Thursday, February 15, 2024

TTRPG Babble: How do we cultivate more game masters?

 This is going to be a pointless ramble, because I don't actually have an answer to the question. If anything, I'm rather ardently looking for it. The TLDR (too long didn't read) version of this is simply the following:

  • The problem: There aren't enough people willing to step into the shoes of Game Masters to run games.
  • Which creates the problem: There's no way to facilitate growth of people playing TTRPGs.
  • Conclusion: Stagnation/Shriveling and general disappointment.

The longer babble:

As far as I know, there aren't any conclusive answers as to what the ratio is of GMs versus Players in the hobby. Even with D&D, it's hard to say. It is played internationally by thousands of people, sure, and for that to happen there has to be GMs running the games. But there also isn't any information on how many people are waiting to play that lack the opportunity because there isn't any facilitation of the game.

Now there are some old grognards that would say "It doesn't matter if you're new. Just GM for your friends. Read the book. It's not that difficult..." but those who learnt to GM this way are few and, in my opinion, the minority of game masters out there.

I've been playing the game for nearly ten years and started running my own games somewhere around three or four years after I started playing. The group I was in (and still play with) naturally encourages and cultivates the desire to run games for others. There is no one game master. Everyone has the chance to run. Everyone has a pet project that they would like to run and we take turns as life and busy schedules allow. It is an unpressured environment that naturally sparks curiosity and a sense of 'what if I tried?'

In the past two weeks, I've become aware of how... I don't want to say desperate... but how much people are itching to play. In the posts I see on Reddit, Discord, Facebook, etc. often involve people asking to play and other people also adding their voices to the post, wishing for the same thing: to be part of a game. 

This has bothered me quite a bit. 

I used to describe myself as someone with ultimately two passions: 1. to learn, and 2. to share what I've learnt. Because of these inherent desires, these needs required basically to function, I have to sit on my hands to keep myself from tossing my hat in the ring. To help DM multiple groups. To introduce people to this hobby that I love so much. But I can't... because I don't have the capacity to do so. I've only just started not getting burnt out from doing too much and so my ability to actually jump in and be helpful has been hobbled.

But even if I had the capacity, would that really help the problem? Because one more DM is not going to change the tide, is it? You almost need the same thing I had - where you not only learnt to play but learnt to run the game.

I guess it's the girl with the starfish story though, right? You can't save them all but you can make the world of difference to the ones you throw in the sea.

As I said above, I don't really have answers. It's just bothering me enough to write about it. I don't quite know what can be done. At the same time, I know I want to be part of the solution... without going into burnout.







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