Loader image
Loader image
Back to Top

Blog

Nerdarchy > Dungeons & Dragons  > New DM Handbook  > New DM Handbook: Starting gaming in Adulthood

New DM Handbook: Starting gaming in Adulthood

New DM Handbook: Explain Your Actions
New DM Handbook: Adventuring Guild Agencies

New DM HandbookAt first, I wasn’t going to write this article because Doug, one of our newest writers, coincidentally wrote an excellent piece this week talking a lot about a lot of the same things I was going to before I could. Seriously, if you haven’t checked it out, read it now. It’s a very well written article. However, I eventually realized there are actually a few different experiences that we’re going to have by pure virtue of when we’re starting playing Dungeons & Dragons. Enough that I think it’s worth an addendum.

Adults Are Less Forgiving With New Things

adulthoodWhen you’re a kid, you don’t have any responsibilities whatsoever. You may think you do. You may think taking care of the pet, doing your chores, or having your little job constitutes responsibilities, but those things only prepare you for a world of responsibilities. Adults have to contend with mortgages (or rent), managing budgets, bills, utilities, insurances, maintenance and upkeep, and repairs, managing the household, keeping everyone healthy and happy and loved, trying to be a parent, and hoping you don’t screw your kids up, advancing in your career, trying to take what few minutes in your day or week you can for yourself, and squeezing in a social life of some accord. When you’re an adult, you don’t have time to start to carve out to try to learn something new that’s another time sink. That’s not even including, as an adult, your mind is less elastic, so it’s a lot harder to learn things, you’re a lot easier to get overwhelmed and frustrated, and you’re a lot more cautious of making an ass of yourself.

Getting adults to check out a new hobby, especially Dungeons and Dragons, is going to be hard. They’re going to be a lot less forgiving. You can’t just stop if you get them to the table. You’re not done trying to convince them it’s worth it until they’ve fully bought into it. Until you can see them making time to understand the finer points of the game, and not just showing up to the table, you’re not done selling it. You have to get them hooked. Until they’re invested, you’re going to have to keep their attention. You’re going to have to ride a very fine line between challenging and achievable. You’ve got to make it worth their time.

DM, Reward Your New Players

D&DI’ve already talked about making a tutorial quest and explaining your actions, but you can’t end there. You’ve got to find ways of rewarding players. Every party is going to be different, so there’s no one way to keep them on board until they’re fully invested. Be prepared to be a lot more generous with rewards at first. You don’t have to keep it up forever, but the beauty of playing with adults is you can tell them you’re being more generous up front in an effort to encourage them to become comfortable. Most adults know that a bit of encouragement is what they’ll need to help them become comfortable with something new, especially something as drastically different as Dungeons and Dragons.

With my players, I have chosen to be a lot more free with handing out experience points. I know that giving out inspiration die won’t mean anything to them right now. They’re still trying to get a handle on the game. Inspiration die would be another thing they wouldn’t understand, they wouldn’t know when and how to use it, and they’d likely forget about it. However, everyone in my party knows experience points. They know more experience points means they get to level up faster. Even though I’m not dolling out a lot, it feels rewarding to get a little extra.

Adjust For New Player Fatigue

New player fatigue can come in many different forms. In my experience so far, there’s encounter fatigue, table fatigue, session fatigue, and life fatigue. Each of them provide unique challenges that you have to account for, and there’s no one formula that I can provide. As a DM, you’re going to have to get a feel for each of them over the span of several sessions and experiment until you can dial it in.

Encounter Fatigue is how much of an emotional beating the players took during the course of the fight. I know it’s something every player goes through, but new adult players need special attention. As a particularly tough battle in my last game was starting to wane on, my players were starting to get emotionally drained. You could see it in every aspect of their body language. It wasn’t just the fact their PCs were being beat up. The very combat itself, the back and forth, and the way it ended up being drawn out far longer than anticipated, is what drained them. I knew I needed to revitalize their spirits, so I gave everyone an additional 30 experience points, telling them they did an amazing job of getting through such an epic and cinematic fight. Very instantaneously, their moods shifted. Their hard work and pain had paid off. They did an exceptionally good job. Before, I gave them 10 additional experience points for little things they did. This bump in 30 experience points was a massive boost to the rewards they’d been getting.

D&DTable Fatigue is how long players can sit at a table at once. By far, this is going to change the most. I’d imagine that there are going to be too many variables to account for every week, but you should get a strong handle on it. As an example, my players start to burn out at about an hour before they need to take a break. That may change over time as they get a better handle on it, but for now I need to focus on being able to time scenes and encounters into one hour chunks. That way they’ll have some form of satisfaction each time they take a break, and will be able to come back better refreshed to take on the next hour.

Session Fatigue is how long you have, including breaks, before your players are done for the night. You have to account for the length of the breaks, too, or you’re going to find that last period to be where they’re going to start being disruptive. For my players, they tend to last about three to four hours. With 20-minute breaks, I have to consider three encounters, including social encounters, built in one hour blocks. If they stretch those out, it means they’re engaged. That’s not always a good thing, because if they spends two hours on a social encounter, that doesn’t mean they’ll have enough energy to extend their playtime to be able to get to that third encounter.

Life Fatigue has nothing to do with the game itself, but adults do have to deal with all of the stuff I addressed above, plus other life events. Even if they want nothing more than to be there, their head may not be in it the way they want to be. There’s no way to build around that if you don’t know it’s going on. I don’t have any easy answers here, or any good suggestions. My only thought would be to get the other players on board to adjust the night’s session to help be a bit cathartic for the player, or players, going through something at the moment. Most adults are understanding, so they’ll likely play along, and it’s always nice to do something good for your friends who are having a hard time.

Stick To a Schedule for Dungeons & Dragons

adulthoodAdults live their lives in 30 to 60 minute increments. Not everything in their life is so subtle as to not interrupt their routines, but having a specific time and day that everyone can meet, and know that’s the exact time and date they can rely on, will do wonders. There will need to be adjustments for life as an adult, for sure, but having a nearly unwavering schedule makes it easier to do, and makes it something to look forward to. As an example, one of my players has shared custody of their children of alternating weeks. So, they’re only available on every other week. For a lot of factors on everyone’s schedules, Saturdays at 1:00 p.m. are the best day for all of us to get together. So, as long as it’s reasonable for us to meet, we know exactly how to build our schedules to block out four hours of time to be able to get together and have fun with our friends.

As always: Stay Nerdy, my friends.

[amazon_link asins=’0786966009,B01AYDICU2,1503079198′ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’nerdarchy-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’7d01bb5a-ea99-11e6-ac04-df3151e2cab5′]

Share
Joshua Brickley

Despite looking so young, I'm in my mid-30s (36, to be exact). Up until I was 21, I focused a lot of my attention on stage acting, mostly local and school theater. At some point, I felt a need to change my life's direction, so I joined the Air Force. After 10 years, where I was an Intelligence Analyst and Mission Coordinator, I was medically retired. I went back to school and got my Bachelor's in English, focusing mostly on literary theory and rhetorical criticism, at the University of the Incarnate Word. In this next chapter of my life, I'm turning my attention towards tabletop RPGs.

No Comments

Leave a Reply