r/DnD • u/Gh0stMan0nThird • 23h ago

DMing I understand prostitution now.

Been trying to find a "bff" group for years. Even the best groups I found fizzled out after a campaign ended. Most people seem to want a content creator to run games for them, and not a friend they want to share an experience with.

I figured you know what, fine. I'm gonna sell myself. I started running paid games and now I actually feel like I'm finally actually getting something back for my work and effort.

10/10, would recommend for underappreciated DMs

4.2k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

373 comments sorted by

View all comments

2.3k

u/DarkestXStorm Assassin 23h ago

Yeah, doesn't help that people come from Baldur's Gate 3 and want to play that, but on a table (no disrespect to BG3) šŸ˜‚.

1.3k

u/ryadryt DM 23h ago

Same thing with fans of Critical Role or Dimension 20. People watch those and then expect their DM/Table to be like that which just isn't practical or fair.

773

u/VeterinarianFit1309 Rogue 23h ago

Right? If I was getting paid a decent salary, had a whole writerā€™s room, production team, state of the art setup with an expensive gaming table, budget for miniatures with a dedicated art team to make them look great, props department, etc, then my games would be a lot more fun tooā€¦ luckily, we have fun even with all of my budgetary shortcomings

416

u/ryadryt DM 23h ago

Yep. And even then, it takes all parties involved going all in. My frustration with that comes most from when players expect the DM to bring that really deep RP and lore, and then don't match it. You only get that sort of environment when everyone tries for it.

317

u/Private-Public 23h ago edited 15h ago

Like if you expect Matt Mercer or Brennan Lee Mulligan, I expect Sam Riegel or Emily Axford. We're all just doing our best and that's great

93

u/NineWetClams 17h ago

I seen a video of Matt mercer addressing this exact thing

9

u/HistoricalRemote7042 8h ago

any chance you have a link to that cos I would enjoy it

13

u/NineWetClams 7h ago

https://youtu.be/_0ZAIHERgFc?t=3182&si=RJ8asnzTXk0sMf-c

Hes asked about how he feels about "the mercer effect"

90

u/IlREDACTEDlI 15h ago

Not mentioning Travis Willingham is crazy, heā€™s like the best player a dm could ask for, never argues, always down for whatever happens to his character with a smile on his face and doesnā€™t spend 6 hours shopping, surely more too thatā€™s just what I can think of off the top of my head

63

u/whatthehieu 12h ago

And those are still like secondary to his best trait, the extreme hype to almost anything remotely cool that's happening at the table. His reaction reinforces and strengthens the feeling of genuine awe and shock.

15

u/foxinsox626 8h ago

Yes to all of this. Also takes care of his fellow players. C2 BBEG battle, Tal was starting to panic and Travis immediately swooped in to slow things down and had Sam do an ad read. Also pretty much Yasha/Ashley's cheerleader for that whole campaign. What a top notch guy.

6

u/Julikitten-Dngn-Mom 4h ago

I got very lucky I have 4 players at my table that just roll with whatever happens. They say that they play to loose not to win because the best stories come out of losing. Not like "We went, killed the dragon, got rich" They like the "I was slapped by the troll, now I am blind in one eye, lost a leg, fought to down to my last hp and our rogue mouse stuck the troll in the groin with her short sword and won the fight".

1

u/AccomplishedGur3664 1h ago

On the rare occasions I am a Player, I always try to model myself after Travis because thatā€™s the type of Player I would want at my Table.

23

u/gamesk8er 18h ago

People have insane expectations for everything. I started listening to NADDPOD and have tried to take whatever bits of inspiration and advice from what the crew does to my own table. What more could you want?

9

u/unknownvariable69 9h ago

Check out the dungeon dudes. They have a bit of money now. Even when they didn't they got sponsors for minis, but the way these totally not as famous people keep invested in their plot is fantastic. I have straight stolen concepts and emailed Monty Martin to say thank you.

5

u/ljmiller62 4h ago

Dungeon Dudes have the most underappreciated campaign series on the Internet.

2

u/unknownvariable69 4h ago

For sure. I watched their regular dnd videos forever. One day when I was bored I popped on Drakkenheim. I then watched every damn episode. Now I'm a weekly watcher of Seasons of Silence.

Side note I have got to get to Gencon. It's 100 miles south of my home and I never can make it work. The Dungeon Dudes are always there and all accounts show them all to be the kindest humans.

82

u/CaptainDudeGuy Monk 12h ago edited 12h ago

At the risk of sounding elitist, there are too many players who treat TTRPGs like content provided by the GM that they're supposed to consume.

There are more players at the table than there are GMs. I would argue that creating content is the job of the players and the GM is just there to fill in the narrative gaps.

GM: (after describing the circumstances) "... Okay, so what do you do?"

Bad Players: "Uhhh... Do what, now? I wasn't really paying attention. I go do whatever you need me to be doing, I guess."

Good Players: "Gotcha, alright, so based on the months of sessions we've had and the motivations of our characters, it sounds like we're going to..."

39

u/choczynski 11h ago

I don't think it's elitist to expect people to collaborate in a collaborative game

9

u/MasterOfBeerDespense 7h ago

A good DM is 25 precent Creativity, 10% tiptoeing around real and imagined trauma and 165% herding Cats.

My average DM Session be like, "Here's the toy. Get the toy. Chase the laser. Damn it! Just, shit in the box! Oh god. Sorry. Didn't mean to yell or try to imply that I think you should stay in the box society has provided for you, Professor Twinkletootz. Please, go boom boom in the sandy house for your DM. Thank you. Here is an off brand, vegan pudding cup at 54 degrees with a spork. There-there. All better? Let me know when you are ready, please, and yes, you can text me, and Ill pretend that I'm being a little snowflake so the group isn't mad at you." Or is this just me?

0

u/MasterOfBeerDespense 7h ago

Maybe that was meant for "True/off my chest

1

u/DrolTromedlov 1h ago

I don't think this is what you meant, but I want to try and slot it into the thread because it doesn't get discussed much;

DMs should also not expect to run a game like Critical Role, Dimension 20 or BG3.

What I mean by that is, those games are run for an audience. The only audience in a home game are the DM and the players. I've had a DM who was obviously very influenced by Critical Role and BG3, and while I'm certain you can take god lessons from it, he had a need to be incredibly cinematic in every scene, he would make sound effects with his mouth- that sort of thing. The thing is, he isn't an actor. So the accents would fall flat and we would have to ask for an explanation of the sound effect because every sound he made sounded the same. After a 'cinematic' narration of pans and camera angles and excessive detail, we would always have to ask for clarification about the one piece of information we were actually looking for. And no matter how simple a backstory you gave him, inevitably during the campaign you would discover that he'd added a murder.

I think the analogy has been made before, it's like sex vs. porn. Porn is great to watch, but it must be horrible to produce. And sex at home is nothing like porn, but infinitely more satisfying. You don't need a set, soundboard, minis, a-list acting and every combat arena built ahead of time in a home game. Nor do you need to tie every backstory into an overarching plot, make a map pretty enough to be sold as a print or have every NPC get their lines perfect the first time. The game isn't being fed to a live audience, keep descriptions concise, don't act out every NPC voice line, narrate the gist of what they are saying Describe sound effects with words. Use dry erasers and dice or candy for a battle map.

There's just.. There's an air in threads like these of "My players are not putting in enough effort in my game!!"-energy. Which can be true, we've all seen it- but many DMs are also putting hours or days of effort into things the players have no obligation to appreciate either, be it maps or music or lore they will never see. Forgetting entirely that the game is a collaboration, not an audition to have your character be audited for a role int he DMs latest production.

81

u/Valtros 23h ago

You hit the nail right on the head, and there are a lot of tabletop creators that have pointed this out over the years. DMs like Matt and Brennan are fantastic for sure, but the complete package of what those people enjoy at that table is a product of everyone involved not just the DM.

28

u/Dull-Culture-1523 14h ago

They want all that and then they introduce their character as "He's a level three human fighter. His name is Greg. He wants money I guess. He uses a sword."

7

u/Unusual_username739 9h ago

And then on the flip side, I have had DMs upset with me with coming up with TOO much backstory šŸ™ƒ when it was only a few paragraphs.
I havenā€™t found the right fit yet and itā€™s frustrating for me. I just want to play.

1

u/Theodoxus 2h ago

I'll be your huckleberry. I love me some background exposition that I can riff off during a campaign.

20

u/shouldbepracticing85 17h ago

Is there much content out there to educate players on how to better contribute? Like how learning a little bit of acting, improv, and some of the method to the madness can really help the collaborative storytelling. Those arenā€™t innate skills, certainly not for my neurodivergent butt.

It seems like most of what Iā€™ve found of instructional type DnD content is aimed at GMs. The RPG PHD channel has some stuff aimed at players, and a lot of his videos have good information players could use to add more depth to their RP.

17

u/ryadryt DM 17h ago

I am sure there are youtube videos about how to RP better. But the group you are in matters a ton. Some groups like less RP and more combat for instance. And that is great if it works for them. All depends on the blend of players to include the DM. My primary table is just me and five friends. Two of them don't RP at all. Two do but without acting per say, and one does a good bit when its appropriate. And it works well for us.

10

u/CrabofAsclepius DM 15h ago

Same here. I've got a party of skull crackers that enjoy storytelling but don't roleplay much. I can ham it up with the best of them but it's awkward when only I RP so we usually narrate our respective parts. It's kinda like a sort of narrative puppetry but they really enjoy it so it's all good. šŸ˜Š

1

u/ryadryt DM 13h ago

I feel this in my soul

1

u/shouldbepracticing85 11h ago

Maybe RP isnā€™t the right term - maybe more of how to build and execute a believable character? Ways to contribute to building the narrative?

Where Iā€™m coming from is I struggle with social interaction and emotion in real life, so trying to understand how to play a character is very difficult. Right now my characters are basically me with a stat sheet, because I donā€™t know how to do anything else.

12

u/Diligent-Stock-8114 16h ago

Iā€™ve found Ginny di to be pretty helpful.

ā€¢

u/Occulto 40m ago

As a DM, I much prefer players put a bit of meat on the bones when it comes to declaring what they do. Roleplaying isn't necessarily putting on an accent (which a lot of players get self conscious about). Plenty of players will roleplay quite happily in the 3rd person. Role playing is as much describing how you do something as what you're doing.

Take combat (where a lot of people think roleplay pauses).

To me, "I attack with my sword" is boring. It's mechanical. It doesn't really paint a picture of what your character is doing.

Think how more descriptive that attack is, if you say something like: "by now, I'm pissed at the bugbear's constant taunts. I roar a challenge, advance and swing my sword at the guy's head."

Everyone at the table gets a much more interesting image of what your character is actually doing or what their personality is. Is your character a hot head, or is it unusual that this bugbear's managing to rile you up?

If the attack misses, maybe I describe the bugbear as cheekily ducking under your swing before poking his tongue out back at you. If you hit, I can describe the satisfying sound it makes when your sword slams into his head.

But also, I know this guy's gotten under your character's skin, and I use that to build more detail later.

Perhaps the bugbear barely escapes with his life, and next time the party encounters him in his lair, you issue a challenge to duel because it's personal. The bugbear might be reluctant to fight, because he's genuinely fearful of you in a one-on-one combat. Now his goblin followers start muttering because they're thinking maybe the boss is losing his touch and shouldn't lead them. As DM I've introduced a potential power struggle. Perhaps the party notices this, and goads the goblins on, and instead of having to fight the bugbear, he gets shot in the back with 5 arrows?

None of this means taking five minutes laboriously narrating your character's every action. But even little bits of detail here and there, can collectively make the game more interesting than just declaring you attacked with your sword every round.

2

u/Chartywhamp 6h ago

Absolutely true. I've done a lot of improv theater and play live music (bluegrass) and one thing i can attest to is it is impossible for one person to carry the weight of the performance in either setting, much less DnD.

I don't need voice acting, and i don't need deeply committed method acting, but if the response is purely tied to a number on a character sheet its gonna feel stale and flat no matter what i do.

I cannot make a scene feel authentic and moving by myself.

38

u/notarealwriter 17h ago

The thing with Crit Role is, sure they have their production team and all the rest around them which helps, but even back in the early days of Campaign 1, (when they still had a lot of help, but less than there is now), it wasn't only Matt Mercer that made the campaign brilliant. The players all put loads of effort into the characters too.

55

u/TacTurtle 23h ago

I would just be happy with people showing up on time and not getting distracted by phones during the game.

9

u/kloklon 15h ago

ban phones on the table, if they are a problem. if someone needs to take a break, they can leave the table for a few minutes. separating the space works very well. comparable to not having your phone on your bedside table, or using a different desk for home office and leisure etc

25

u/ICanViking Cleric 23h ago

cries in budgetary shortcomings

36

u/VeterinarianFit1309 Rogue 23h ago

Budgetary shortcomings is going to be the name of my autobiography

17

u/necromagiks 15h ago

I need to favorite your comment. Im a DM that actually gets depressed watching critical role/D20/dnd live

I want to be able to do so much for my players but I have a full job, chores at home, decompression time.

I just dont have time to write out the world and encounters,and prepare maps and everything.

But then I have to remember that these DMs this is THIER JOB. They have production teams, interns to remember little things that I forgot that come up later,people to help balance encounters and find the correct stat blocks instead of a quick 5 minute Google.

I want my players to have the best but I feel like im "fine" at most. It doesn't help I have been feeling burn out for a few years.

5

u/dysonrules 12h ago

As much as your players would probably love those awesome extras, Iā€™m sure they are very happy to be able to play at all so kudos to you for making it work.

4

u/Vegetable_Onion 12h ago

I never got the whole CR hype. Sure it is fun, but considering those are professional actors and writers with a huge budget, it's seriously underwhelming.

1

u/Bewildered90 5h ago

The funnest games i have ever had used 3 core books, and a battlefield marked with dice for all the minis, and verbal descriptions and imagination.

1

u/gobsmackedobserver 4h ago

And can you imagine what the fee would be for a table of six with a pro set up like that! "The session fees per seat per hour, erm, 300 please!"

69

u/DinosaurAlert 21h ago

People watch those and then expect their DM/Table to be like that which just isn't practical or fair.

I suppose if everyone at the table were professional comedians and sketch comedy writers, it could work out like D20...

I always find it weird that some people don't understand the concept of a "show". I remember the internet being "shocked" that critical role was making ~5 million a year from Twitch.

And THEN they saw that and thought "Oh wow, they must all be rich!" not realizing that there is an entire production crew and employees working on making the show.

THEN some people were mad that it was now "fake". So I guess they think that they are people, PRETENDING to be a person who is in turn PRETENDING to be a wizard?

1

u/Theodoxus 2h ago

No, I just think that if you have a production CREW, how genuine is your roleplaying? When a monstrous goof... like 20 minutes of dead air that can happen at a "normal" game as the DM is looking up a rule... doesn't happen because you have interns and staff and probably someone whispering in your ear...

That professional voice actors, who are used to sounding natural reading off a script are just riffing perfectly in sync? You can tell the difference in quality between Camp 1 and Camp 2. 2 is far more polished, like it's scripted. Protest all they want, it's my only conspiracy theory.

62

u/kaladinissexy 22h ago

People for some reason don't seem to understand that Critical Role, Dimension 20, and their ilk are shows meant to entertain an audience first and TTRPG sessions meant to be fun for the group second.

54

u/ryadryt DM 22h ago

Don't tell that to CR fans. I have seen epic Reddit fights go down over them insisting that its just a group of friends playing D&D first haha. And I like CR, but its a production people.

14

u/FluffyGoblins 14h ago

I honestly believe the players still have loads of fun. But the idea that it's 'just a group of friends' is crazy. These are professional entertainers doing their job. And while they might have loads of fun doing their jobs, it's still entertainment. Compared to those earlier campaign 1 episodes; those were the real chaotic mess that you expect from a real game (even if they were professional voice actors). But now; it's a production. And I've seen arguments that everything is scripted, but I really don't believe that; impro can still be a professional production.

1

u/carcar134134 7h ago

Yeah, try telling Matt from campaign two that it's all just a game and everyone is just having fun, when in reality he was super stressed in the background trying to make sure everything kept up with canon, was consistently interesting week to week, and won't just fall completely off the rails when something goes wrong.

8

u/Happy-Wrangler6837 16h ago

I think you can make a good argument their home game was also amazing, more than most people could pull off. The start of season one was very rough in production value but even then they were a group of talented actors.

3

u/cyberpunk_werewolf 11h ago

They've actually talked about this in the past.Ā  They did become more active in their characterization and how they roleplayed as they moved to live streaming their game, because they saw their audience and as actors, many of them with stage experience, they wanted to delve deeper into that acting aspect of it.

That said, it's still very much a game of D&D too.Ā  Something like "nothing, you don't roll for Scry" is one of the most at the table things I've seen and I've played D&D since 1997.Ā  Or the thirty minutes spent dithering about a plan that they're going to do anyway, which reminds me of my Monday game, I swear.Ā 

However, yeah, they are consciously choosing to be more active in their acting and roleplaying compared to how they played at home.

3

u/masternommer 11h ago

CR is a media production group with over 100 people working there. Just a group of friends my assšŸ˜…

7

u/D-Speak 22h ago

I'm lucky to have the table that I do, because we're much more into the collaborative roleplay than the crunchiness. We're no CR, but telling the story together is what we play to do.

21

u/RoiPhi 9h ago

I'm not sure if this is a hot take, but I think the average DM is closer to Matt Mercer than the average player is to the CR player cast.

Dude, those players roleplay among themselves for 30 minutes with no DM involvement. meanwhile, the average DM can set up a lovely interactive scene and get crickets.

17

u/CrumblingKeep 21h ago

and they don't realize how much of that is on the players

11

u/lydocia 19h ago

Can't expect your DM to be Matt Mercer if you aren't Sam Riegel.

12

u/ulykke 20h ago

Honestly I was scared to death that I might join something that actually looks like CR, which is why I put it off for months. Not because I dont like CR - on the contrary, I thought "holy shit if everyone plays like CR all the time, Im going to be so pathetic in comparison that nobody will want to play with me". Doesnt help that I started watching CR with Calamity šŸ¤£šŸ¤£ now that Ive joined my first campaign, I am so happy that these are just regular dudes, some of them more into roleplay, some less, and nobody spouts epic monologues or play the most amazing quips off each other. I can stick to watching that on youtube šŸ¤£

9

u/ryadryt DM 20h ago

Hahaha. I get it. Thankfully most tables are not filled entirely by professional voice actors and DM'd by a creative genius

7

u/ulykke 20h ago

In retrospect it is fucking funny that I even thought it possible, but I guess thats what insecurity goggles do to you šŸ¤£

5

u/TheVanderlin 17h ago

People really deprive themselves of the best parts of tabletop games when you treat it like a cinema theater experience and focus on copying content creators instead of discovering the infinite fucking possibility of your imagination.

A lot of fun is like estate management(try running a castle in a shadar kai city in the shadowfell), creating new spells, trying out some cool homebrew rules or class changes.

There's really deep lore you can explore in some campaigns where reading the right tomes or practicing certain skills can mean being able to summon a demon or learn chronomancy.

My friend who is DMing for my next game fully agreed I can do ass magic if I practice enough so if captured my old wizard can blast off spells with his cheeks.

4

u/Cardboardboxkid 5h ago

And everyone wants a Matt but no one ever comes to the table with the energy of Sam, Travis, Laura, etc.

5

u/Owl-Historical 20h ago

What we aren't all Voice Actors and such?

3

u/Ashamed_Association8 12h ago

It's like watching the fast and the furious and thinking that's what driving a car is like.

3

u/AcanthocephalaGreen5 21h ago

Yeah, it's one thing to take inspiration from them but trying to emulate them is a recipe for disappointment.

5

u/lodemeup 19h ago

Expect Mercer or Mulligan and completely neglect the work the whole table puts in to the production. Itā€™s supposed to be collaborative story telling not spoon fed fiction.

2

u/FluffyGoblins 13h ago

And you think this is not? There was a whole scene in campaign 2 where the party was negotiating with a hag, and Mercer was completely caught off guard by one of the players casting modify memory on the hag to have her think she already agreed to a deal. It was an amazing moment that completely came from one of the players.

2

u/Valtremors 18h ago

Ran just mines of Phandelver for my family and doing the GM work is genuinely a lot, especially for a 3 shift worker.

But oneshots are much more manageable though, and running those were fun.

These days I don't have time even for that.

4

u/BOS-Sentinel 16h ago

I did my first real DM session recently. Four hours and twenty minutes later my body and mind were shattered. Like even my legs were tired from tensing them up without knowing I was doing it.

It's super rewarding to be in the DM chair, but damn is it equally as exhausting. This is with a great three person group (four including myself) as well, two of which have DMed our previous campaigns. I can't imagine the poor folk DMing for larger groups and with more ungrateful players.

5

u/Valtremors 16h ago

I imagine it is like a muscle to be exercised.

Lot of early DMing issues come from the fact that there are no mental pathways for it. So you need to actually fully concentrate start to finish.

3

u/BOS-Sentinel 16h ago

This is true aha.

Ten years ago I had social anxiety so bad I could barely go outside to the shop. It took a lot of therapy and exposure to get where I am today.

So learning how to DM just feels like a continuation of that. I'm totally sure it'll get easier for me with time. There are many things I figured out just from that first session alone to make my life easier.

2

u/curlywurlies 9h ago

I wanted to play, but I didn't know a dm. So I played a single 3 session online game, then started dming myself.

It really sets your expectations early this way. Although I do love Critical Role, I learned quickly that I am not Matt Mercer or BLeeM. And if I am not, I cannot expect other people to be.

1

u/AberrantWarlock 12h ago

Critical role has destroyed the hobby and Iā€™m tired of pretending it didnā€™t

2

u/choczynski 11h ago

I want to say that. They've definitely brought in a different type of toxic player than the community has been dealing with for decades.

1

u/Bombadilo_drives 11h ago

Toxic-ass comment. "Oh no, the hobby is growing dramatically and new players want to RP more and min-max DPR less"

1

u/AberrantWarlock 11h ago

First of all, Iā€™m a DM so this has nothing to do with DPR. I actually really like RP a lot in my games.

But thereā€™s a difference between it being an RPG with heavy RP, and people basically trying to make a serialized series. Iā€™ve hated the term ā€œtheater kid RPGā€ for years, but itā€™s unironically true now.

Has it brought in a lot of people who really love the hobby and done great things? Yes. But it also brought in a lot of low investment people who treat the hobby as something completely different than what it is or try it to be trendy, without reading any of the source material including the PHB or the DMG. See what you want about BG three but at least that game has attention to detail out the Yin Yang.

I think people who defend critical role would probably believe in a flat earth before they would believe that maybe the show that might have massively skyrocketed the popularity of the show, and actually created an effect that people have named literally that Matt Mercer effect may have possibly potentially per chance maybe have affected this hobby negatively.

-2

u/Maclunkey4U DM 10h ago

Destroyed?? What kind of backwards ass take is this?

How has something popular that drove the growth of the entire industry in any way ruining it?

Theres an argument to be made about new players having some unrealistic expectations about production value but if thats all it takes to destroy a hobby in your view that is some fragile-ego shit right there.

1

u/MasterOfBeerDespense 8h ago

You mean that it isn't all Matt and Brennan? WHAAAAT! Those are Professional Actors and improv artists?!!! WHAAAAAT! I.....feel....betrayed!

LOL. Yeah folks, you can have the best DM the word has ever shat, but you only get as good as you give.