this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2025
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I got roasted so hard by my last group when I tried to first time dm tyranny of dragons (to be fair, the first part of it is combat heavy and I didn't handle it as well as I could have) and it triggered my anxiety about it so hard that I dropped from the group and havent played in 5 years
That actually sucks man, I'm sorry, that's not how a first time DM for any new system should be treated.
Or even just a new DM in general. The whole thing is a group activity for mutual enjoyment. I ran a cyberpunk red campaign as the GM with 6 players for like a year, and it was my first time DM/GMing in general, and it was also a brand new system at the time. Everyone was very forgiving, lax and then serious in the story when it mattered. I certainly would have quit if people were assholes because my math wasn't there or I had to flip pages to figure out like fire damage calculations without having them bookmarked or whatever
I wont lie about still being a bit salty, especially since it was our 3rd round with new dm, the group had a few people (me as well) who wanted to dm. So we kinda took turns. I played through the good and bad of the other campaigns, dont care still had fun. I just dont know what changed when it was my turn.
Fuck those people. You should try dming again its really fun
Fuck em' find another group. Anyone that wants to give a DM shit isn't worth having at the table anyway.
I feel like there's a difference between constructive criticism for a dm and outright shifting on their attempt. I feel the group did the latter
I don't think there's even room for constructive criticism any time close to the event. You want to encourage anyone who wants to GM, not do anything that might dissuade them
Anyone that bms their first time dm actually just sucks. I’m so sorry to hear you had such a bad experience :(
Oof that's a rough place to start. As published that campaign has major issues and relies heavily on the dm to identify them and change it to be playable.