#Forever DM

[openstorygames]

If you've never played a TTRPG with tweens, you're missing out.

These kids are clever and creative and funny (sometimes in unintentional ways).

They're old enough to grasp complex rules but young enough to not care enough to be rules lawyers (mostly).

They still believe that adventure is just around the corner in their real lives. They love the freedom of making their own choices in a game, but they're still learning how to be a team player.

They break out in song randomly. Or start wrestling each other irl.

They latch onto details you didn't think mattered—and in their own way, that adult groups don't.

They'll make silly and immature decisions because they are silly and immature, in the best way, just like they should be!

They're willing to take risks that adult players often avoid, and when the GM rewards those risks, they are so wonderfully proud of themselves.

They don't mind consequences for bad choices, provided you make it fun.

They speak up when they don't like something (including consequences for bad choices), and they're creative collaborators to find a better a solution.

But most of all, tweens deserve a place where an adult treats them like they're a little more grown-up than they are. Where it's safe for them to try new things (even things like swearing under their breath) without being immediately corrected or squeezed into a box that doesn't feel quite right.

They deserve the chance to discover what it means to be people who care about others, who feel compassion, who recognize dignity in creatures not like themselves (whether that's smelly boys or giggling girls or a geriatric robot who stutters).

They deserve space to practice being human. And TTRPGs can be a beautiful way to give them that space.

Tweens are incredible, creative, valuable humans. Playing TTRPGs with them will make you better, more willing to laugh at yourself, and more aware of the brilliance within those kids you only thought you knew before.

[educationaldm]

As a Forever DM, I feel this. They sometimes make appearances as NPCs though.

[clockworkdragonffxiv]

I started my D&D campaign back in April of 2020 shortly after the COVID Lockdown hit. I was bored out of my skull and stressed, and a friend had expressed his frustration with his own D&D group and I just went "Fuck it."

I hadn't played DnD since college. I had never GM'd a tabletop game. But I had nothing better to do. So I went on to Discord into, like, the three channels I'm active in and rounded up a gaggle of friends from FFXIV and from my old City of Heroes group. For my starter campaign I used the very first Eberron campaign ever published for I think 3e or 3.5e, converted to 5e, "The Forgotten Forge."

And three and a half years, multiple cases of COVID, two rounds of cancer and chemotherapy, four or five moves, three kidney stones, multiple bouts of depression, and a half dozen job changes, we finally finished the campaign at level 16, having convinced the Lord of Blades to devote his talents to building the new Warforged nation and healing the Mournlands using the unique techno-organic warforged plants and animals we'd discovered, instead of his original plan which was to absorb the power of a Creation Engine and a Demon Overlord into himself, achieve apotheosis, and drown the world in a tide of blood.

My original plan for the final battle has in large underlined letters the phrase "Biblically Accurate Chainsaw Angel" and included a speech with lines like "LET THE SEAS BOIL AND THE SKIES FALL! LET THE WORLD BURN!"

Also probably ending up with the players picking the Red, Blue or Green endings from the End-o-Matic 9000.

But that didn't happen.

So instead, the campaign that started with our little group of heroes stumbling onto the murder of a professor with the clues to a hidden workshop, ended with the wedding of Seeker the Warforged Artificer, the man who'd talked the Lord of Blades down (despite having a Charisma of 8) and now holds the title of Maestro Seeker, is an advisor to the national leadership, and is the teacher of a whole new batch of warforged, and the warforged medic Solace, an NPC whose existence began as a joke about Seeker having a whirlwind romance with a medic in the space of about 23 minutes while the rest of the party were running errands.

Hot damn was that a lot of work. Three and a half years, and despite it starting in modules by the second I'd decided I didn't like the story as it was written, threw it out, and told my own story. Featuring friendly little fire elementals named Phil, packs of extremely patriotic and laddish mimics named Jimmy, an eight foot robotic sweetheart named Friend whose primary weapon was an equally massive tower shield and her totally-not-boyfriend warforged druid/allosaurus/swearasaurus Din, a wrestling match with a hobgoblin that nearly turned lethal when an 18 foot tall warforged titan came in with the steel chair, an alligator with a gun, and banishing the elemental dragon powering a flying battleship while A) the team was still on the battleship and B) it was still several hundred feet in the air and C) it was the only thing keeping it there... it's done.

And it was all worth it. God I love these guys. So here's to you, Katie, Jacquie, Mike, Stan, and Will. I'll see you all next week for our next adventure.

[maddiesfridge]

hahaha pretty dnd oc brain rot is horrible when you’re cursed with being a forever dm

[lordmogatron]

You're a DM because you did it once and now your friends are overly reliant on you, and you're too scared to try and find a game that will let you be a player.

I'm a DM because I have crippling control issues.

We are not the same.

[kelticangel]

Add nuance and archetypes in the tags!

[seritoninmemes]

I love making players paranoid, and so do my mimics

[opheraphernalia]

I'm going to write a drow politcs campaign set in Menzoberranzan 👀

not going to run the game just yet but I'm gonna write it like a sourcebook to be referred to later 👀

[gayghostbuster21]

Who wants me to share weird and goofy quotes from my DND campaign? (warning they are a teensy bit sus) not me though, I'm the super slay, always gay, forever dm.

[derangedbasementcreation]

Lowkey I've been thinking about how since I always DM I never get to make a character that I interact with the way one of my players would, I don't get to experience the story from their perspective.

But I kinda realised that I am making playable characters, I build stat blocks, back stories, how they fit into the world, everything.

It kind of hit me that I create the whole story that they get to live, every interaction is my own played character, every puzzle is one I've usually hand crafted that I can guide them through, everything they experience as a player is something I have put my everything into.

I know it's the cliché joke of "the DM is the god of the DND session" but it really feels that way, I've built everything from scratch as I always play home brew and I feel that this level of accomplishment and joy that I get from seeing my players working together, befriending my own characters, and creating memories for themselves and their characters is something I would be missing out on if I was a player and not a DM.

Basically I'm really happy that I'm a forever DM as I never had this much fun as a player.

[venisonhare]

I need to find a different way to cope with the imposter syndrome Dming gives me because I cannot keep going, ok ill write another campaign. I'm running curse of strahd, shadow of the Dragon Queen, I have a one-shot server revolving around a dnd academy setting which was created from period cramp delirium later abandoned and never started, AND NOW. God and now my mind is telling me to start writing a witcher dnd oneshot. I need to be put out of my misery I need to be a PC with my friends ill go mad.

[macrocosmus]

starting my moral crusade (exaggeration) to save forever GMs by beginning to use the term "forever players"

[bigfatsocialist]

Overpowered Character? ❌

Cool New Quest Giver? ✅

[kelticangel]

what’s up? feel like i haven’t talked to you recently

also other random question, what ttrpg systems have you used?

💜 I feel like I've had my head buried in the sand for a month!! But now I'm back and have lots of things on the go:

- super secret recording project that no one will ever guess, hehehe 💚💛❤️

- new discord server to hang out with people

- relaunching my Twitch account for non-Minecraft (and sightly more PG-13) gaming

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As far as ttrpgs go, I'm most familiar with D&D 5e. I'm a different kind of DM than most, though, because I really dislike maps and minis and stuff

I'm wanting to learn some other systems, but haven't had a chance to sit down with any more serious ones yet. I'm a big fan of some of the cute casual ones, like You Awaken In A Strange Place

[strawbebearts]

The last gift I made is for our forever DM (also my wife). She's been playing longer than any of us and she creates the most incredible homebrew adventures to excite, amaze and terrify us. She has a real gift for storytelling and we're so thankful to have a DM as kind and fun as her.

Merry Christmas everyone. Stay safe and share love.

[senraven2662]

I just had to explain to my PCs what a library is. Welcome to Dungeons and Dragons.