Starting last year and continuing into this one, there have been stories about a “dungeon master shortage” in the TTRPG hobby, specifically meaning D&D Fifth Edition. D&D rocketed up in popularity in the last decade or so since Fifth Edition was first released, but that means that some of the game’s liabilities have finally caught up with it. D&D was never great on rules clarity, but Fifth Edition, while aiming for simplicity on the player side of things, finally and completely left the DM in the lurch as the rules for that side of the screen were either executed poorly or, in many cases, removed entirely. Given the edition’s rise in popularity, the demand for DMs has completely outstripped the pool of game veterans who cut their teeth on earlier editions and could use their experience to fill in the gaps left in the 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide.

While there is no acute GM shortage across the rest of the hobby, the travails of D&D have brought the game-running role back into focus. Many indie games over the last decade have eschewed having a single player take on running the game (called both GMless, implying no need for any facilitation, and GMful, implying there is still a need for facilitation but it is split amongst multiple players), but the traditional “one GM-many players” paradigm still rules the roost across the spectrum of popular RPG designs. As the D&D hobby is finding out quite painfully, if you’re singling out one player to take on more responsibility, you’ve got to help them out.