New DM here. Under a year of experience, but I have learned alot from my friend who has helped guide me through the basics of DMing. Basically the only games that I have run have been with my close friends, none of them public, except for one. That one public game is what I want to ask about here.
This game took place last weekend. Now, it's at my local game shop. I'm not much of a nerd so I felt pretty insignificant when I went to reserve a table for this weekend coming up. But they seemed friendly and willing to help me learn to DM. At my game store D&D groups are formed like this: you go up to a clerk and say something along the lines of "I wanna DM here". You gain limited privileges to the backstore and the backroom and a place to DM each weekend, as long as you fill out the form and pay the proper fee. So they gave me a charter and told me to put up to 8 people on the list for players. So I went around, collected the signatures of said group members, and turned it in. Our group was formed.
I didn't want to be a liability, so on Thursday night (my game was on Friday) I looked up on all the important stuff (AC, THAC0, etc.) and got my campaign together. Then, when I got back from school on Friday, I did all my work around the house and did some pre-game meditation and workouts. So yeah, I was feeling pretty good about myself.
Anyways, I got to the store, went in the back, set up my table (thanks to my buddy for letting me borrow his dice) and waited for my group to come and join me. Eventually they all gathered around, and the first thing one of them said was "Let's get this over with, I got stuff to do." Yeah, right there I almost lost it. But I didn't, I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to make myself look like more of an idiot than I already did.
The campaign started with me dimming our table light and setting the scene. They were on a ship at night, sailing towards a jungle in hopes of finding a lost warrior. And yeah, I kinda got nerdy and got really into setting the scene. It was an opening narrative, so it took about 4–5 minutes for me to give all the backstory to the local area. And the same group member that "had stuff to do" from earlier wouldn't stop rolling their eyes at me. I tried to ignore it, but then they said:
Dude, can we just get on to the game? Like c'mon, it's not a book.
Yeah, that was the last straw. I said some stuff I shouldn't have, and ended up packing up all my stuff and leaving the store. I was pissed for the rest of the weekend: it was pretty hard to get over it.
But anyways, I'm scheduled to have a game with that same group on Thursday. I want to know how I can recover from that incident, as that guy probably doesn't wanna put up with me again after I got in his face, and the rest of the group thinks I'm just an angry 14 year old.
Please help me. I really like to play D&D with my buddies and I want to expand the group of people I can play with.
Best Answer
You
I'll deal with your issues first: you are an angry 14 year old.
Don't sweat it; everybody was, is or will be. Maturity can in fact be summed up as learning not to punch the face of someone who richly deserves it.
You have to remember that you have no control over the way other people behave; you only have control over the way you behave. And ... you behaved badly. People say "I lost my temper"; this is a euphemism that means they choose to express anger in an aggressive and non-productive way. Learn to choose to react differently; no one ever changed their mind by being yelled at - at best you can get someone to back down and resent you.
Oh, and because none of us is perfect and I have chosen to "express anger in an aggressive and non-productive way" myself (and no doubt will in the future), you need to know how to recover from that. This is easy: it's called an apology. There are 2 reasons we say sorry and both are applicable here: 1. to show that you know that you behaved badly and 2. to repair the hurt you caused other people.
Him
This guy was rude; there is no doubt about that. You haven't mentioned his age or the age of the group but if this guy was an adult then this is really bad behaviour; if there were adults there who didn't intervene then this reflects poorly on them too.
All the stuff I said about you is equally applicable to him; of course, he's not reading it.
Due to the wonderful diversity of humanity you will, from time to time, encounter people who are rude. They may be rude because they are: tired, drunk, just had their dog die, just got fired, have a splitting headache or are just obnoxious p*%^ks who didn't have enough parental discipline growing up. Notwithstanding, dealing with rude people is a skill and, like any other skill, you can learn it.
Here's a quick quiz. In response to his opening remark of "Let's get this over with, I got stuff to do.", which of the following is likely to give the best outcome:
No 2 could be fun but No 4 does a lot with a great deal of economy, it:
Note: even if you say this you don't have to accommodate him! Polite and nice are not the same thing.
Expectations
When you sit down to play chess you know what you are going to get but when you ask someone to play football and you come ready for soccer and they come ready for gridiron; you have a problem. Ways of playing D&D range from treating it as a tactical war game to be won to using it as improv theatre and everything in between. All of these are valid and it's you job to give the players (including yourself) what they want out of the game.
Take 5 minutes next time you meet to find out what type of play each player prefers and describe your preferred style to them.
Agency
I think of agency as:
The D&D 5e Player's Handbook neatly encapsulates this in the "How to Play" section on page 6 and it is applicable to all RPGs that have DM/GM (some don't):
"I kinda got nerdy and got really into setting the scene. It was an opening narrative, so it took about 4–5 minutes for me to give all the backstory to the local area."
Cool, at what point did this lead to step 2: The players describe what they want to do? How much of it was describing the choices they could make? How much of the information was relevant to those choices? RPGs are a dialogue, not a monologue; unless the player's feel like they are involved in the storytelling then they might as well be at a book reading.
Back story is fine but if it was good it would be part of the story; the reason it is back story is that it is not enough fun to be the story. Back story may need to be there (or not) but it should emerge from the play; not be read at the players.
Scene setting is about providing just enough information that the player's can see the choices and have enough information to intelligently choose one; remembering that choosing to seek more information is always one of the choices.
For example:
The scene is set and its now the player's turn.
Do they have enough information to make intelligent choices? No but you have handed them the initiative and they are now free to ask questions about what interests them. They might:
Now it is possible that some player's will not be comfortable with taking the initiative but the overwhelming likelihood is that within the group one or two will shoulder leadership roles. If so, they can start the ball rolling; I would suggest that you ask the other players "Are you happy with that?" to up their level of involvement.
In the unlikely event that no one seizes the opportunity, you can go on to enumerate what you think they can do. Some people like to pick from the menu rather than having to write it themselves first.