Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 209 - Give Your DM a Break

Episode Date: January 28, 2024

Most GMs love their players and running games is a labor of love for them.  However, burnout can happen to all of us and it might be a good idea for you to give your DM a night off now and then.  In today’s episode I give you some suggestions on how to do so. #dmtips #dnd #pf2e #GMtips #burnout Resources: Clay-o-Rama (2017 republish) - https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/dragon/D15_Clay-O-Rama.pdf

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. So yes, my friends, you could take a week off of gaming to give your DM a break. But what I'd like you to think about is maybe scooting over a couple of seats and running a game for a week. Thank you for listening to the Taking20 Podcast, episode 209. Encouraging all of my wonderful players out there and giving them ideas on how they can give their DM the night off from behind the screen. I want to thank our sponsor this week, tea. The drink, by the way, not the letter. The price of tea just keeps going up and up, and soon it may just become too steep.

If you like the podcast, please help me spread the word about it on social media or on tabletop related Discord servers. It only takes a minute and it can help the podcast spread to a wider audience. I tend to not use clickbaity titles like, your DM wants you to learn this one simple trick, or 10 things about your character backstory that One Simple Trick, or 10 Things About Your Character Backstory That You Suck At, so I usually don't get boosts from shock articles. I'm not going to get into that game, by the way, so no worries there, but if you wouldn't mind helping me spread the word about the podcast, I would greatly appreciate it. For those of you who are lucky enough to play in a regular game of D&D or Mork Borg or Pathfinder, Starfinder, Delta Green, or any other game you enjoy,

have you considered how lucky you are? I subscribe to a number of tabletop roleplaying game related subreddits and Discord servers where I hear just horror stories about DMs who nerf abilities because it's hard to design encounters around them, or GMs who create GM PCs who are more powerful than the party, and it turns the PCs into little more than an audience. DMs who make fun of players, or characters, or tales of GMs who are just awful to play with. If you have a DM who's generally reasonable, does their level best to make the game fun for everyone at the table, and seems to be having a good time with it, then you have a great DM and you are one lucky duck.

For that reason, you really should be kind to your GM whenever you can, and one of the best ways you can do that is offer to give them a night off. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Jeremy. If the DM has the night off, then we won't have a game. I'd rather the DM go ahead and do the prep work for the 40th straight week and lead us through the adventure. I hear you. I love to play too. But if you've never been behind the screen before, you need to know something that your GM wants to say to you, but probably won't. Being a DM can be a grind.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but even in games that I thoroughly enjoy running, with players who are engaged, make interesting characters, and are a pure joy to be around, sometimes we can get overwhelmed by how much there is to do to run a game week after week after week for months or even years at a time. So what does your DM likely want to tell you? Sometimes, they'd like a night off. A week where your DM doesn't have to sit behind the screen easily could become a week of no gaming, but if your GM is like me,

you don't want to disappoint your players. You know that your game is probably the only gaming your players are going to get in a week or two, maybe even three weeks time. You don't want your friends to go without, but damn, it'd be nice to just be able to show up or two, or maybe even three weeks' time. You don't want your friends to go without, but damn, it'd be nice to just be able to show up at a gaming session and just play. No NPCs to voice or overarching plots to design.

We don't have to worry about what the name was of the freaking blacksmith shop here in Cherrywood Vale. It's Smith Smith's, by the way. I can just show up with my dwarven barbar Barbarian or Dragonborn Sorcerer or Skeleton Cleric and just roleplay, laugh, and make bad jokes all night. So yes, my friends, you could take a week off of gaming to give your DM a break. But what I'd like you to think about is maybe scooting over a couple of seats and running a game for a week. That week of letting your GM just be a player can really help them reset, recharge, and return with fresh ideas and energy. It's good for you as well, by the way. Learning

how to DM, even doing it just once, can help you become a better player and it gives you a different perspective on tabletop roleplaying. Sure, first time you're in that seat, there's a feeling of stress and exhilaration behind the screen. But you gain lessons about how to run encounters and traps and social interactions. Most importantly, it gives you insight into what GMs need to run the game better, or at least make it easier for your DM to run one. They need player engagement and attentiveness and the importance of buying into an adventure. These lessons become crystal clear when you're trying to get the players to buy into the adventure you're running. Me? DM? I don't know. Yes, my friend, I would like you to volunteer to take the reins and run a game one night instead of your regularly

scheduled game. Now here's something that might relieve you. To loosely quote one of my favorite movies from about 20 years ago, your DM may be disinclined to acquiesce to your request. By the way, you want to feel old? That quote is from the movie The Pirates of the Caribbean, The Curse of the Black Pearl, and that movie is more than 20 years old as I'm recording. Yep, 20 years ago. It's okay. Go ahead and go have a lie down. And by the way, go ahead and take some leave

for your back before you do. That being said, the DM may simply say they don't want to take a break and you shouldn't force a break on them. They don't want to give up the seat. I have two games where I'm a player and I think honestly, I'm only a player in those games because those GMs like being forever GMs. They like being in charge of the game, and both of them prefer DMing to playing. Okay, no problem. I get to play my weird-ass character ideas that are NPCs in games that I do run. Hey, I'm happy I get to play. Heck, in one of those games, every player is a DM or GM in other campaigns. Given our experience with tabletop role-playing games, you'd think that we avoid every obvious trap and always have a plan, right? Nope. My character in that campaign has a 10 intelligence and occasionally does

something monumentally stupid, like cast a spell at a creature that Jeremy knows that the creature would be immune to, but my character doesn't. My character failed the lore check, so hey, I cast that 6th level spell, what do you mean it didn't work, and then I act all annoyed and hit it with my battleaxe for my third action of the round. My DMs in those two games love being DMs and don't enjoy playing at all. I still offer occasionally and stand ready with a one-shot ID or two in case they do want a break for a week. However, what if the opposite is true? You approach them and they would love the opportunity to play.

They would love to step aside and let you run the game next week. Great! You're about to take your first steps into a larger world. But how do you do it successfully? Fear not, my friend. I have some tips to give you a better chance for success. Tip number one, if you're going to run a one-shot one week to give your DM a break, don't continue the existing adventure where the current GM left off. It's just a bad idea. It's a recipe for disaster. It could be fine, and you could continue the story in exactly the way the previous DM would.

But there's also a chance that you'll be letting the adventure unfold a completely different way than the previous DM had planned, and now they have the stress of trying to bend the results of your session back to the campaign they had planned. Plus, you may learn some spoilers that your character doesn't need to know. So I would avoid running an existing adventure where the GM left it off. Now, if you do want to stay with the same game system, in the same world, what I would recommend is that you focus on something different than the main story going on right now. I've had great success focusing on one-shots that do something like a backstory moment for one of the characters. You could have an entire adventure

built around the backstory moment where one of your characters escaped from the happy hot springs juvenile detention center and funtastic work camp when she was 13. Make a prison, make some guards, throw some skill checks in there, and you're having a great time. You could instead have a side adventure in your main world that is at best tangentially related to the main adventure, or a completely different group of adventurers that are having their own fun against the big bad, or a little bad lieutenant of the big bad. If you have an experienced gaming group, by the way, you consider running an adventure with a group that works for the big bad. They are working against the PCs in the main adventure, and as a bonus, this gives your regular DM some boss NPCs to roll out against the party later.

However, this does set up a potential future situation where the players are running their main characters, who will now have to fight one of their one-shot characters. Inexperienced players may not feel comfortable with that situation. That's why I would suggest if you want to go this route, make sure all the other players are comfortable with this type of one-shot adventure before you do. Plus, not everybody likes role-playing a bad or evil character. Third option, you could run a completely different game system that you've always wanted to try. A break opens up possibilities for trying new games and systems and can introduce the group to new experiences, and maybe prevent gameplay from becoming stale. Making a switch to a different, larger game system is possible. Like, are you playing Pathfinder right now? Ask if the group wants to play Starfinder, or Blades in the Dark, or something from Dungeon Crawl Classics. Ask your 5e group to try Pathfinder

2e, or maybe Mork Borg. Generally, larger game systems like that may require some work and buy-in by all the players around the table. Even with electronic aids and pre-built characters, this does require some effort on their part. But if it's your first time running and it's only going to be a one-session break, look at some of the rules light systems that are out there. I mean, examples are Honey Heist is very popular, Sexy Battle Wizards, which is just as fun as it sounds, The Witch is Dead, or Lasers and Feelings. Those are ones that I've played and enjoyed every single one of them. Now, when I say that there are rules light, I mean some of these games are rules light. All of the rules and tables and rolls can fit on a single

sheet of paper. They're fun, easy to learn, play, and you may wind up laughing at the silly situations where, for example, a bear is posing as a chef trying to get access to the pantry when no one else is around. Heck, when I was in college, back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, there was a one-page game system called Kleorama

that was published, I think, in Dragon Magazine. You use Play-Doh, or whatever the hell the generic name for that stuff is, and make little monsters out of the clay-based stuff. Based on what your monster looked like, how many legs it had, and other characteristics, the DM would assign movement speed, the number of attacks and damage, and other characteristics of your character. It was so much fun. Since we played weekly, honestly, we scheduled weeks off

where we could play Kleorama or other light RPG games instead. I went digging for the original article out there and I can't find it. I know it's somewhere buried in an archive, but I couldn't find it before I had to record. I did find a 2017 article where Wizards republished and updated the rules a bit. As usual, they added rules for edge cases and made it a bit more complicated than it originally was, but the heart of the game is still there. I'm going to put a link to the resources in the description of the episode, so please go give that a read if you're interested. One of the huge advantages of running a rules-like game instead of something more complicated is that it removes the fear of, well, what if someone knows the rules better than I do? It's fine.

You're all making your first forays into this little game system, and if you or someone else forgets a rule, who cares? Plus, looking it up on the one page takes about 30 seconds. Your fourth option if you want to give your DM a break is play something that's not an RPG for a night. Have a board game night or online trivia. Play a Jackbox game or something online and fun together. Hell, watch a movie and rotate who picks the movie each time your group takes a break. After laying out all of this advice, I do have one caveat. If you don't want to DM, don't do it.

I don't want you to think that I'm trying to guilt trip you into giving your hard-working GM a night off. If you don't feel comfortable and you'd be miserable behind the screen, don't sit there. It would probably be better for your group if you didn't meet for a week rather than having someone grumpy about having to run a game. But if you are interested in the experience, and I would encourage everyone to try it at least once to see what it's like, consider giving your GM a break once in a while. Remember, a happy and well-rested DM tends to lead to a happier and more fulfilling campaign for the whole group. I'd be willing to bet that if you did offer to give your DM a break, whether they took you up on it or not, that you and your fellow

players would all have fun doing it. If you wouldn't mind, please consider liking, rating, and subscribing to this podcast wherever you found it. I love reading the feedback and the ratings and would love it if you would take a few minutes to give me some feedback about that. Tune in next week when we'll be talking about the differences between running long campaigns versus running a short one. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, tea. Once again, the drink, not the letter. I've entered a tea drinking contest against my family, but my tea tastes way better than any of those garbage teas that they like. I've got my winning tea in the bag. This has been episode 209, tips for giving your DM a night off.

My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media production. Copyright 2024. References to game system content are copyrighted by their respective publishers.