When did you start DMing

[Bender]

this is for those who are or have been DM (or GM)

I started playing D&D with a group of friends where nobody had any experience as DM, and negligible experience as a player. I bought the books, volunteered to start as the DM and have done most of the DMing since then. Sometimes someone else DMs so I can have a chance to play. Most monsters, items... I use, are as new for me as for the players.

I thought it would've been easier to start DMing when you already have a lot of player experience. The logical step seems to be a player first, so I wondered how it went for most DMs on this forum:

1) started DMing without roleplaying experience

2) occasionally played as a player, but started without knowing all the rules

3) had years of experience as a player and already knew most rules

[Zaggab]

I started DMing after having played for one or two years. That was about 1 and a half year ago, give or take a few months.

The rest of my group had to beg and bribe me to get me to DM, because I didn't want to. By that time, everyone else in the group had DMed a bit. Though noone really got the hang of it, so for several months before I started DMing, our "campaigns" had only lasted 2-3 sessions before they died off.

My group thought that I would make a great DM, and when I DMed my first campaign, it lasted about 20 sessions and came to a natural conclusion. My players thought I was a good DM, but I think I suck.

Even though I had played for a while, I was still the most unexperienced player in the group.

Now I am DMing my second campaign, even though I had hoped to never have to DM again... It's much more fun to play, imo, but my group really can nag

[Galathir]

I am sort of between option 2 and 3. I had about a year of playing as a PC before I started DMing however, I picked up the rules pretty quickly so I knew the rules better than most in our gaming group. My first attempt at DMing was interesting. I had no idea what I was getting myself into and I was running a full blown campaign in a homebrewed world. It was pretty crazy, but I've learned a lot from it and I am now running a second campaign that is going very well.

I think player experience is invaluable, but unless you have that, it is very difficult to know what the players need to have fun. In my first introduction to D&D I played under a DM who had never played a PC and without going into detail, it was pretty bad. Thankfully I moved past the experience and I've learned what not to do in a campaign.

[TempusCCK]

Eh, I started playing with a DM who thought the idea of a good campaign was to rip it off of a popular videogame. I went to one session of a Golden Sun (GBA) and Morrowwind (Xbox) each before I blew it off, being as it was an absolutely miserable experience. But I loved the D20 system and D&D, so I started looking into it a little more, I bought the books, I learned the rules, and started work on my own campaign for my friends to play before I even told them about it.

Now I'm running my own campaign, which is going swimmingly, and I didn't invite my former DM to play.

[Swordguy]

Started DM-ing when I was 7, because my uncle (who worked for TSR) gave us the stuff every year for Christmas.

The problem is that I'm one of those poor bastards who evidently runs a good game. Ergot, everyone wants to play in my games and I never get to play a PC. It frusturates the hell out of me sometimes.

[Gamebird]

For my first campaign game, I had played D&D for 17 years. During that time, I'd run Vampire for 11 years, so I wasn't a stranger to organizing and running a game. I just hadn't done it for D&D.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

I first refereed a game because I was the one with the books and I wanted to play this new game.
That was twenty two years ago...

[Maryring]

Ah. Read the question wrong. I had almost NONE experience when I began DMing. I began because, everyone else had DMed, and they wanted to see what I can do... I've haven't been a player in that group after that.

[JadedDM]

I had almost no experience when I started. Heck, even to this day, over 10 years later, I've very rarely ever been a PC. And when I am, it's almost never for more than two or three sessions, max.

[Earthstar_Fungus]

My knowledge of D&D is mostly theoretical, and I only got to play as a PC for about three short dungeon crawls. I'm only the DM because no one else can remember the rules as well as I can.

[Matthew]

Indeed. I also had almost no experience when I started. As I recall, I played Hero Quest, was the GM for Advanced Hero Quest, then was the GM for War Hammer Fantasy Roleplay, then played a few games of D&D before being the DM for (A)D&D. I was a player off and on over the course, but in the vast majority of cases I was the DM. However, I only really 'got good at it' after about five years of gaming.

[Hzurr]

I first DMed maybe a year after I had started playing. Basically, I had spent the previous semester or two at school playing with a few friends, and that summer, I found myself with a LOT of time on my hands and a desire to play d&d without anyone to play with. So I wrote an adventure.

Actually, that seems to be the source of most of my DMing. I'm on vacation, and I get bored, so I write a campaign, run it when I get back, and then just let other people run games til I get bored again.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

The very first time I played, I DMed. Ah, fond memories of having no idea what I was doing...

[Em]

I recently started GMing... because everyone else had got to do it? I don't know. I'm STing World of Darkness, when I'd previously played 3.5 D&D for 2 years.
I have the wrong personality type to GM anything!!!
I'm just as crap a GM as I imagined, considering I'm incredibly shy and my mind just melts when several people are looking expectantly at me... not to mention my painfully bad memory for rules.
I still don't know some obvious D&D rules, despite playing every "type" of class for long periods of time. A plaintive "So what do I roll to counter a Persuasion check??" might be heard in my WoD game for a long time to come...
I'm such a girl...
The shyness is the worst part, though. I hate having all eyes on me... "So what happens now?" "I don't know, I'm having a nervous breakdown if no-one minds..."
The worst thing is... my players appear to have lost all sense of judgement, because they LIKE my sessions, which end up being REALLY LONG.
I'm a natural PC...

[Em]

Started DM-ing when I was 7

That's really sweet!!

Edit: I know I double posted, but as I just said, my brain's mangled.

[LotharBot]

I played a single character (fighter) to about level 10, played 2 other characters that started at level 12 and never made 13 (campaign ended), and played in 2 other campaigns that didn't make it beyond 5 sessions. Then I started DM'ing.

A couple things helped:
1) I had a reasonably high-quality module. It had a good balance between combat, role-playing encounters, research/knowledge skills, skill use, traps, dungeons, open spaces, etc. Now I have a good feel for using all of the major aspects of the game together, instead of just making a dungeon crawl and forgetting the traps or whatever.
2) My wife had spent a few months as a DM before, so I asked her after every session "how did I do? What can I do better?" and she'd give me pointers.
3) I have a very experienced (20+ years) D&D player in my group who I can bounce rules changes and ideas off of. When I'm not sure how to rule something, I ask the other experienced players "what do you think?" and we work it out as a group.

[Fax Celestis]

The problem is that I'm one of those poor bastards who evidently runs a good game. Ergot, everyone wants to play in my games and I never get to play a PC. It frusturates the hell out of me sometimes.

ME TOO! I hates it so much.

[Dark]

I may have answered your poll wrong...

I started DMing without roleplaying experience, but I did know all the rules. I bought the books and read them intently. There weren't many players around, but when there were enough for a game I was usually the DM because I was the one who knew the rules. And the one who knew the adventure modules :)

Even now I'm more likely to buy rulebooks to read than to play.

[Swordguy]

ME TOO! I hates it so much.

[marge] See Lisa? There is such a thing as being too smart for your own good. [/marge]

[Viscount Einstrauss]

Sigh, I know of the good DM syndrome. All my buddies are either extremely terrible as DM's or just don't want to be one because that would mean I'm not DMing. Paraphrasing, "It's because you're the only person I know that can run four or five different interwoven plots at the same time without railroading anyone".

My players really, really love to seperate and go off on their own, see. I fear my accomodating to this may have created a monster.

[Ravyn]

Everything I've tried to run, I've spent at least a few months learning to play first. Been rather picky about my audiences--with my cousins, it was only a couple months' experience first, whereas I didn't have the nerve to run Exalted for my friends, even online, until I had about a year under my belt.

[Fixer]

I ran my first game in 1981. I was 9. I had no prior DMing experience and neither did anyone else.

We did things very free-form for a while until we got the hang of it.

[Kiero]

I was a GM before I was ever a player. Rotated GMing duties with another guy for the first few years. Later on there was more playing and variety.

[Weezer]

I was basically thrown into DMing because I was the only one of my friends who had any comprehension of the rules and now I'm stuck with it becasue none of the people I play with has any ability to RP or create stories. So I get stuck making lots of hack and slash stuff.

[PnP Fan]

I first DM'd as a fill in DM for a GURPs fantasy game, almost 20 years ago. I'd been playing for maybe 2-3 years already, but hardly had any of the books, so I really wasn't familiar with the rules. I think I shipped (that is, magically portalled) the characters off to some town that they had been to before, and were revered as semi divine beings (they had a really good bard-like PC that embelished some of their adventures ;-). Anyway, I wasn't completely familiar with the magic system, so I just said "you're in a necromantic aspected mana area, so none of your equipment works" which worked well, and my players/friends were understanding (minimal griping, and no mutinies). I don't remember exactly what the story was, but I think it involved a necromancer villain, and a murder mystery. I think it was the first of my trademark "you hear a bloodcurdling scream come from around the corner" campaigns. <chuckles, sighs>. It lasted one session (which is all it was supposed to last), might have been an all nighter, and folks seemed to enjoy it. Though it was probably another 6 months before I ran a game again, the bug had bitten, and bitten deep. I've probably spent more time behind the screen than in front (only a slight exaggeration).

[Diggorian]

Had been playing 2nd ed AD&D for about three years when I picked up Paladium's Robotech to give some variety to the group 12 years ago. My first problem was not having enough material to fill our eight hour sessions. Ran that a few times then stopped.

Expanded into Rifts and ran some games for non-gaming friends of mine off and on. The rules got in the way and they didnt want to really invest the time to learn'em. Went to Star Wars d6, being a huge fan of the franchise while they had a passing interest, and it was much lighter rules wise. Did about four adventures a year for them.

Made a SW d6 camp for my old gamer friends during college breaks which went on for several months. They liked it but still didnt have respect for my games like they had for our AD&D DM from back then. A couple became regulars for me as we lived close. They taught me the most from feedback, one of them ran Vampire and Aberrant. Learned to fill in the gaps between encounters with freeform roleplay and detail in addition to improvising.

D20 came out and the old DM introduced us to it, I fell in love with the system. So internally consistent, intuitive and thorough, my Star Wars book had bunches of hand written houserules jammed between pages and written in margins.

While I was working to convert Star Wars d6 to d20, guess what came out? D20 Star Wars!! Got that and had no trouble finding players with D20 popularity. Ran a two year long campaign. Got burned out during and PCed in a D&D group I found by literally talking about D&D with my dorm room door open.

They did rotating DM turns, the rules are very similar to Star Wars, so I blew them away. My problem now was 8 hour sessions werent long enough.

My old high school DM came to my school for grad school and joined my Star Wars game and was very impressed. He wanted to start his own sci-fi game so started running D&D. He was kinda snooty about my style but I had a resume of dozens of satisfied players so nut to him.

He started a new D&D campaign, so I went back for a sequel to my Star Wars campaign. Got burnt out after a year of that. I've dabbled in running D20 Modern, Future, and Exalted with mixed success and run PbP and chat games.

But yeah, when I started Dungeonmastering I was already a versed Gamemaster. Nice memory lane topic, Bender. A cookie of your choice to those that read this far!!

[Fus.Weapon 1337]

My first game was with me as the DM. Never changed since, but I can still make some pretty nice plots. My first adventure (that was by me) was an interesting little "one-time adventure plot" called "The Tavern's Keep", where you are hired to clear the local tavern's basement, which is actually connected to an ancient dungeon used by a band of warlocks to summon creatures. Obviously, through the years, it fell into disrepair and became the home of several monsters, including an orc named King Obould (who is never meant to be fought because he is way too hard at the point you go there). There is also a remnant of a warlock Summoning Circle, and if the characters inspect it and read the words on a nearby pillar (which must be done to continue into the dungeon), it summons a Black Dragon, the first dungeon boss. Then the door unlocks and leads to a treasure pile and some stairs further down...

Wow, that was long.

[evil]

I played D&D for about 6 months before I GMed my Star Wars RPG game. Then after I finished that I GMed D20 Modern Urban Arcana.

So to put it bluntly. I've GMed 2 game settings without ever playing either of them.

[Bender]

Great to read these stories. Some of it is very recognisable. The main reason I DM is also because I own the books and know the rules best (but not even that good): in the beginning the fighter added BAB to damage (even with arrows), the paladin thought it was a great idea to eat part of his mount and last session I had to explain to the rogue how he can sneak attack

cheers

[kpenguin]

My first DM experience was my second session. I was pretty much doing most of the work first session (it was my entire group's first D&D game ever) and the guy who was DMing handed over the keys to me. At the time, I was armed with nothing more than a PHB, but over time I grew into the DMing role. Now I DM two different groups at once and I've hardly ever been just a player.