It's traditional. :smallamused:

[2D8HP]

I want to know what you guys think about this. It seems to me the level of hard work I put into......

...... this hobby just some freak occurrence.


I feel a little bad about how you've suffered, but I just have to say, that is some high quality ranting EightBitEngine!

Long may you post!

[EightBitEngine]

First: There will always be jerk players that think only about themselves. You might even get lucky and just get that one git that doesn't mesh with your style and just wants to kill monsters while you are running a game of Call of Cthulhu.

"Just go ahead Bob, grab your shotgun and go Byakhee hunting. Good luck with that" He'll come around eventually or just drop out of the game.

The way to run a successful game is to minimize the impact of such players or just not include him in your group. Why stick with this guy? Sometimes he is a friend and kept on a tight leash he can work in the group.


Second: If this one guy manages to entice the whole group into another game then you can't have been doing a great job as a GM. Every experienced roleplayer knows a great game is worth it's....weight? in gold. For every great game I've played there are dozen good, mediocre and even flat out bad games. If you can deliver good playing experience consistently then you'll have gamers lining up to your games (if the roleplaying scene is big enough) Then the players will be abandoning other peoples game to join yours.

Third: Not all games are successful and it migh be not be anyones fault. Sometimes campaigns just fall apart, what looked good on paper just didn't engage the players or the GM. It can be myriad of things, like poor execution, the players weren't that interested, people were busy with their lives at that exact moment and nobody had time, bad blood happened between two players and it ruined the mood. The GM suffered from a burnout from running all the games all the time.

Fourth: Not all games end.....in fact from my experience most games just peter out. People lose interest and want to play something else, you take a break and never start the game again or the most common...there was no ending planned and the game never got wrapped up you just started playing something else.

Take a break, play something as a player. Hone your skills as a GM and get back into the saddle.

This is actually pretty insightful thank you. Once again I'm going to have to defend myself on this point though "If this one guy manages to entice the whole group into another game then you can't have been doing a great job as a GM."
As I've mentioned twice now when the wizard left the game it left the group at a small enough number it couldn't really be played it doesn't matter how good a game is if you drive an axe through it it can't be played. The players didn't leave because they wanted to they left because for whatever reason the 2 remaining players felt awkward playing the game with only 2 player characters. Some people might be able to play with a group that small and enjoy themselves but for what ever reason my friends hate groups that small.

Maybe d&d is just a poor fit for me personally as a game and I need to start looking into less popular games to see if I'll have any more success with those.

[EightBitEngine]

In the last twenty of my thirty years of playing D&D and other RPGs, I've never had a single party game last more than three months before the players flaked out. So far as I can tell this hasn't been due to a failing on my part as a DM, but rather because almost all people are flakes who want instant gratification and something new and exciting right now, then lose interest after a little while unless it's a constantly new thing. Finding a single group of dedicated players who will do something long term is HARD. And it's incredibly frustrating.

Personally, instead of quitting, I started running official play instead.

But if you do decide to quit, don't forget to flip the table on the way out. It's traditional. :smallamused:

Running an official game might be something I'll want to look into. It's possible the reason my players show me so little respect might be because they know me to well or perhaps I fail to properly engage them with my stories... if ether of those things are the case organized play like Pathfinder society should at lest in theory fix the issue.

[KillianHawkeye]

In my experience, any game-related difficulties you may experience are actually social or people-related, so don't blame the game. Your examples seem to also fit that mold.

It's not always easy, but the answer is to stop gaming with jackasses and find some decent gamers and hold on to them for dear life. A game doesn't function if you can't trust that the DM or your fellow players aren't out to screw everyone over, or even just that they're too self-absorbed to pay any attention to how their actions and attitude will affect everyone else at the table. If you encounter these kinds of bad players, you must weed them out.

And on the off chance that you feel like everyone you game with are jackasses, you might be the unluckiest person ever. Or you might want to just double-check that the jackass hasn't been you all along. Not saying you are, just that everyone in the group is equally accountable for staying true to Wheaton's Law.

[Mr Beer]

I dunno man, I've never really had this problem, past high school anyway.

Last time I needed to start a group from scratch I went to the nearest RPG club, played there as a player, decided that they were mental after a few sessions. So I went to a different RPG club, liked them, offered to run a game and then once I was running it for a couple of weeks, I suggested to move it to my place. Those guys formed the core of a decent sized group for a decade.

When enough of them moved away that the game was finally falling apart, I tried to repeat the same trick, with partial success and also advertised online, snagging another 2 long term members.

So I've had nearly 2 decades of uninterrupted gaming, with about 18 months where it got very patchy. One of the players have been playing the entire time and another one for well over ten years. Total number of jerk players in that time was one and he got uninvited.

I will say if you go to public gaming sessions, it's pretty hit and miss and the theory I've heard is most decent players end up gaming at someone's house with people they like and the dregs (who are unwelcome for various reasons) bounce around public games. You really only need one or two annoying players to ruin the best game.

But anyway try groups who are recruiting gamers, if nothing else maybe you can get a game with people that can make a game work. IME if you get on with them OK, you will get to DM if you offer because it's a colossal pain in the bum and most adults don't have time to do the work.

[EightBitEngine]

In my experience, any game-related difficulties you may experience are actually social or people-related, so don't blame the game. Your examples seem to also fit that mold.

It's not always easy, but the answer is to stop gaming with jackasses and find some decent gamers and hold on to them for dear life. A game doesn't function if you can't trust that the DM or your fellow players aren't out to screw everyone over, or even just that they're too self-absorbed to pay any attention to how their actions and attitude will affect everyone else at the table. If you encounter these kinds of bad players, you must weed them out.

And on the off chance that you feel like everyone you game with are jackasses, you might be the unluckiest person ever. Or you might want to just double-check that the jackass hasn't been you all along. Not saying you are, just that everyone in the group is equally accountable for staying true to Wheaton's Law.

I'm not infallible I have definitely been the ******** responsible for the ruination of a d&d game before I'll be the first to admit my mistakes but I've grown past most of them at this point, even though I still have more growing to do.

As for everyone of my players being a first class scrotum-head... that would be a big fat nope tons of players I have had in the past have been very good players but unfortunately like I'm cursed or something every good player I know personally comes as a package deal with a player I hate (Brothers, Sisters, boyfriends, girlfriends, ect)

[Darth Ultron]

Seriously though does anyone share in my pain or is my universally negative experience with this hobby just some freak occurrence.

Your pain is shared. The world is full of bad people, jerks and worse. And it's not just RPGs, you can hear the same horror stories from any type of group, social, activity.

I can tell horror stories, as can many other posters. Getting a good TRPG going is hard.

I'd say you first off really need to pick your players. This is very critical. You really want to game with people who are on the same page that you are on. As nice as it sounds, you can't just grab your ''best'' friends and play a game. You need to find people that not only want to play the game the same way you do, but ones that can also do things in the real world too. Like show up for a game session that lasts hours once a week.

I've found the best thing to do is be tough. There are good people out there, but the rest just need to be left to do their own thing.

I run two weekly TRPGs, both for years, with two groups of players that willing show up and want to play the game. So it is possible. Amazingly, all of them, have had no problem showing up and role playing like crazy. And it is, of course, because they want too. I also, often, squeeze in a shorter game or a pick up game once a week or so.

The good gamers are out there, you just have to find them.

[Tanarii]

Running an official game might be something I'll want to look into. It's possible the reason my players show me so little respect might be because they know me to well or perhaps I fail to properly engage them with my stories... if ether of those things are the case organized play like Pathfinder society should at lest in theory fix the issue.
Actually, given your issues, which are considerably different from the issues I was experiencing, it's probably not a long term solution. Official play has plenty of jerks, or at least people I thought were jerks. (I'm sure plenty thought I was too.) Plus lots of different player expectations for what they want out of an RPG session, which may not match yours. But it might be worth it for contacts from the people you will inevitably hit it off with.

Also, one upside is players aren't taking a fat dump on anything you've created, and the prep load is much lighter that creating a bunch of stuff personally. The downside is you're not being very creative.

All in all, I found DMing official play a rewarding experience. I just don't want to push that it's a solution for everyone.

[RazorChain]

I dunno man, I've never really had this problem, past high school anyway.

Last time I needed to start a group from scratch I went to the nearest RPG club, played there as a player, decided that they were mental after a few sessions. So I went to a different RPG club, liked them, offered to run a game and then once I was running it for a couple of weeks, I suggested to move it to my place. Those guys formed the core of a decent sized group for a decade.

When enough of them moved away that the game was finally falling apart, I tried to repeat the same trick, with partial success and also advertised online, snagging another 2 long term members.

So I've had nearly 2 decades of uninterrupted gaming, with about 18 months where it got very patchy. One of the players have been playing the entire time and another one for well over ten years. Total number of jerk players in that time was one and he got uninvited.

I will say if you go to public gaming sessions, it's pretty hit and miss and the theory I've heard is most decent players end up gaming at someone's house with people they like and the dregs (who are unwelcome for various reasons) bounce around public games. You really only need one or two annoying players to ruin the best game.

But anyway try groups who are recruiting gamers, if nothing else maybe you can get a game with people that can make a game work. IME if you get on with them OK, you will get to DM if you offer because it's a colossal pain in the bum and most adults don't have time to do the work.


This. I've been running games for almost 30 years and most of that with one core group that has stuck together for almost 20 years. The first step in great gaming is forming a great group.

When I moved to another country I played online via conference mike and webcam with my old group but it just wasn't the same. So I put together a new group and the hardest part for me was running games not in my native tounge. But now I've been running the same campaign for 2 years with no end in sight.

[Pex]

It's nice to know I'm not the only one. I didn't have it as bad as you, but many times I try to get a game going and I'm lucky if there's a session 2. If I do get a session 2 the game won't get passed session 5. Sometimes I think it's me. I don't have the Magic Something that has a DM keep a group together and have a game. I can agree I don't have 18 Charisma in real life, but it's not a 5. However, I speak to the players who didn't give me excuses why they can't play anymore wanting to play and they say they enjoyed the game and are also upset the game is over. The excuses I got for why there's no session 2 include new job, I'm moving, wife won't let me, I was only playing until my regular DM could run his game again. If you knew you were moving or weren't going to stick around because your DM is on vacation, why the heck did you join a campaign? I've ran one-shot adventures at conventions and everyone enjoyed them. I haven't convinced myself I'm totally innocent, but I darn well know I'm not completely at fault either. I've given up trying but then try again it goes kaput, give up, try again, goes kaput over and over. I'm currently in given up mode. I get it. Real life happens, but know you can commit before you commit.

[EightBitEngine]

It's nice to know I'm not the only one. I didn't have it as bad as you, but many times I try to get a game going and I'm lucky if there's a session 2. If I do get a session 2 the game won't get passed session 5. Sometimes I think it's me. I don't have the Magic Something that has a DM keep a group together and have a game. I can agree I don't have 18 Charisma in real life, but it's not a 5. However, I speak to the players who didn't give me excuses why they can't play anymore wanting to play and they say they enjoyed the game and are also upset the game is over. The excuses I got for why there's no session 2 include new job, I'm moving, wife won't let me, I was only playing until my regular DM could run his game again. If you knew you were moving or weren't going to stick around because your DM is on vacation, why the heck did you join a campaign? I've ran one-shot adventures at conventions and everyone enjoyed them. I haven't convinced myself I'm totally innocent, but I darn well know I'm not completely at fault either. I've given up trying but then try again it goes kaput, give up, try again, goes kaput over and over. I'm currently in given up mode. I get it. Real life happens, but know you can commit before you commit.

I've definitely had this happen to me as well and honestly I've been the flake myself before but you have my sympathies man, I hope your next attempt at a game goes better then your previous attempts.

[Thrudd]

Sometimes a shift in your own perception can help. You are thinking about the game a certain way, and maybe that is what is causing stress. If the DMing time commitment is disproportionate to your enjoyment, then it isn't worth it. Maybe you're putting more time and effort into it than is necessary. If players aren't able to commit to or stay interested in long narratives, maybe that isn't the best format for the games. D&D is great for episodic, serial style adventures. Run one shots or adventures that take only a few sessions, so you can bring in different characters as players come and go. If players don't feel like they must be there every week or not at all, they might still come to game night occasionally.

There are ways to make it more fun for you, and if you have more fun with it your players probably will, too.

[Oddcraft]

The only thing I might advise is, rather than running people through an epic 8 season Game of Thrones, maybe run ‘em through a mini-series. Solid beginning, middle and end within a month or two.

Afterwards they can retire the characters with warm feelings rather than exhaustion.

[RazorChain]

@EightbitEngine

Few tips for running a game.

Being a GM it helps to be a person of gravitas, someone who your players take seriously. Who you are will always follow you even into your games, if you are the class clown your players will gear up for comedy and ready all their Monthy Python quips. If you are a person of authority or a high status person that will help you keep players in check. GM position is traditionally one of high status and if your players don't respect your authority then you'll have problems. It seems some of your problems might stem from this, you as a GM have the authority to say no to characters that you think are inappropriate.

Knowing how to play status game and understanding it is immensely useful in not just RPG's but just in life itself. You can also just google the subject.

https://improwiki.com/en/wiki/improv/status
http://changingminds.org/explanations/behaviors/games/status_game.htm


Own your game. Recruit the players, host the game, own it. As much as we like there is always that one person who does it all, wife, kids, career, running games and then you have whiners who say they don't have enough time. Traditionally in every stable roleplaying group you'll have one or two persons who keep the group running. Those are most often the GMs and without these individuals who take it upon themselves to herd cats things would fall apart. If you own your game, you control who will be attending, try to find somebody you can have fun playing with and mesh with your style and when you trust you can open up and let them "own" a part of the game as well. Trust between GM's and players is really important else your players won't expose their characters to drama if they think you're out to get them. Of course you're supposed to be out to get them but in a fun, exciting way.

Be the best GM you can be. Hone your skills, experiment, look for advice. If you have enough time run for multiple groups, do an improv only sessions. Take acting classes (I recommend improv theater), take courses in public speaking, do some creative writing, play different systems and try to play not only run games. Ask people what they like in roleplaying games because I can tell you with 5 different players you probably have 5 different expectations.


Then you can sit back and profit.....not monetarily...ah you get my drift.

[Florian]

@EightBitEngine:

That's pretty much normal. Invite some friends to a Whiskey tasting and it becomes more obvious: Some are there for the Whiskey, others hope to be drunk and the rest comes for the company.

"Playing D&D" can have a lot of meanings to different people, so be a bit critical about your own expectations. With the right people, you can do a deep and fulfilling campaign, with the rest, maybe a "monster of the week" serial format, that's it.

[EightBitEngine]

The only thing I might advise is, rather than running people through an epic 8 season Game of Thrones, maybe run ‘em through a mini-series. Solid beginning, middle and end within a month or two.

Afterwards they can retire the characters with warm feelings rather than exhaustion.

Well if I'm being honest I've never really liked really long stories so I never felt like my d&d games were to long but you are making an excellent point perhaps the people I usually play with just don't have the patience for the kind of stories I'm trying to tell them.
I'll shorten down the plot beats as well as the over all stories and see what happens.

[EightBitEngine]

@EightBitEngine:

That's pretty much normal. Invite some friends to a Whiskey tasting and it becomes more obvious: Some are there for the Whiskey, others hope to be drunk and the rest comes for the company.

"Playing D&D" can have a lot of meanings to different people, so be a bit critical about your own expectations. With the right people, you can do a deep and fulfilling campaign, with the rest, maybe a "monster of the week" serial format, that's it.

A Monster of the week format sounds promising. I have to entertain a bunch of essentially big children... If it worked for the power rangers tv show it might work for me.

[Telonius]

The DM and the players have to want to play the same kind of game. I've been extraordinarily fortunate to find four gaming groups who have lasted full 20-level adventure paths. Runthroughs of Shackled City with two separate groups, Age of Worms, and a homebrew campaign of my own; and currently 7 levels in to a Ravenloft adventure. The players and the DMs all wanted the same thing and were willing to put in the scheduling to make it work. If that's not what your players want, then it's not really something that's going to happen for you.

[Koo Rehtorb]

All you need to make it worthwhile is finding a group of people who share your priorities. Which isn't the easiest thing to do, but it's far from impossible.

[D+1]

It seems to me the level of hard work I put into dming is both never appreciated or respected by my players and the payoff is woefully inadequate to the amount of work I put in.A DM's work is seldom fully appreciated because most players aren't also DM's and so they don't know what's needed to actually run a game and be good at it. In other words - get used to being unappreciated. Lack of respect, however, just drop 'em from your game. No DM needs to put up with disrespect unless they are quite awful people and/or so bad at DMing to deserve such boorish treatment. Even after 40 years of playing D&D I could probably count less than a dozen people I've HEARD of who warranted no respect. Most people deserve respect for at least trying insofar as they understand how.


I’ll try to explain what I mean. In all my years of playing tabletop rpgs I’ve only had maybe one game that you could describe as being successful (and for the purposes of this post I am defining a successful game as one that went all the way to it’s story conclusion and didn’t end prematurely or go on forever.)Sounds about right. D&D games just DON'T go on forever, or even to their ultimate hoped-for conclusion. I've been a player in one campaign that lasted about 10 years. Most others that I've been in as a player or run myself as DM have lasted a year at most. Maybe one or two exceptions lasting longer than that. ASSUME that the game will not go on forever. Plan accordingly. When it continues beyond your initial expectation of a LIMITED duration you can be pleasantly surprised and keep it going - and STILL you should assume that it won't go on forever. The number of times I've even HEARD of games that have run for decades without end over 40 years of playing D&D is TRULY RARE.


Seriously I’m not joking nothing is worse for the health of a d&d game then a selfish player character,Then get rid of them if it comes to that. Talk to them of course; talk to ALL your players. Tell them in detail what kind of game you plan to try to run, what you want to provide FOR them, what kind of gameplay you want to see FROM them, and most importantly - when it all goes pear shaped what you intend to do to try to fix it. If you get a player that you can't get to play the way that is going to fit for your game, ask them not to come back and in simple terms explain why.


I wonder what these players think they are going to get out of one of these games when working together is such a large focus of their game design.TELL THEM THAT. players don't generally READ the whole of the game books. They SHOULD read more of it, but they seldom do. Consider yourself reasonably fortunate that they at least are familiar with game mechanics. Sometimes you get players who can't even be bothered to do THAT much. So, tell them you expect them to work together. They don't have to play Care Bears, but tell them they have an obligation to find ways to work together much more than they have any right to just play "my way or the highway" all the time. That way when they start being jerks you can just tell them they're being jerks and that you TOLD them you weren't going to tolerate players who act like jerks.

Then the god damned wizard starts up a second game on the side, so he can NO JOKE spend time with his ex girlfriend who is married and completely uninterested in him in any way
but a guaranteed strike out was more important to him then my game was.Players don't sign contracts obligating them to play in your game until you permit them to do something else. Players have a right to leave - for any reason. You don't have to like it. They can sometimes be jerks about WHY they leave. Good riddance. Players that care that little about courtesy and maybe just a little loyalty DO NOT deserve to be in your game.

not only did he drop out of my game in the middle completely ruining it but in order to have enough players to play in his side game that was really only an excuse to try and hit on his ex he took all the players from my group leaving me with no one to play with.Then you tell them, "Well it's bloody damned rude of you all. I'll SAY that I hope you have a good time, but I'm sure you know I don't really mean it."

Later when I went to ask my old players to play in a new game they said and I quote. “Look man I just don’t have the time to play two d&d games at once.”Why are you asking those players to come back when they DEMONSTRATED quite capably that they will walk out on you at the drop of a hat? Find NEW players.

They munchkined out every part of the character creation process.Firstly, they don't necessarily have a right to create characters without your supervision, in particular regarding any random die rolls that are required, classes, races, feats, perks, advantages, skills, prestige classes, etc that you DO NOT WANT TO ALLOW for just these kinds of reasons. If nothing else you could at least limit the destructiveness of over-optimized builds by saying, "Core rules ONLY," but some players only take that as a challenge to break the game anyway. But setting that aside...
Secondly, you obviously did not speak to them about what kind of game you intended to run, nor what kind of gameplay you were hoping to get from them...
Thirdly, Like it or not, for some people THAT is the kind of game they want. The solution is simple. You tell them, "Guys, this is NOT the kind of game I want to run. I don't know how to make it fun for YOU much less for me, and don't really care to try to run a game in that way. It just doesn't interest me. We can either START OVER with the kind of game I DO want to run - and with the kind of PC's that will work in that game, or we can call off the nightmare before it starts."

And again, remember that campaigns won't run forever. Sadly, it's just expecting too much that even if you spend 4 years creating a game setting that the campaign you run in it will last even 1. The game will last as long as it lasts - and sometimes even that's too long.

I guess that was asking to much though because the player who wanted the item immediately after I finished describing the npc walking away with the item punched the d&d table with his fist yelled some obscenities then glared at me with a look like he wanted me to burst into flames… then he spent the rest of the night giving the other players the silent treatment and refusing to engage in the game at all or even look at anyone for that matter with his arms crossed the whole time. This was enough to make all the other players decide to stop coming to the games, because they understably didn't want to spend time with this ****heel.Well, when the player punches the table with his fist is the time you should have stopped and asked him what the problem was. When he just sat silently fuming you should have stopped the game and asked the player to either clear the air about what he was so in a twist over, or LEAVE - because the basic requirement of D&D is active and constructive player participation.

When things happen at the table, whether they are the result of in-game events, or the player didn't get enough sleep, or someone at the last cheeto, or WHATEVER it is, the time to deal with it is IMMEDIATELY. DO. NOT. LET. THINGS. JUST. FESTER.

TALK to your players - ESPECIALLY when something seems wrong or they get upset.

This is the **** I have to deal with as a DM.:) Dude, this is the **** EVERY DM has to deal with. This is something no DMG ever really tells you, but whether you understood it or not, one of the things you have to do as DM is manage real-world people. You have to learn to get them to calm down when they're upset, to participate when they're being a stick-in-the-mud, to treat others at the table with politeness and respect, and to play the game in a way that works for you and everyone else that's participating.

I remember one time when a player pointed to an overworld map I drew and said “Hey look the caves look like buttholes. This place is now called The Butthole Coast.”:) And the people skills includes getting players to PLAY and not just MOCK. Sometimes all it takes to accomplish that is to ASK them to stop.

usually using rules for justification for the disruption saying things like “Giant spiders can’t move that fast the book says their speed is blank.”, or “Mage’s disjunction should work according to the rules in the book so I don’t care what you say.” and many many more.One of the reasons I prefer older editions of D&D is because there are clear admonitions about players being rules lawyers or trying to assume authority over the DM. Even in newer games I will always insist that rules lawyers can go pound sand and that _I_ run the game, not the rules, not the players - ME. I try to do that sensibly and fairly, and if players have serious objections to my rules and rulings they should say so, but the DM is there for a reason. Players don't get to change that reason. Ultimately players get to vote on our performance as DM with their feet, but the DM is still in charge. If players want to offer OPINION on how X or Y should work you should be grateful for their input - and then politely overrule their suggestions after due consideration. Any player trying to quote a monster manual at me will get derisive laughter in return - unless I've actually made a mistake, but usually I will have made obvious changes for valid reasons and they don't need to quote stat blocks at me. A player that says, "I don't care what you say," will promptly submit for reeducation or be asked to leave. Now, if I make changes to the rules in the book that players will need to know ahead of time I do my damnedest to let them know ahead of time and keep a solid list of house rules for them to consult at any time. If I make changes to a rule in the book during play then I will generally explain my reasoning insofar as players need/deserve to know that reasoning. It might be for reasons they DON'T need to know right now. It might be for no other reason than, "_I_ want it to work differently." Mostly though, I try to keep players OUT of the dark. I WANT them to know WHY I do things the way I do. I want them to AGREE with me - or if they don't agree then to at least respect me sufficiently to GO ALONG WITH IT.

DM's have as much right and reasonable expectation to have fun as the players. When players understand that the DM isn't just being an arbitrary jerk but actually has decent reasons for doing what they do and how they do it, then it's my experience that they will be far more likely to cooperate as players rather than antagonize over stuff that ultimately just doesn't matter.

[Florian]

A Monster of the week format sounds promising. I have to entertain a bunch of essentially big children... If it worked for the power rangers tv show it might work for me.

Then some tips to make that interesting and enjoyable:

L5R 4E uses an interesting format for the episode/serial approach: Challenge, Focus, Strike. Challenge is the basic introduction to the scenario, Focus deals with complications and exploration and Strike is how the players must deal with it and some plot twists. That's a good format to come up with short and intense self-contained adventures that can be done in one session.

Shadowrun 5E offers a good example how to mix and match and expand on that a bit without breaking a sweat. Come up with a "campaign plot" and make a rough 50/50 mix of campaign related and unrelated "MotW" episodes that will make up a self-contained serial of 10 episodes.

I´d suggest using a setting that has organizations that work well with this kind of game setup. Forgotten Realms have their Harpers, Golarion the Pathfinder Society or the Sleepless Detectives.
Using those simplifies things as the characters are automatically assumed to be agents of the organization and share their goals, getting quests and equipment can also be done via this route and simplify play.

Next time, insist on a session zero with group character generation of said agents and you should be good to go with your "big children".

[Jay R]

Yes, you’ve had some bad luck. I do sympathize. But you need to learn that difficult situations routinely come up, and it’s up to the DM to learn how to overcome them.

Game 1: the alternate game.

Stop caring why he wanted to play in your game, or why he started his own game. Those facts are irrelevant. What happened is this: the players decided that another game was more fun than yours.

OK, that happens; your game has ended. Move on.

Game 2: Your homebrew setting with over-powered PCs

OK, you’re proud of your setting. Now you need to run it correctly.

You should never have let those characters in the game. They don’t need to ask you how characters should be built in your game. You need to tell them. I send out a 4-6 page description of what players need to know to build characters that fit this game and this world. And I always state that I have final approval over characters. Here are two quotes from a game introduction I wrote:


I know most of the ways to try to build a character worth much more than the rules intend. If you come up with such a strategy, I will congratulate you on your cleverness and ruthlessly disallow it.
…
If these rules make your character conception impossible, talk to me. That may mean the character conception cannot be used for this game, or we may find a work-around that meets your goals and mine together.

The point is to make character creation a co-operative task between DM and player, where fitting into the setting is a crucial goal. This is more important with a well-designed homebrew world.

But after you let them in the game, you made another mistake. If they steamroll one encounter, then you have a problem you can fix. If they keep steamrolling all encounters, then you didn’t fix it.

Send them encounters as strong as they are. You need to make your game challenging for the real PCs, not for some theoretical ones who aren’t actually playing.

Game 3: the arcade.

OK, your first mistake was setting up a situation in which somebody could see someone walk away with one of the players’ goals. That’s not going to lead to a happy game.

Your player was disappointed (which is natural), annoyed (which is understandable), and sulky (which is not acceptable). Talk to him about it privately. Let him know that there are always alternative ways to achieve his goals. Help him to see that by not trying something else, he not only failed to get the item, but also ended the fun for everybody else.

Then, if he won’t stop sulking and play through setbacks, he should not be invited back, and the other players should know it. You need to protect your game.

In short, yes, difficult situations come up – all the time. You need to try to learn from these and become a better DM, with more ability to fix problems at your table.

I repeat – I do sympathize. I certainly had my share of difficulties, and made my share of mistakes, when I started DMing in the 1970s. But this is D&D. We should know about starting at low levels without many skills, and facing greater challenges, gaining experience, learning new skills, and getting more competent overall.

This is real life. You don’t start at the high levels. You have to start as a first-level DM and learn how to face and conquer the threatening encounters.

I promise you that it’s possible to become a high-level DM who entertains the players and has fun doing it.

[FreddyNoNose]

People are free to move from game to game. You don't have control over that, so move on. Don't let your EGO have a problem with this. Don't think of it as failure.

Campaigns come and go. Some last years others last a short period of time and still others only a single session. Just accept it. Having been a wargamer for 40+ years, I will tell you that wargaming campaigns go bust all the time. In fact, busting up is the rule rather than the exception. Too many flakes, too many quiters and often people have to change priorities. These things make you really appreciate the good ones.

As to people wanting all the attention. Like many things, is it a problem? If not, then it is fine. If it is a problem, first talk to the player(s) and tell them this is a group game and everyone need to be involved. If they are wanting to go in direction X while the majority wants to go Y, then either do two sessions to allow that OR remind them it is a group game and if their characters want to go elsewhere that is fine but you don't have the time to run sessions for them.

I personally run some side sessions even on game day. You know, the rogue and mage, want to do something without the rest of the party. People want to "shop" for items. Other dealing with NPCs where the whole group wouldn't make sense.

If someone is ruining the experience or isn't going to mesh with the group, they have to go. It is good for everyone.

You can make better decisions on who you let play in your games in the first place.

[Zinarik]

I want to know what you guys think about this. It seems to me the level of hard work I put into dming is both never appreciated or respected by my players and the payoff is woefully inadequate to the amount of work I put in.

That was also the crux of the problem for me, while I love Pathfinder and other crunchy games the effort to reward ratio was always low. Until I started running OSR games and the amount of fun I had compared to how little prep I had to do was off the charts, I even ran some sessions out of my ass and both me and the players had a lot of fun.

Find other games you might enjoy running that don't require that much work from your part, if you put 4 years into making a setting it's easy to get butthurt when someone does not take it super seriously.

[2D8HP]

To the OP: Do less work.

I've GM'd settings that I had little interest in, and I did it really half-assed.

My players liked it better than the adventures that I put more work and passion in.

Basically I still liked the Conan/The Hobbit mash-ups that we did for D&D, and I was interested in doing a more realistic medieval-ish setting (Pendragon), but that's not what my players wanted, they wanted James Bond.

We compromised a bit and did Space Opera using Traveller, which I did some world-building for, but I relented and ran "Top Secret" except that I didn't even bother to learn the rules, and on the theory that the 1920's are close enough to the 1980's I just used the rules for Call of C'thullu instead, and I improvised most everything, no notes and little prep

My players said my GM'img "had improved".

:annoyed:

To be fair we had another GM in our circle you did the kind of adventures that I was interested in better than me (he used RuneQuest and then Rolemaster), so my attempts to do likewise always suffered in comparision.

I concluded that besides my players really wanting to role-play PC's who use modern firearms, that most of my world-building just wasn't wanted.

Modern setting power fantasies are dead easy to do and usually are more popular among players.

Or just play board games.

[Jarawara]

In this game I had set up a ridiculous hook. Essentially there was a festival in town that had classic medieval games setup, Jousting, sparing, hammer tossing, pie eating, horse racing, ect ,ect
And placing in the top 5 of any of these games awarded the players tickets that they could exchange for magic items at a ticket counter 80’s arcade style. Well at one point in the game I described a scene in which the players witnessed an npc leaving the ticket counter with an item the party really wanted... In the hopes of getting the players to do a little roleplaying and maybe talk the npc into giving it to them or maybe sneaking into the npc’s tent and stealing it,
do something in game to solve the problem.
I guess that was asking to much though because the player who wanted the item immediately after I finished describing the npc walking away with the item punched the d&d table with his fist yelled some obscenities then glared at me with a look like he wanted me to burst into flames… then he spent the rest of the night giving the other players the silent treatment and refusing to engage in the game at all or even look at anyone for that matter with his arms crossed the whole time. This was enough to make all the other players decide to stop coming to the games, because they understably didn't want to spend time with this ****heel.


This one here is clear as daylight. He wanted a particular item from the contest. You figured out what that item was. And then, you deliberately made sure he could never, ever win it, because you were deliberately screwing him over.

Or at least, that's how he sees it.

He's had problem DM's before (or even, problem *people* in real life) who have deliberately taken steps to screw him over, and he sees the same scenario unfolding in this game, and automatically assumes you're doing the same thing to him now. He's angry at you, but really he's angry at the previous DM's before you and making the assumption that you're the same way.

Now the solution is straightforward, but not entirely easy. Talk to him, find out his concerns (easy to do since you already know), and describe what you were doing so as to correct the mistaken assumptions. The hard part is how to describe to the player what options he had without just leading him to that action. What I mean is, if you say to him "I was assuming this action would lead to a roleplay with the NPC, or even an attempted theft to take the item", then of course the players will immediately talk to the NPC and/or try to rob him. You were hoping to get the players to *try something unexpected*, not lead them into a course of action. And also you don't want to set the precedent that whenever a player has a bad day you'll just hand him the solution.

But even if you're handing him the solution, it's far preferable to him thinking you were deliberately screwing him.

[redwizard007]

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: if you are consistently loosing players, triggering meltdowns, and failing to complete campaigns I would hazard a guess that somewhere between your campaigns and your players is a disconnect. Try changing things up, or run a PC for a bit.

[King of Nowhere]

I dunno man, I've never really had this problem, past high school anyway.

Last time I needed to start a group from scratch I went to the nearest RPG club, played there as a player, decided that they were mental after a few sessions. So I went to a different RPG club, liked them, offered to run a game and then once I was running it for a couple of weeks, I suggested to move it to my place. Those guys formed the core of a decent sized group for a decade.

When enough of them moved away that the game was finally falling apart, I tried to repeat the same trick, with partial success and also advertised online, snagging another 2 long term members.

So I've had nearly 2 decades of uninterrupted gaming, with about 18 months where it got very patchy. One of the players have been playing the entire time and another one for well over ten years. Total number of jerk players in that time was one and he got uninvited.

I will say if you go to public gaming sessions, it's pretty hit and miss and the theory I've heard is most decent players end up gaming at someone's house with people they like and the dregs (who are unwelcome for various reasons) bounce around public games. You really only need one or two annoying players to ruin the best game.


that's a common problem; most good gamers already have a group, those left out and looking for one are often the dregs. You have to find people you can trust and with whom you share something, and it's gonna take time. the good thing is, once you find some, they will generally stick with you. I don't know your players, but I get the feeling that you play with random people. Try playing with real friends, they are much less likely to make a mess of it.


Your pain is shared. The world is full of bad people, jerks and worse. And it's not just RPGs, you can hear the same horror stories from any type of group, social, activity.

Also this. rpg is not really different from other social activities - except maybe that it is a social activity that somehow tends to attract a lot of antisocial people, so maybe it's a bit worse.
I was lucky with D&D, I found good groups fairly soon in my career. I was not lucky in finding friends, however. All the way to middle grade I was surrounded by ****. And I changed people, until around the middle of high school I had found some good people and befriended them. 15 years later, I'm still a good friend to most of them.
So, your D&D could go a similar way. You're stack with bad players; I suggest you change players until you find the good ones, and then, barring exceptional circumstances, they will be your group for life, and it will be worth the effort.

There is one more point to raise: similar people tend to congregate. Whatever the activity, you rarely see nice people and jerks together. If it happens, the nice people will kick off the jerks, or they will leave. Nice people will tend to segregate themselves away from the jerks, and jerks will tend to segregate themselves with other people who will put up with them. Of course there are a lot more distinctions on which people congregate; people who like fantasy and people who think it's childish will rarely hang around together, for obvious reasons. But I focus on the distinction between jerks and nice here.
I have seen some nice people hang with jerks, because they had an old friend they could not accept had grown bad, or because they got a crush for a (bad) girl and they gravitated towards her company, or because they felt lonely and would take any company offered. Regardless of the reason, it didn't end up well. Those formerly nice people also became jerks. The opposite scenario, where a jerk hangs around with nice people and become nice, also happens. People tend to conform to their surroundings.
I'm saying this to adive you to stay way from toxic people and do not let them ruin you. Find good people. You can get a bad player and by talking to him maybe you can turn him into a good player, but if there are too many bad players in your group, it's more likely that they will turn you into a bad DM.

[2D8HP]

Maybe, to avoid burn out, trade of GM duties?

In the '80's my gaming circle had three of us that traded off GM duties, and none of us did long multi-year "campaigns", and we also played war games that didn't have a referee from time to time as well.

It seems to me that modern GM's expect too much of themselves, maybe from the tales of "star" GM's that they're exposed to.

[Jay R]

The crucial thing is this: if you don't enjoy DMing, don't do it

I enjoy it. I enjoy creating a world, coming up with history for why things are as the are, inventing NPCs, designing encounters.

In my younger years, I put together a couple of compete dungeon complexes that nobody, it turned out, ever played. I do not consider that hard work that was wasted, because it wasn't work at all. It was playing with the rules and learning about them, exploring who the Mathemagician was and why he did what he did, inventing the dwarf dragon-riders and developing the shared dragon / dwarven culture, etc.

It's an extra benefit when somebody plays and enjoys my creations, but it isn't necessary to enjoy the act of creation.

[ross]

A Monster of the week format sounds promising. I have to entertain a bunch of essentially big children... If it worked for the power rangers tv show it might work for me.

you don't have to do anything. ditch your group.