Hey all,

Just wanted to share my thoughts about DMing. I've been a DM for about 14 years now, starting when 4th edition was a thing and being GM in many other RPGs too. I very rarely play as a player (the struggle is real), but I really love running games and making stories with people.

I've noticed such a high level of pressure from new DMs and just talking with my players about even the IDEA of DMing (these are mostly people who have been DMing or playing less than 5 to 10 years). And there's such a feeling of high stakes that I seem to hear from them - that DMing is "terrifying" or "way too much for me to handle." It makes me sad that so many people are intimidated by the idea of running a game.

I understand the kind of climate that we're in at the moment - I started DMing when D&D shows didn't exist yet. I only knew DMing from my Dad, who had DMed for my brothers and me. I think seeing so many professional shows and podcasts out there that there's this feeling that DMs need to be TOTALLY prepared to run their first game.

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I remember the first few games I ran - I was legitimately terrible at it. I had almost no plan, I had a cool name to a town I liked and monsters basically. No one knew where the story was going - I was DMing for my middle school friends. And even with all of that - we had so much fun together.

You'll never ruin someone's game night by doing silly voices and not having a master plan for the adventure. You don't need to write 30 pages of worldbuilding to have a good game.

I love the resources here and in other places - so much of this is valuable and genuinely very helpful to become a better storyteller. I only wanted to highlight that, especialllllly with players who have never played before - you can really do a super super basic plot hook and a villain with a silly voice and one nice NPC and have a blast for a session.

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Your bad english accent is awesome, your players love the little goblin voice you came up with on the spot. Put a weird shadow monster in the local church and have no idea what its abilities are and just make it creepy - come up with it on the spot and stick with all the things you've established. That's all that matters.

Your players are hopefully your friends, and just like you all have fun playing video games that you're super bad at, your friends just want to spend time together and just have fun. In my experience, 90% of the time if a game is not working, it's a people problem rather than a D&D problem. Good D&D players will love what you give them, however bad your english accent is. You're all there to have fun and tell a story. Kids often love refrigerator boxes more than 60$ toys, and adults aren't always that different lol

You might be setting up the stage, but you can relax knowing that your players are the main characters there to make the story happen. Trust them and they'll trust you.

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I hope this can take a little pressure off. You don't need to be perfect - give your players some refrigerator boxes and see them make a great time out of it. No is expecting you to be a master storyteller, go have fun and do silly voices with your friends.