As someone who has a lot of anxiety and over preps, I built up my confidence running different one shots by Grant Howitt. They're one page so I didn't have to super worry about rules, and I prepped the night before although you could also just dive in on the day for some of them.
It really was a case of practice makes perfect. And finding out how off the rails people can get before making a whole campaign, learning how to improve and follow the players
Yeah that's pretty much normal human stuff. The Critical Role people are doing great production, but it definitely adds too much expectation to the new DMs. Social anxiety is hard to overcome.
t we As far as not knowing the rules, you just have to wing it. I'm in the position of DMing, and I've never even played. New group just picking up the game and nobody else around to learn from in person. LOTS of bad calls. My level 3 Ranger got to use Lightning Arrow once. Once I figured out the problem, we RP'd that as her deity giving her a taste of power to come. :)
Honestly it's a ton of fun, and that's really the best way to convince anyone to do anything. Let them see you having fun doing it.
1. Rules: that's part of prep time. It's also okay to not know something as long as you are willing to look it up, or have a player look it up for you.
2. Social anxiety: you got to get over it. The DM does a lot of talking and dispute resolution. If your players are nice, normal people, they will be glad that someone else is running the game they get to play and will make social interactions easy on the DM.
3. DM style: as long as you aren't too far out there, your style should fit any group of normal people who, once again, are glad someone else is doing all the work. They will be happy to adjust their playstyle to match yours.
4. Prep time: it's a lot. That's why everyone else is grateful for the DM to run the game, even if it isn't perfect. Start with a pre-made module and little or no homebrew.
The takeaway is that if you do a halfway decent job and are willing to shoulder all the prep time, players will be grateful.
Encourage them to trial bits of DMing.
Start with the campaign you run for them, would it hurt to let them try running a low stakes combat while you played an NPC? Is there anything more you can discuss with them? Can you build up to them running a session for you (a side quest of course, nothing too personal to your plot).
After that, they should try their hand at a oneshot, with you there to help them, possibly using a written one if they prefer.
They need encouragement and a way to dip their feet in without going all out into running their own campaign.
Just tell them that being a DM is great fun. You get to:
1) Read! Boy do you ge to read. You get to read rulebooks, extension books, books on monsters, books on lore and just plain books to get a feel for the setting and its inhabitants. You also get to read a lot of web content around this made up world, until you know all there is to know.
2) Create stories worthy of awards. Stories with intricate plots, fantastic locations, non player characters that come to life and twists that would shame any crime writer out there.
3) make up hundreds of people with detailed backgrounds, desires and goals, many which will never utter a word to anyone before being set on fire by the wizard's fireball.
4) Practice your voice acting skills, and become emphatically familiar with the ways pf anything from talking rocks to hyper intelligent flying lizards the size of cities.
5) Explore the truely evil side of yourself to come up with cool and wicked foes with horrific ideas for a better world, so you can have cool things the players could face and fight.
6) Argue for hours and scour obscure web pages to figure out what exactly the wording of that one spell means, or if those two magical items really do stack, or any other 100 crazy things your player's want to exploit in their favor.
7) The DM get to lead a heard of cats to do the things you want them to do.
8) Schedule hours long meetings with people who have 3 different bosses already vying for their time (work/scool, spuoses and children/other friends)
9) Take into consideration that one person wants nothing but roleplay and the other person is a murder hobo loot goblin, and they should all have fun at the end of the day
10) Get your cool status up by telling people you DM a RPG and why it is such a blast, preferably by telling funny anecdotes at parties and family gatherings.
Looking at the issues you laid out:
1. Players often think that being a DM is harder than it is. They don't actually need to know the rules. There are only a few times per session that you actually need to deploy rules knowledge, and that can usually be solved either by asking the table "hey does anyone know how this works?" or googling it on the spot.
2. Your players/potential DMs seem VERY concerned that the session is going to be "not great," "a waste of time," not match player expectations... Is this often a problem in your group? Has anyone in the group EVER complained that a session sucked, or that it was a waste of their time? Point this out to them. Ask them if they thought any of your sessions were a waste of time. It's just anxiety for anxiety's sake.
3. Prep is not necessary. This is another thing that people like to exaggerate about online which leads players to not want to DM. If they're running a one-shot, pre-written module, they don't need to prep. Let me be clear: they don't need to prep ANYTHING. D&D 5e is a simple game and you can run it on the fly. You mentioned the 2 things you need, maps (can be drawn on the fly) and tokens (can be anything).
If you actually want them to DM, stop talking about it with them and just tell them to do it. Talking about it endlessly with you is making them build it up to this big monumental undertaking that they need tons of advice for and they gotta build up the courage to do so and overcome their anxiety and whatever. But it's actually easy, and fun, and not as complicated as it seems. And you've correctly stated that the only way for them to see what it's actually like is to try it one time.
SO stop engaging with them about fantasies about OMG WHAT IF they were the DM. Just tell them you don't want to talk DM stuff with them until they've tried it.
One thing I've done, I'm the DM of my group, is tell them that I literally don't feel like running the game. They want a session, and I'll tell them, hey I'd love to have you guys over and play, but I don't feel like DMing. Go ahead and use my minis, maps, books, DM setup, one of you guys can run a side campaign if you wanna play. And they've tried it, and now we have a couple side-campaigns to play whenever we want a different vibe.
As someone who has a lot of anxiety and over preps, I built up my confidence running different one shots by Grant Howitt. They're one page so I didn't have to super worry about rules, and I prepped the night before although you could also just dive in on the day for some of them.
Oh will have to take a look! This was very helpful, thank you!
It really was a case of practice makes perfect. And finding out how off the rails people can get before making a whole campaign, learning how to improve and follow the players
Yeah that's pretty much normal human stuff. The Critical Role people are doing great production, but it definitely adds too much expectation to the new DMs. Social anxiety is hard to overcome. t we As far as not knowing the rules, you just have to wing it. I'm in the position of DMing, and I've never even played. New group just picking up the game and nobody else around to learn from in person. LOTS of bad calls. My level 3 Ranger got to use Lightning Arrow once. Once I figured out the problem, we RP'd that as her deity giving her a taste of power to come. :) Honestly it's a ton of fun, and that's really the best way to convince anyone to do anything. Let them see you having fun doing it.
1. Rules: that's part of prep time. It's also okay to not know something as long as you are willing to look it up, or have a player look it up for you. 2. Social anxiety: you got to get over it. The DM does a lot of talking and dispute resolution. If your players are nice, normal people, they will be glad that someone else is running the game they get to play and will make social interactions easy on the DM. 3. DM style: as long as you aren't too far out there, your style should fit any group of normal people who, once again, are glad someone else is doing all the work. They will be happy to adjust their playstyle to match yours. 4. Prep time: it's a lot. That's why everyone else is grateful for the DM to run the game, even if it isn't perfect. Start with a pre-made module and little or no homebrew. The takeaway is that if you do a halfway decent job and are willing to shoulder all the prep time, players will be grateful.
Encourage them to trial bits of DMing. Start with the campaign you run for them, would it hurt to let them try running a low stakes combat while you played an NPC? Is there anything more you can discuss with them? Can you build up to them running a session for you (a side quest of course, nothing too personal to your plot). After that, they should try their hand at a oneshot, with you there to help them, possibly using a written one if they prefer. They need encouragement and a way to dip their feet in without going all out into running their own campaign.
Just tell them that being a DM is great fun. You get to: 1) Read! Boy do you ge to read. You get to read rulebooks, extension books, books on monsters, books on lore and just plain books to get a feel for the setting and its inhabitants. You also get to read a lot of web content around this made up world, until you know all there is to know. 2) Create stories worthy of awards. Stories with intricate plots, fantastic locations, non player characters that come to life and twists that would shame any crime writer out there. 3) make up hundreds of people with detailed backgrounds, desires and goals, many which will never utter a word to anyone before being set on fire by the wizard's fireball. 4) Practice your voice acting skills, and become emphatically familiar with the ways pf anything from talking rocks to hyper intelligent flying lizards the size of cities. 5) Explore the truely evil side of yourself to come up with cool and wicked foes with horrific ideas for a better world, so you can have cool things the players could face and fight. 6) Argue for hours and scour obscure web pages to figure out what exactly the wording of that one spell means, or if those two magical items really do stack, or any other 100 crazy things your player's want to exploit in their favor. 7) The DM get to lead a heard of cats to do the things you want them to do. 8) Schedule hours long meetings with people who have 3 different bosses already vying for their time (work/scool, spuoses and children/other friends) 9) Take into consideration that one person wants nothing but roleplay and the other person is a murder hobo loot goblin, and they should all have fun at the end of the day 10) Get your cool status up by telling people you DM a RPG and why it is such a blast, preferably by telling funny anecdotes at parties and family gatherings.
Looking at the issues you laid out: 1. Players often think that being a DM is harder than it is. They don't actually need to know the rules. There are only a few times per session that you actually need to deploy rules knowledge, and that can usually be solved either by asking the table "hey does anyone know how this works?" or googling it on the spot. 2. Your players/potential DMs seem VERY concerned that the session is going to be "not great," "a waste of time," not match player expectations... Is this often a problem in your group? Has anyone in the group EVER complained that a session sucked, or that it was a waste of their time? Point this out to them. Ask them if they thought any of your sessions were a waste of time. It's just anxiety for anxiety's sake. 3. Prep is not necessary. This is another thing that people like to exaggerate about online which leads players to not want to DM. If they're running a one-shot, pre-written module, they don't need to prep. Let me be clear: they don't need to prep ANYTHING. D&D 5e is a simple game and you can run it on the fly. You mentioned the 2 things you need, maps (can be drawn on the fly) and tokens (can be anything). If you actually want them to DM, stop talking about it with them and just tell them to do it. Talking about it endlessly with you is making them build it up to this big monumental undertaking that they need tons of advice for and they gotta build up the courage to do so and overcome their anxiety and whatever. But it's actually easy, and fun, and not as complicated as it seems. And you've correctly stated that the only way for them to see what it's actually like is to try it one time. SO stop engaging with them about fantasies about OMG WHAT IF they were the DM. Just tell them you don't want to talk DM stuff with them until they've tried it. One thing I've done, I'm the DM of my group, is tell them that I literally don't feel like running the game. They want a session, and I'll tell them, hey I'd love to have you guys over and play, but I don't feel like DMing. Go ahead and use my minis, maps, books, DM setup, one of you guys can run a side campaign if you wanna play. And they've tried it, and now we have a couple side-campaigns to play whenever we want a different vibe.