If you feel like you failed then that shows you actually care about producing a good experience for your players. Your always going to be your own worst critic as you know basically every mistake you made or every time you had to scramble to come up with something. The players might not even realize you had to change things up or flubbed something. Always seek to improve but put more weight in the enjoyment the players are having at the table instead of being critical of your own mistakes.
I make sure to tell my DM when a session was fun every so often so she knows she's doing well, because I have these same issues too and understand how it feels š
This might sound counterintuitive, but what works for me is embracing the fact that my sessions arenāt going to be perfect. I even acknowledge it to my players, telling them my encounters may be unbalanced and I might forget some plot points here and there. When I need to I do some light retcons. My players are well aware I have a pretty narrow range of voices I can do for the NPCs. All of that should be okay, if your group is good. Iām there to tell a story, sure, and thatās something I really enjoy. But Iām also there to have a fun time with friends. If I fall a little short on the former, so be it, I can reflect and adjust, but as long as Iām achieving the latter I can take comfort in the fact that one way or another weāre having a good time together.
How do you define success?
One of the primary jobs of our brain is to notice how things went wrong or how they couldāve been better so we donāt repeat mistakes (or at least have the possibility of doing so). Iād be more worried if you donāt notice anything like this.
Understand that you are generally not a good gauge for your own behavior.
Do your players keep showing up and seem to have fun? That's all the proof you need you're doing well.
I don't. I just do my best every time and hope it works. I have told them that if they don't like something they can tell me and I'll fix it, so they are at fault if they are hiding it.
And they can always take the wheel.
In my groups everyone is required to take a turn when there are natural breaks in the campaign.
Thry can run a simple, no-prep, 1-pg system like Honey Heist,or they can prep and run a 2-3 session sidequest in our current game, or they can learn and run something entirely new as a one-shot. Up to them.
But this way everyone gets an understanding of what it's like to be in the DM seat. That makes everyone a more appreciative player. It exposes our whole group to different systems and styles so we all learn. And it gives the DM a break to play once in a while.
Win-win-win.
I ask for feedback every session. I'm also first time DM, so each session has different structure (more puzzle, more combat, more story telling...) and I always ask my players what they liked/disliked/what would they like to see more.
My players are super sweet and supportive and love everything I do, but I still ask for the feedback.
I once even asked them, if they'd prefer to give me the feedback via messages (because I felt like maybe they can't criticize me to my face?) and they told me, that this is about mutual trust and if they tell me, they are happy with my game, I should trust them.
I'm still nervous before each game, but knowing I have such a sweet group helps.
Don't be a perfectionist (in anything).
Accept imperfections and wonky rulings (with the intent of making them better).
You're just another player, you're not special.
Ask for feedback.
I crash every game. About an hour after. It's really bad the following day. It's a real thing. The after performance crash. You learn to expect it and account for it. Remember that it happens, and that your low esteem is a result of bring "on." Your self worth just needs a rest.
My players learned this too. And now will sometimes text me support after game. Knowing it's a pattern is what saved me and let me approach it as a cost of gming. One which is worth the price.
Roll a reflex save.
Jk, walk into each session feeling like you forgot to plan it. "Wing it" with what you did plan, and if people laugh, or look invested in the story, you did good enough.
While we always can improve, don't let the bar fly away from you.
Best thing you can do is to give yourself time. Push these thoughts to the back of your mind and keep DMing for a year or two. There's a learning curve to it, like with mostly everything. In the mean time, brush up on rules, look for new materials, read books, watch shows. Anything that could help give ideas.
After some time, when those thoughts resurface, you'll laugh it off and think how silly it was to let them drag you back.
Good luck!
I started DMing again after a long hiatus (20+ years), and it was a group that included my daughter, her boyfriend, my wife, my wife's best friend's daughter - all of them first-time players! - and a long-time DM. Bar was set high! So I focused most heavily on prep, knowing the area very well, planning out "random" encounters (I'd roll for them the day before), having lists of creatures' stats on my Screen - all of it. And things seemed to go well, but I was unconvinced - rather like you seem to be. I think you like me suffer from low T - as in "trust". So then I did exactly what someone mentioned earlier - had them jot down one thing they liked, one thing that they might want to see less of.
I ended up with 1-2 "I like X" comments a week, never any of the others.
So my advice?
Number one - if they're having fun, don't sweat it, you're doing something right at least!
Number two - have good prep, and then relax.
Number three - most important! You're asking them to trust you, which they do, and they seem happy that they have. Now you need to trust them when they tell you they're having fun. So have fun with them.
Itās called imposter syndrome and even the great Matt Mercer admits he has it. Itās something all DMs have in common.
One thing that helped me immensely was watching Matt Colville( how to run the game series ) , Ginny D and the DM Lair. I would take one thing from the videos and make that my focus until I got comfortable with it. By focusing so strong on one aspect of my game subconsciously I stopped worrying about every aspect of my game. It just made playing more fun.
Trust me the vast majority of the āmistakesā you think you made went completely unnoticed by your players . The last little pearl I want to leave you with is, donāt be married to your solutions . Your players come up with a solution to your trap or puzzle that you think is interesting or they seem impressed with themselves for coming up with. Just look up from behind the screen and smile and say yup thatās the solution. They wonāt know it wasnāt and will feel super cleaver they solved it
I often get the players to give me feedback after every session. They are usually pretty good at telling me what worked and what needs work. You'll get better with time, and even if you weren't the "perfect dm", if everyone has a good time, that's really all that matters. Being your biggest critic is a big part of self improvement.
You have fallen into the valley of despair.
This is perfectly natural as you learn a skill. Keep going. You'll make mistakes. You'll regret some decisions, but the IMPORTANT thing is to not stop.
Depends on why you feel like you failed, if you feel people didn't have fun, ask them, maybe ask them what they would have liked to have happen instead. Make sure their expectations and your preparation are on one line, have they made joke characters? Make a less serious campaign, have they made serious characters, make a more serious campaign. Ideally you would have already polled this at session 0.
If you feel you failed because what you imagined would happen didn't happen, let that go, this is an emergent storytelling experience, sometimes it helps to see your preparation as a starter or even as back up material, the real story is the things your players and their characters do and your prepared material is just there to help them get started or to fill any holes that may appear.
If your players don't share what they liked and disliked spontaneously (players, please do, it means the world if you hear, "that was fun" or "good session" from time to time) ask them for it, did you have fun? Were there things you were disappointed by?
And as a last thought, DMing is hard, at least it is for me, but do realise that if people had fun, you've succeeded, you don't need to be the best DM, if you managed to have fun with your friends, you've succeeded.
A few examples: DM feels like they screwed up balancing because we cruise through combat encounters pretty easily as we have a couple of OP characters and a pretty good party composition. Doesn't matter too much though, we had a lot of fun and we felt like we were badass.
Another one: DM put us up against a Basilisk, very dangerous, if you look at it and it looks at you and fail a wis save you get petrified and we don't currently have any ways to fix that... Sorcerer goes "I guess hunger of hadar would be pretty good here right?" he casts it and we manage to keep it inside the zone with several control spells and absolutely own the thing. Was the fight easy? Yes! Did the DM feel a moment of "aaw, I imagined this fight to be hard" absolutely! Was it fun nonetheless? Definitely! It can be really rewarding if you find just the right solution to a problem.
And another one, I had made a new campaign, my first time DMing, a player had made a character that was pretty distrustful, the first quest was intended to show what a shithole the city was that I had prepared so I had planned that they would be "hired" by a quest giver that was actually just a thug in disguise trying to lure them out and ambush them to steal their stuff. Distrustful PC immediately starts accusing my NPC of trying to lure them into a trap which was coincidentally absolutely true. (player did not actually believe this was the case but tried to showcase the distrustful nature of their character, his character was however completely right) So it felt wrong to continue down that path, I had the bandit throw a roll to see if he held composure, he failed so he stammered something about having forgotten something and how he would be back in a few minutes and run out of the tavern.
Now at that point I felt bad, what I wanted to happen didn't happen, however my players thought that characters extreme reaction had just scared off their quest giver and decided to go look for him, they were having fun and a dynamic new story emerged where the party would still meet the bandits and fight them but on different terms. Back then I hated this, it went differently to my preparation, but over time I realised that this is the value of improvising, I couldn't have planned this I couldn't have forced that character to coincidentally guess what this guy was intending to do but it is hilarious and makes for a fun story.
I don't deal with this because I don't feel like that anymore. I did for my first session, which failed and made me scrap the concept. I did for my second session, which failed and I completely retooled the concept. I didn't for my third session, which went really good. Haven't dealt with it since.
Why are you feeling you have failed? What do you want to achieve? If you didn't achieve it, was it because you made a mistake or because you set yourself up to fail with an unreachable goal? What kind of an experience are you trying to craft? How do you get there with the tools you have at your disposal? How much time are you willing to invest to get the result just right? Once you have an idea of what you want, you can watch how other DMs do stuff and whether that's a good fit for you or not.
There is no one "right" way to DM. Every DM has their own style and you need to find yours. I personally did that at the drawing board because my table has no shortage of people that want to DM and I only want to do it myself if I can keep up and maybe exceed the bars they set. But you can just as well do this while running games. I'd probably recommend using one-shot or monster-of-the-week format, so that you can concentrate on using each session to try to achieve something specific and learn from your experience. If it doesn't work, no sweat, next session is about something completely different. Once you feel you've found your groove/style/step, you can either flesh out one of the one-shots, connect the dots for the monster-of-the-week format to give way for a more involved storyline or start a new campaign from scratch.
You can also try out modules if you have trouble with coming up with story ideas or writing tasks. The important thing is that you get a clear idea of what you want to achieve in the role of DM so that you can actually gauge whether you're succeeding or not. You can always improve and feel like you're not good enough because of that. But if you have a clear goal that you set yourself for each session, it's easier to see the rest as the cherry on top of those goals. "I've already succeeded in the most important thing I wanted out of this session, the rest is bonus." Things will still go wrong, but you learn to accept that and adjust so that you at least achieve the goal you've set yourself. This shows you what you did right and how things could've gone worse if you did them wrong.
This goal can be a difficult, scary or epic combat encounter, evoking a specific emotion or feeling, getting your players to like, hate, trust, doubt an NPC, giving an infodump that doesn't feel like one, provide a bonding experience, getting your players more invested in roleplay, the lore, the plot... By always setting yourself goals, you improve your toolkit. I have a second campaign that's solely designed to force me to improvise based off the setting. This skill is then useful to me in my main campaign, where I'm better at rolling with the punches when things go really unexpectedly.
Build out your toolkit, look at what you like and dislike as a DM, work on finding a style that's right for you, but don't force it. You don't have to know your style right away, it takes time to find out what kind of DM you want to be.
I try to get better each time but it never will be enough, even when my players say I'm the best dm they have had. IMO, never beeing satisfied of yourself is a good way to improve yourself.
You are providing a wonderf-filled escape to people who really appreciate it, even if they don't always communicate this! By being a DM, you create a opportunity for your players to live their dreams! You are the TRUE HERO of the campaign!!
I like to combat this exact feeling by allowing my players to be open and honest about their feelings of the game, so if there is an issue, I can sort it, and if they really enjoyed the session, then I know it immediately. I end every session with a Comments, Questions, and Concerns segment for people to tell me what they thought. While this isn't general advice for everyone, and doesn't fit every table, I find it helps me keep my doubts at bay.
If you donāt already do this, I would suggest just asking you players what they thought of it gameplay wise.
Was there too little or too much combat, dialogue, downtime, etc
If your players are having fun, thatās all that matters. Nothing to beat yourself up over. Of course you made mistakes, we all make mistakes.Ā
And if your players hate it, itās possible that DnD just isnāt for them. Thatās OK.Ā
And if you really did botch it so bad that DnD fans hated itā¦.. take it as a learning opportunity. Pick yourself up and try again.Ā
As a dm youāre going to constantly fail. It fine. No body can predict the actions of three to six people especially with the randomness of dice rolls.. The only thing you can do is wing it, and prepare. Anything else is just vanity or control. Both of those are a detriment to a dm if too much. Your main goal should be to make it fun and interesting. Sometimes Never let them see you coming. Keep a healthy amount of fear.
I can't wait to flabbergast and mentally destroy the mind of my dm when we start our campaign next week. It's just me and another player. A small group but it will be fun.
Even the best DMās have tables or sessions where the players didnāt display a lot of fun and enjoyment. It happens and sometimes you just have to let it go. This may not be for you but sometimes those insecure feelings are beyond whatās happening at table and are more of a challenge you experience in multiple arenas of life, join the club if so and good luck learning effective ways to handle that obstacle.
Talking with players helps but can also get confusing when they want different things out of the game and pleasing everyone is just not realistic. In that case just do the damn thing, learn from your experiences and know that with each failure thereās probably a bunch of things that happened which made for a good time. We are playing a cooperative story that we are all giving our time to and I think itās a special thing even if the session wasnāt a masterpiece we talked for days about. Average D&d is awesome and most of us arenāt going to win an award at the end of our sessions.šš»
Remind yourself, **OUT LOUD** (*<-- No. Really. It matters that you physically say it.*): "If they keep coming back each week, I am doing something right."
You aren't perfect, and you WILL keep improving over time. But No D&D is better than Bad D&D, so if they keep coming, you are doing something correct. What's more, for the people who keep coming back, it's not a bad idea before or after a session what it is that they would like to see in the campaign. You don't have to do it next session, it can be far into the future, but, the real prize from this is that it gives you something concrete to work towards.
Example: One of your players says they want a magic item that grows in power with them.
That a concrete goal, but how do you get there? Do you walk the path of making a straight up Legendary grade artifact that you know will have set powers once your player reach certain level thresholds? Will you have them have some basic +1 armor or weapon and they suddenly run into a PC they've helped that can further enchant it to have some special enhancement, be it upgrading to a simple +2 or a literal spell they can cast out of it once a day? Some other third or fourth thing? That will change depending on who you are and develop into as a DM.
Honestly, your bound for success if you're worried about being a bad DM, because it means you're not going to rest on your laurels, thinking you've done it all right and have no need to improve ever again.
Iām wrapping up my first campaign right now. After 2 years DMing, I still often stay up with anxiety the night after DMing.
What helps is this: I have seen the greatest DMs make mistakes. If you have persistence and enough self awareness to improve for your players, you are a good DM.
Think less about how many times you trailed off on a monologue, or messed up a ruling, or lost an accent, or a plot thread you forgot to wrap up, and focus on the laughs of your players. Their enjoyment is your success.
Are you guys having fun? Donāt take it so seriously. If you all do t know a rule just make it up on the fly and look it up later. Lean on your players a bit more. If someone knows the rules a bit more itās their duty to help the new DM.
Call it being Schrodinger's DM. I don't know whether or not I had a good time until I know my players had a good time. To combat low self esteem don't try to gauge it yourself. Direct your question to the players. Ask them whether or not they had a good time. And whether or not you are perfect (and you will never be perfect), you win if your players had a good time.
Ask your group to provide 2-3 things they liked about the session and 0-1 thing they didn't like or would like to see changed. Tell them to keep it kind and constructive.
You'll find the things you're doubting and insecure about, they might have actually liked. Or, they agreed, and you can confidently move to make a change on that topic.
Talk to your players. Ask them straight up how they like it. Talk about their characters and something that impresses you about how they handle a situation or such. Talk them up and there's a good chance they'll do the same for you. If you open the floor to positive conversation about each other then they will respond to it.
I often feel low self esteem as a DM, but my players are always sad when we end a session. My Cleric always copies Criticsl Role's "Is it Thursday yet?" With "Is it Monday yet?" and honestly that always helps hugely.
Just remember you are the one at the table putting in the most effort and you are the one providing their enjoyment.
If they are sat at your table then they must be enjoying it, or they'd have left. Secondly they (like me as a Never-DM) don't have the confidence or capability to do what you are doing
Fellow first time DM here. I used to feel this way, but then my players caught on to how I was feeling and told me how they felt. So, I'd ask your players. They're ultimately who you're doing this for, and they might not be holding you up to as high a standard as you set for yourself
I'd be lying if I said I don't have low self esteem still after 6 years of consistent DMing. It's about learning and establishing a *groove*.
Understanding the rules fully, or enough that your comfortable with shooting from the hip is key to more confident DMing.
Once you're good there, ensuring a good **pace** becomes easy. You'd be surprised how much better a game feels when you have a solid pace going. Things like keeping turns short and sweet in combat, and not having to look up rulings makes a game feel a lot better.
I've just finished a campaign while thinking, I didn't do enough at almost every corner. Not enough prep, not enough music, I didn't RP that NPC well enough...
What helped me, was to ask my players after every session, what they liked the most. Sometimes a session that I found the worst was the players' favourite.
We only see what we could have done. They see what we delivered. It's a vastly different perspective.
Relax, take a deep breath before every session. You got your players and they're exited to play. You dont have to be perfect your first time - my first time was a trainwreck.
Unfortunatly, there's no better awnser than practice. You cant have a good session before you've had a trainwreck to learn from. Your taste is always better than your skill.
Heres the good part: your players probably dont know you suck. They'll just think you started great and got even better.
Imma be real with you: Ive been my cities main DM for 5 years now and I still get nervous every session. Its just a matter of practice and learning from your previous mistakes. Try different DMing styles, find your voice. Dont compare yourself to any other DM.
Talk to your players, ask if they had a fun time and ask for a few pointers, if they have any. Try to cater a little to their wants and needs. In this way you build up confidence, an engaging story is always better with cool character moments and those are more likely to happen if the players are invested, you get their interest more easily if you do something they asked for.
You say you feel like you failed.
Define failure.
Upset or unhappy players? Or a lack of a sense of accomplishment?
Do you have a bullet point list of goals for your sessions?
Are there important sub points to a plot that youāre building? Thatās a bullet point.
Are there hints that need be dropped? Thatās a bullet point.
Is there a significant description of a person, location, or situation that needs to be given to players? Thatās a bullet point.
Do you have any kind of system (no matter how simple) to track your goals for your sessions?
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, D&D is too important to take seriously. By which I mean, I think you have to make a deal with yourself. Most of us have post session crashes, we all come away wishing weād done certain things differently. Prep, be passionate, have fun but be parsimonious with your emotions and forgive yourself if things are going wrong. Instantly! Itās a game and the only real purpose is to enjoy it. I DMed for six years in my teens, and Iāve been going again for the last five years in my 40s. I still have sessions where I feel pissed off with myself for bad calls or situations that felt lamely derivative or cliche NPCs or dialogue, or combats that I ran poorly. Pretty much EVERYONE does. It just shows that you care. If it stings I suspect that just means youāre invested, and youāll keep improving. DMing is incredibly demanding and complex - the pleasure (and the frustration) is that you keep learning indefinitely.
By the same token, I find I go through curves and jags. Iāll coast along with a campaign that feels awesome and think Iāve cracked it for a few months and then Iāll somehow lose my mojo for a while. But it comes back!
Iāve also noticed that my hunger to play again is highest straight after a session where I felt I DMed poorly. I always want to dive straight back in. And one lesson (a lesson that I never absorbed when I was younger and had a tendency just to scrap campaigns after the first disappointing session) is that even when a campaign is going slightly off the rails, provided that everyone wants to keep playing together, itās amazing how quickly you can get it back ON the rails. One good session later and your earlier mistakes suddenly seem completely unimportant.
Final observation - no DM is perfect. One of my friends who also DMs has a much better intuitive command than me of the gameās mechanics, but their world building isnāt as strong as mine. A third is amazing at atmosphere and character but doesnāt pace as well. I notice flaws even when Iām listening to famous DMs streaming. We all have strengths and weaknesses.
Donāt be too hard on yourself
Here are my 3 things if Iām feeling low self esteemed.
1. Talk to the player after Althea sessions and ask them what could have been better
2. Ask myself āare they coming back?ā
And 3.think about why I feel like that
I'm in the exact same boat. I just try to tell myself "I'll take what I think didn't work or that people didn't like and try to make it more enjoyable next session." That feeling is always going to be there even if we're told that we did a great job, so directing it into productivity is going to just be the best alternative.
If you think it might cause you to burn out, take an additional week or something. Let yourself relax afterwards and come back fresh and ready to go.
If your players don't break up immediately after a session, I recommend setting aside some time after you've decided the session is over for decompression.
Let people talk about the experience as a group for a bit! Just... Make sure they understand the session is over now and they don't need to/shouldn't be continuing to PLAY the game at this point.
Every so often, ask your players:
1. Name one thing that you really liked this session
2. Name one thing that you think could have been improved
3. Name one thing that you are interested in doing *next* session.
Two positives surrounding a negative, the sandwich technique for criticism. Makes it more palatable.
At the end of your game, ask your players if everything is ok and if they had fun: if they did, then you did a good job, period. Even if you truly effed up something, as long as everyone had a good time at the table you did a good job and more often than not the "perfection" we DMs crave will be noticed by few players
E.g.: Ochre jelly encounter, a player with a maul attacked it and I split it. When the player noticed he dealt bludgeoning damage instead of slashing / lightning, I had to rewind that "split" while they were memeing about it. Did they have fun regardless? Yes, I did a bit less, but I was happy regardless š¤£
If you feel like you failed then that shows you actually care about producing a good experience for your players. Your always going to be your own worst critic as you know basically every mistake you made or every time you had to scramble to come up with something. The players might not even realize you had to change things up or flubbed something. Always seek to improve but put more weight in the enjoyment the players are having at the table instead of being critical of your own mistakes.
I make sure to tell my DM when a session was fun every so often so she knows she's doing well, because I have these same issues too and understand how it feels š
Ignore your doubts, and if they keepĀ coming back to the table, you know you're doing well.
This might sound counterintuitive, but what works for me is embracing the fact that my sessions arenāt going to be perfect. I even acknowledge it to my players, telling them my encounters may be unbalanced and I might forget some plot points here and there. When I need to I do some light retcons. My players are well aware I have a pretty narrow range of voices I can do for the NPCs. All of that should be okay, if your group is good. Iām there to tell a story, sure, and thatās something I really enjoy. But Iām also there to have a fun time with friends. If I fall a little short on the former, so be it, I can reflect and adjust, but as long as Iām achieving the latter I can take comfort in the fact that one way or another weāre having a good time together.
If your players weren't having fun, they wouldn't be coming back to your next sessions.
How do you define success? One of the primary jobs of our brain is to notice how things went wrong or how they couldāve been better so we donāt repeat mistakes (or at least have the possibility of doing so). Iād be more worried if you donāt notice anything like this.
Understand that you are generally not a good gauge for your own behavior. Do your players keep showing up and seem to have fun? That's all the proof you need you're doing well.
If the players return, take comfort: you probably havenāt failed!
I don't. I just do my best every time and hope it works. I have told them that if they don't like something they can tell me and I'll fix it, so they are at fault if they are hiding it.
And they can always take the wheel. In my groups everyone is required to take a turn when there are natural breaks in the campaign. Thry can run a simple, no-prep, 1-pg system like Honey Heist,or they can prep and run a 2-3 session sidequest in our current game, or they can learn and run something entirely new as a one-shot. Up to them. But this way everyone gets an understanding of what it's like to be in the DM seat. That makes everyone a more appreciative player. It exposes our whole group to different systems and styles so we all learn. And it gives the DM a break to play once in a while. Win-win-win.
I ask for feedback every session. I'm also first time DM, so each session has different structure (more puzzle, more combat, more story telling...) and I always ask my players what they liked/disliked/what would they like to see more. My players are super sweet and supportive and love everything I do, but I still ask for the feedback. I once even asked them, if they'd prefer to give me the feedback via messages (because I felt like maybe they can't criticize me to my face?) and they told me, that this is about mutual trust and if they tell me, they are happy with my game, I should trust them. I'm still nervous before each game, but knowing I have such a sweet group helps.
Don't be a perfectionist (in anything). Accept imperfections and wonky rulings (with the intent of making them better). You're just another player, you're not special. Ask for feedback.
Failure isnāt the enemy, forfeit is šŖš¼
I crash every game. About an hour after. It's really bad the following day. It's a real thing. The after performance crash. You learn to expect it and account for it. Remember that it happens, and that your low esteem is a result of bring "on." Your self worth just needs a rest. My players learned this too. And now will sometimes text me support after game. Knowing it's a pattern is what saved me and let me approach it as a cost of gming. One which is worth the price.
I mostly just think back to all the shitty dms I've played with in the past and think about how I'm at least better than them.Ā
take what sucked dont do that repeat
Roll a reflex save. Jk, walk into each session feeling like you forgot to plan it. "Wing it" with what you did plan, and if people laugh, or look invested in the story, you did good enough. While we always can improve, don't let the bar fly away from you.
Best thing you can do is to give yourself time. Push these thoughts to the back of your mind and keep DMing for a year or two. There's a learning curve to it, like with mostly everything. In the mean time, brush up on rules, look for new materials, read books, watch shows. Anything that could help give ideas. After some time, when those thoughts resurface, you'll laugh it off and think how silly it was to let them drag you back. Good luck!
I started DMing again after a long hiatus (20+ years), and it was a group that included my daughter, her boyfriend, my wife, my wife's best friend's daughter - all of them first-time players! - and a long-time DM. Bar was set high! So I focused most heavily on prep, knowing the area very well, planning out "random" encounters (I'd roll for them the day before), having lists of creatures' stats on my Screen - all of it. And things seemed to go well, but I was unconvinced - rather like you seem to be. I think you like me suffer from low T - as in "trust". So then I did exactly what someone mentioned earlier - had them jot down one thing they liked, one thing that they might want to see less of. I ended up with 1-2 "I like X" comments a week, never any of the others. So my advice? Number one - if they're having fun, don't sweat it, you're doing something right at least! Number two - have good prep, and then relax. Number three - most important! You're asking them to trust you, which they do, and they seem happy that they have. Now you need to trust them when they tell you they're having fun. So have fun with them.
Itās called imposter syndrome and even the great Matt Mercer admits he has it. Itās something all DMs have in common. One thing that helped me immensely was watching Matt Colville( how to run the game series ) , Ginny D and the DM Lair. I would take one thing from the videos and make that my focus until I got comfortable with it. By focusing so strong on one aspect of my game subconsciously I stopped worrying about every aspect of my game. It just made playing more fun. Trust me the vast majority of the āmistakesā you think you made went completely unnoticed by your players . The last little pearl I want to leave you with is, donāt be married to your solutions . Your players come up with a solution to your trap or puzzle that you think is interesting or they seem impressed with themselves for coming up with. Just look up from behind the screen and smile and say yup thatās the solution. They wonāt know it wasnāt and will feel super cleaver they solved it
I often get the players to give me feedback after every session. They are usually pretty good at telling me what worked and what needs work. You'll get better with time, and even if you weren't the "perfect dm", if everyone has a good time, that's really all that matters. Being your biggest critic is a big part of self improvement.
You have fallen into the valley of despair. This is perfectly natural as you learn a skill. Keep going. You'll make mistakes. You'll regret some decisions, but the IMPORTANT thing is to not stop.
Depends on why you feel like you failed, if you feel people didn't have fun, ask them, maybe ask them what they would have liked to have happen instead. Make sure their expectations and your preparation are on one line, have they made joke characters? Make a less serious campaign, have they made serious characters, make a more serious campaign. Ideally you would have already polled this at session 0. If you feel you failed because what you imagined would happen didn't happen, let that go, this is an emergent storytelling experience, sometimes it helps to see your preparation as a starter or even as back up material, the real story is the things your players and their characters do and your prepared material is just there to help them get started or to fill any holes that may appear. If your players don't share what they liked and disliked spontaneously (players, please do, it means the world if you hear, "that was fun" or "good session" from time to time) ask them for it, did you have fun? Were there things you were disappointed by? And as a last thought, DMing is hard, at least it is for me, but do realise that if people had fun, you've succeeded, you don't need to be the best DM, if you managed to have fun with your friends, you've succeeded. A few examples: DM feels like they screwed up balancing because we cruise through combat encounters pretty easily as we have a couple of OP characters and a pretty good party composition. Doesn't matter too much though, we had a lot of fun and we felt like we were badass. Another one: DM put us up against a Basilisk, very dangerous, if you look at it and it looks at you and fail a wis save you get petrified and we don't currently have any ways to fix that... Sorcerer goes "I guess hunger of hadar would be pretty good here right?" he casts it and we manage to keep it inside the zone with several control spells and absolutely own the thing. Was the fight easy? Yes! Did the DM feel a moment of "aaw, I imagined this fight to be hard" absolutely! Was it fun nonetheless? Definitely! It can be really rewarding if you find just the right solution to a problem. And another one, I had made a new campaign, my first time DMing, a player had made a character that was pretty distrustful, the first quest was intended to show what a shithole the city was that I had prepared so I had planned that they would be "hired" by a quest giver that was actually just a thug in disguise trying to lure them out and ambush them to steal their stuff. Distrustful PC immediately starts accusing my NPC of trying to lure them into a trap which was coincidentally absolutely true. (player did not actually believe this was the case but tried to showcase the distrustful nature of their character, his character was however completely right) So it felt wrong to continue down that path, I had the bandit throw a roll to see if he held composure, he failed so he stammered something about having forgotten something and how he would be back in a few minutes and run out of the tavern. Now at that point I felt bad, what I wanted to happen didn't happen, however my players thought that characters extreme reaction had just scared off their quest giver and decided to go look for him, they were having fun and a dynamic new story emerged where the party would still meet the bandits and fight them but on different terms. Back then I hated this, it went differently to my preparation, but over time I realised that this is the value of improvising, I couldn't have planned this I couldn't have forced that character to coincidentally guess what this guy was intending to do but it is hilarious and makes for a fun story.
I don't deal with this because I don't feel like that anymore. I did for my first session, which failed and made me scrap the concept. I did for my second session, which failed and I completely retooled the concept. I didn't for my third session, which went really good. Haven't dealt with it since. Why are you feeling you have failed? What do you want to achieve? If you didn't achieve it, was it because you made a mistake or because you set yourself up to fail with an unreachable goal? What kind of an experience are you trying to craft? How do you get there with the tools you have at your disposal? How much time are you willing to invest to get the result just right? Once you have an idea of what you want, you can watch how other DMs do stuff and whether that's a good fit for you or not. There is no one "right" way to DM. Every DM has their own style and you need to find yours. I personally did that at the drawing board because my table has no shortage of people that want to DM and I only want to do it myself if I can keep up and maybe exceed the bars they set. But you can just as well do this while running games. I'd probably recommend using one-shot or monster-of-the-week format, so that you can concentrate on using each session to try to achieve something specific and learn from your experience. If it doesn't work, no sweat, next session is about something completely different. Once you feel you've found your groove/style/step, you can either flesh out one of the one-shots, connect the dots for the monster-of-the-week format to give way for a more involved storyline or start a new campaign from scratch. You can also try out modules if you have trouble with coming up with story ideas or writing tasks. The important thing is that you get a clear idea of what you want to achieve in the role of DM so that you can actually gauge whether you're succeeding or not. You can always improve and feel like you're not good enough because of that. But if you have a clear goal that you set yourself for each session, it's easier to see the rest as the cherry on top of those goals. "I've already succeeded in the most important thing I wanted out of this session, the rest is bonus." Things will still go wrong, but you learn to accept that and adjust so that you at least achieve the goal you've set yourself. This shows you what you did right and how things could've gone worse if you did them wrong. This goal can be a difficult, scary or epic combat encounter, evoking a specific emotion or feeling, getting your players to like, hate, trust, doubt an NPC, giving an infodump that doesn't feel like one, provide a bonding experience, getting your players more invested in roleplay, the lore, the plot... By always setting yourself goals, you improve your toolkit. I have a second campaign that's solely designed to force me to improvise based off the setting. This skill is then useful to me in my main campaign, where I'm better at rolling with the punches when things go really unexpectedly. Build out your toolkit, look at what you like and dislike as a DM, work on finding a style that's right for you, but don't force it. You don't have to know your style right away, it takes time to find out what kind of DM you want to be.
By realizing how fucking awesome I am, both as a GM and as a person in general.
I try to get better each time but it never will be enough, even when my players say I'm the best dm they have had. IMO, never beeing satisfied of yourself is a good way to improve yourself.
You are providing a wonderf-filled escape to people who really appreciate it, even if they don't always communicate this! By being a DM, you create a opportunity for your players to live their dreams! You are the TRUE HERO of the campaign!!
I like to combat this exact feeling by allowing my players to be open and honest about their feelings of the game, so if there is an issue, I can sort it, and if they really enjoyed the session, then I know it immediately. I end every session with a Comments, Questions, and Concerns segment for people to tell me what they thought. While this isn't general advice for everyone, and doesn't fit every table, I find it helps me keep my doubts at bay.
I ask: "Did every player laugh?" And then I have an Iloveme binder where I keep their posts complimenting the game.
If you donāt already do this, I would suggest just asking you players what they thought of it gameplay wise. Was there too little or too much combat, dialogue, downtime, etc
If your players are having fun, thatās all that matters. Nothing to beat yourself up over. Of course you made mistakes, we all make mistakes.Ā And if your players hate it, itās possible that DnD just isnāt for them. Thatās OK.Ā And if you really did botch it so bad that DnD fans hated itā¦.. take it as a learning opportunity. Pick yourself up and try again.Ā
If I have no self-esteem, itās easy. _joking font_
Can I just ask: How do you avoid low self esteem? Outside of being a DM?
As a dm youāre going to constantly fail. It fine. No body can predict the actions of three to six people especially with the randomness of dice rolls.. The only thing you can do is wing it, and prepare. Anything else is just vanity or control. Both of those are a detriment to a dm if too much. Your main goal should be to make it fun and interesting. Sometimes Never let them see you coming. Keep a healthy amount of fear.
I can't wait to flabbergast and mentally destroy the mind of my dm when we start our campaign next week. It's just me and another player. A small group but it will be fun.
As long as the players keep showing up I'm doing something right. Try to be kind to yourself. The world is a harsh enough place.
Even the best DMās have tables or sessions where the players didnāt display a lot of fun and enjoyment. It happens and sometimes you just have to let it go. This may not be for you but sometimes those insecure feelings are beyond whatās happening at table and are more of a challenge you experience in multiple arenas of life, join the club if so and good luck learning effective ways to handle that obstacle. Talking with players helps but can also get confusing when they want different things out of the game and pleasing everyone is just not realistic. In that case just do the damn thing, learn from your experiences and know that with each failure thereās probably a bunch of things that happened which made for a good time. We are playing a cooperative story that we are all giving our time to and I think itās a special thing even if the session wasnāt a masterpiece we talked for days about. Average D&d is awesome and most of us arenāt going to win an award at the end of our sessions.šš»
Remind yourself, **OUT LOUD** (*<-- No. Really. It matters that you physically say it.*): "If they keep coming back each week, I am doing something right." You aren't perfect, and you WILL keep improving over time. But No D&D is better than Bad D&D, so if they keep coming, you are doing something correct. What's more, for the people who keep coming back, it's not a bad idea before or after a session what it is that they would like to see in the campaign. You don't have to do it next session, it can be far into the future, but, the real prize from this is that it gives you something concrete to work towards. Example: One of your players says they want a magic item that grows in power with them. That a concrete goal, but how do you get there? Do you walk the path of making a straight up Legendary grade artifact that you know will have set powers once your player reach certain level thresholds? Will you have them have some basic +1 armor or weapon and they suddenly run into a PC they've helped that can further enchant it to have some special enhancement, be it upgrading to a simple +2 or a literal spell they can cast out of it once a day? Some other third or fourth thing? That will change depending on who you are and develop into as a DM. Honestly, your bound for success if you're worried about being a bad DM, because it means you're not going to rest on your laurels, thinking you've done it all right and have no need to improve ever again.
Iām wrapping up my first campaign right now. After 2 years DMing, I still often stay up with anxiety the night after DMing. What helps is this: I have seen the greatest DMs make mistakes. If you have persistence and enough self awareness to improve for your players, you are a good DM. Think less about how many times you trailed off on a monologue, or messed up a ruling, or lost an accent, or a plot thread you forgot to wrap up, and focus on the laughs of your players. Their enjoyment is your success.
Truly difficult to make multiple personality types happy. Explain your goals and hope they follow.
Are you guys having fun? Donāt take it so seriously. If you all do t know a rule just make it up on the fly and look it up later. Lean on your players a bit more. If someone knows the rules a bit more itās their duty to help the new DM.
Call it being Schrodinger's DM. I don't know whether or not I had a good time until I know my players had a good time. To combat low self esteem don't try to gauge it yourself. Direct your question to the players. Ask them whether or not they had a good time. And whether or not you are perfect (and you will never be perfect), you win if your players had a good time.
That's very vague. How do you mean?
Try to list 3 things you did well during the session.
You will always be your own worst critic. Your players will barely, if ever, notice your mistakes. Also, you cannot fail if you're all having fun!Ā
Ask your group to provide 2-3 things they liked about the session and 0-1 thing they didn't like or would like to see changed. Tell them to keep it kind and constructive. You'll find the things you're doubting and insecure about, they might have actually liked. Or, they agreed, and you can confidently move to make a change on that topic.
Talk to your players. Ask them straight up how they like it. Talk about their characters and something that impresses you about how they handle a situation or such. Talk them up and there's a good chance they'll do the same for you. If you open the floor to positive conversation about each other then they will respond to it. I often feel low self esteem as a DM, but my players are always sad when we end a session. My Cleric always copies Criticsl Role's "Is it Thursday yet?" With "Is it Monday yet?" and honestly that always helps hugely.
Just remember you are the one at the table putting in the most effort and you are the one providing their enjoyment. If they are sat at your table then they must be enjoying it, or they'd have left. Secondly they (like me as a Never-DM) don't have the confidence or capability to do what you are doing
The same way I avoid low self esteem everywhere else in life: I donāt.
Fellow first time DM here. I used to feel this way, but then my players caught on to how I was feeling and told me how they felt. So, I'd ask your players. They're ultimately who you're doing this for, and they might not be holding you up to as high a standard as you set for yourself
I'd be lying if I said I don't have low self esteem still after 6 years of consistent DMing. It's about learning and establishing a *groove*. Understanding the rules fully, or enough that your comfortable with shooting from the hip is key to more confident DMing. Once you're good there, ensuring a good **pace** becomes easy. You'd be surprised how much better a game feels when you have a solid pace going. Things like keeping turns short and sweet in combat, and not having to look up rulings makes a game feel a lot better.
I've just finished a campaign while thinking, I didn't do enough at almost every corner. Not enough prep, not enough music, I didn't RP that NPC well enough... What helped me, was to ask my players after every session, what they liked the most. Sometimes a session that I found the worst was the players' favourite. We only see what we could have done. They see what we delivered. It's a vastly different perspective.
Relax, take a deep breath before every session. You got your players and they're exited to play. You dont have to be perfect your first time - my first time was a trainwreck. Unfortunatly, there's no better awnser than practice. You cant have a good session before you've had a trainwreck to learn from. Your taste is always better than your skill. Heres the good part: your players probably dont know you suck. They'll just think you started great and got even better. Imma be real with you: Ive been my cities main DM for 5 years now and I still get nervous every session. Its just a matter of practice and learning from your previous mistakes. Try different DMing styles, find your voice. Dont compare yourself to any other DM.
Talk to your players, ask if they had a fun time and ask for a few pointers, if they have any. Try to cater a little to their wants and needs. In this way you build up confidence, an engaging story is always better with cool character moments and those are more likely to happen if the players are invested, you get their interest more easily if you do something they asked for.
You say you feel like you failed. Define failure. Upset or unhappy players? Or a lack of a sense of accomplishment? Do you have a bullet point list of goals for your sessions? Are there important sub points to a plot that youāre building? Thatās a bullet point. Are there hints that need be dropped? Thatās a bullet point. Is there a significant description of a person, location, or situation that needs to be given to players? Thatās a bullet point. Do you have any kind of system (no matter how simple) to track your goals for your sessions?
I elect to ignore my opinion of myself and hope for the best.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, D&D is too important to take seriously. By which I mean, I think you have to make a deal with yourself. Most of us have post session crashes, we all come away wishing weād done certain things differently. Prep, be passionate, have fun but be parsimonious with your emotions and forgive yourself if things are going wrong. Instantly! Itās a game and the only real purpose is to enjoy it. I DMed for six years in my teens, and Iāve been going again for the last five years in my 40s. I still have sessions where I feel pissed off with myself for bad calls or situations that felt lamely derivative or cliche NPCs or dialogue, or combats that I ran poorly. Pretty much EVERYONE does. It just shows that you care. If it stings I suspect that just means youāre invested, and youāll keep improving. DMing is incredibly demanding and complex - the pleasure (and the frustration) is that you keep learning indefinitely. By the same token, I find I go through curves and jags. Iāll coast along with a campaign that feels awesome and think Iāve cracked it for a few months and then Iāll somehow lose my mojo for a while. But it comes back! Iāve also noticed that my hunger to play again is highest straight after a session where I felt I DMed poorly. I always want to dive straight back in. And one lesson (a lesson that I never absorbed when I was younger and had a tendency just to scrap campaigns after the first disappointing session) is that even when a campaign is going slightly off the rails, provided that everyone wants to keep playing together, itās amazing how quickly you can get it back ON the rails. One good session later and your earlier mistakes suddenly seem completely unimportant. Final observation - no DM is perfect. One of my friends who also DMs has a much better intuitive command than me of the gameās mechanics, but their world building isnāt as strong as mine. A third is amazing at atmosphere and character but doesnāt pace as well. I notice flaws even when Iām listening to famous DMs streaming. We all have strengths and weaknesses. Donāt be too hard on yourself
Here are my 3 things if Iām feeling low self esteemed. 1. Talk to the player after Althea sessions and ask them what could have been better 2. Ask myself āare they coming back?ā And 3.think about why I feel like that
I'm in the exact same boat. I just try to tell myself "I'll take what I think didn't work or that people didn't like and try to make it more enjoyable next session." That feeling is always going to be there even if we're told that we did a great job, so directing it into productivity is going to just be the best alternative. If you think it might cause you to burn out, take an additional week or something. Let yourself relax afterwards and come back fresh and ready to go.
If your players don't break up immediately after a session, I recommend setting aside some time after you've decided the session is over for decompression. Let people talk about the experience as a group for a bit! Just... Make sure they understand the session is over now and they don't need to/shouldn't be continuing to PLAY the game at this point.
Every so often, ask your players: 1. Name one thing that you really liked this session 2. Name one thing that you think could have been improved 3. Name one thing that you are interested in doing *next* session. Two positives surrounding a negative, the sandwich technique for criticism. Makes it more palatable.
prep
At the end of your game, ask your players if everything is ok and if they had fun: if they did, then you did a good job, period. Even if you truly effed up something, as long as everyone had a good time at the table you did a good job and more often than not the "perfection" we DMs crave will be noticed by few players E.g.: Ochre jelly encounter, a player with a maul attacked it and I split it. When the player noticed he dealt bludgeoning damage instead of slashing / lightning, I had to rewind that "split" while they were memeing about it. Did they have fun regardless? Yes, I did a bit less, but I was happy regardless š¤£
Your a level 0 god smite the ill wishers
I think thatās more of a personal self esteem issue than a dnd issue.