Wednesday, May 19, 2021

How to DM 5e

 I finally understand how to be a DM for 5e. I must embrace my role as Entertainer, Storyteller, Railroad Engineer, Babysitter, and Live-Action Video Game. 5e players want to be spoonfed their "entertainment". And to get the most out of that relationship, I should focus on playing the game I want to play, the story I want to tell, the plot I want to run. The players can go through it at the pace I decide. And here’s the evil part, they love it. They will ALWAYS ask for more.


Today, I ran a 3 hour session of Lost Mines of Phandelver for a 5e group. Normally, when I run LMOP, I let players explore the town of Phandalin, do a short hex crawl on the Sword Coast map, and present to them options on pursuing the goblins or saving their employer or delivering the cart. This time, I didn't do any of that. Well, I kept the hex crawl. But otherwise I pushed  the players from encounter to encounter, with little choice in where they got to go.  And they loved it. They want another game next week. They "like the group dynamic"
Everything I know about RPGs is a lie. I'm Booboo the Clown.


I managed to fill up the group in under an hour by recruiting from a Discord. The players weren't technically mentally stable, but I think they were pretty average for zoomers. When I play AD&D, its exclusively with 40+ year old men. I have never had an AD&D group where the average age was below 39. This group was mostly college or post college adults. There was an almost 50/50 parity between the sexes. And they had all signed up completely at random.

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