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Being a dungeon master (DM) requires a great deal of effort, knowledge, leadership, and creativity. From preparing for adventures with limitless possibilities to scheduling to dealing with difficult players at the table, often times making a game of D&D actually happen feels like work. Nevertheless, the rewards can be immeasurable, as DMs have the power to create memories that will last a lifetime. In a very real way, they can improve the real lives of their players through the magic of this collaborative and creative hobby. But with great power comes great responsibility, and the demands of a DM are many!

World building

World building is a crucial aspect of any successful D&D campaign. It involves creating a rich and detailed world that is immersive and engaging for the players. The process of world building can be time-consuming and challenging, requiring careful planning and attention to detail. The goal is for the fantasy world to feel real; to create that suspension of disbelief.

No world feels real without compelling inhabitants. Creating memorable non-player characters (NPCs), villains, and allies is a crucial aspect of being a good DM. These characters enrich the world and add depth and complexity to the game, making it more engaging and immersive for the players. They all need unique personalities and motivations that are distinct from the players. They should have their own quirks, flaws, and strengths that make them interesting and relatable.

The key to creating memorable characters is to give them a backstory that is intertwined with the world. This can involve creating interesting people, histories, politics, or factions that the characters can engage with. Additionally, they might create unique and unexpected connections between the NPCs and the player characters (PCs), such as a shared past or a common enemy. The locations, factions, people, and how they all relate to one another can quickly become burdensome to manage.

And while creating an immersive world for a diverse group of players to enjoy is quite difficult, breaking that immersion is incredibly easy. When players want to learn more about the world and the DM comes up empty, there goes the immersion and the motivation to take part in the collaborative story creation. To guard the fragile immersion of the world after it is crafted, the DM must always be prepared before the game begins to maintain the immersion during play.

Pre-game prep

Preparing for a game session as a DM can take longer than the actual game itself. It involves more than just scheduling and learning the rules. DMs must also design balanced encounters, create maps, and craft NPCs, all while accounting for unpredictable player actions. Unpredictable players often means the DM prepares things that the players never choose to explore, and that over-preparation can lead to frustration about wasted effort, which in turn leads to subsequent under-preparation. And many DMs go well beyond this by creating terrain, painting miniatures, choosing sound track, and setting up virtual tabletops (VTTs). But as much effort goes in to preparing for the game, the real challenge is running the game itself.

Game time

No amount of pre-game prep can predict what the players will do or where they will take the game. This is where improvisation comes in. When the players throw a curveball, the DM is expected to stay calm and think on their feet. It's also important to be flexible and willing to adapt to the changing needs of the game. This may involve changing the direction of the story, adjusting encounters on the fly, or even creating new characters or plot points.

As encounters take place, there's a lot to manage. Tracking the statistics of the combatants, knowing all the abilities and rules, tracking the resources of the combatants, status effects, spell durations, and balancing the difficulty of the overall combat is a lot to manage! And pre-built encounters are not always an option depending on how far off the rails the players go. No matter how you look at is, creating challenging encounters that don't feel impossible is a delicate balancing act that requires some analytical crunch, preparation, a ton of multitasking, and especially for unplanned encounters, some very quick thinking!

Another important aspect of running the game is to involve the players in the process. The DM will need to understand their players' characters and their motivations, and use their answers to shape the story. They also need to give players opportunities to make decisions that create an imprint on the world, and help add definition to their character through exerting their agency within a world where choices matter. But no matter how hard the DM tries to adapt to the needs and desires of the table, inevitably some players will become disappointed.

Player management

The thing about D&D is that to some extent, players use their character to explore an aspect of themselves. And as they are doing so, they'll have aspirations for how that aspect is perceived by the rest of the table and the imagined world the table shares. For a player, it can be incredibly frustrating to imagine how the world they are playing in should work, only to find that it conflicts with other players' ideas, or worse... the DM's ideas.  Players can get very into their character, and become very upset when things don't work out the way they think it should.

When disappointments pile up, players cope in different ways. Some might try to micro-manage the other players to ensure they achieve the outcome they want for their character. Others might sulk, withdraw, or become otherwise unengaged. And there can certainly be even more extreme negative actions at a table than that. For many, D&D is more than a game, and a grievance in game will be carried back into the real world. What this means for the DM is that they have to be prepared to act as a therapist for the table to ensure each player's needs are addressed, and do it in a way that doesn't compromise the needs of the other players at the table.

It's still worth the effort, but why does it have to be so hard?

So basically, a DM is expected to be a project manager, leader, creative director, accountant, secretary, historian, and therapist. But despite the challenges, being a DM can be one of the most rewarding experiences in the world of  gaming. It just really ought to be easier. Most table top players don't want a completely AI DM... but what if their DM had an AI executive assistant to take all the grunt work out of the picture? What if that AI executive assistant could provide them with rich player insights so they could focus on crafting a memorable story taking place within a well organized and coherent world? Or if the assistant could help get a game started without having to worry about all the prep work? That would be pretty cool, wouldn't it?