Despite having refereed roleplaying games for more than four decades, I still suffer from what can only be described as stage fright. It’s not a new affliction. In fact, if I’m honest, I think I’ve felt it for most of my life as a referee and it hasn’t diminished much with time or experience. At the moment, I’m running three separate campaigns: House of Worms, Barrett's Raiders, and Dolmenwood. The first has lasted more than a decade, the second is entering its middle years, and the third is still in its relatively early stages. Yet, with each of them, without fail, I feel a familiar anxiety in the hours (and sometimes days) before every session.
My fear isn’t so much that I’ll “do it wrong” in some technical sense. It’s more that I’ll let my players down – that I’ll fail to be imaginative, that I won’t keep the game engaging, or that I’ll be caught flatfooted, like a deer in the headlights, with no idea what to do next. Mind you, my players aren’t strangers. In most cases, I’ve known my players for years, sometimes decades. They’re friends and long-time collaborators in this shared hobby of ours. Despite this, the fear persists: that I’m wasting their time, that the spell will break, and the game will sputter out.
The irony is that this fear tends to fade during the session itself. Once the game begins, once I see the players reacting, asking questions, scheming, laughing, I usually – usually – find myself caught up in the moment. The game world takes over and real-world anxieties fade into the background. But before the session (and sometimes afterward)? That’s when the doubt creeps in.
Fridays, for example, are often my most relaxed days of the week, not because of anything inherent to Friday, but because they’re farthest from my next scheduled session. I run games on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursdays, which means that, by Saturday, an internal countdown has already begun. The butterflies stir. I start second-guessing myself. Do I have any idea how I’m going to handle what may happen next?
To some extent, this isn’t really about preparation, at least not in the usual sense. I’ve long admitted that I’m a lazy referee. I don’t spend hours poring over notes or crafting detailed plans. Most of my prep consists of a few scribbled bullet points, some half-formed ideas, and a handful of hopeful notions about what might happen. I suspect that’s partly a defense mechanism. Too much planning stresses me out and tends to make me rigid at the table. I’ve learned that, for me, the best sessions are the ones where I stay loose and follow the players’ lead. Improvisation keeps me responsive. It keeps things alive.
Improvisation also leaves me exposed. When you haven’t mapped out every possibility, it’s easy to feel unready or worse, like you’ve been caught bluffing. Maybe that’s the root of the stage fright. It's the sense that I’ll be found wanting, that I’ll freeze up, that I’ll have nothing of value to offer when it matters most. I sometimes think there’s an unspoken belief that veteran referees, especially those with a lot of campaigns under their belt, must always feel confident in their role. To some degree, I do. I’ve run a lot of sessions that my players have told me they enjoyed. I’ve done this for a long time. I know I can do it.
Of course, knowing and believing in the moment are two very different things.
I'm sure I’m not alone in feeling this way. I suspect many long-time referees harbor similar doubts but rarely speak them aloud. In a sense, we’re all performers. Our "stage" is small, our "scripts" unwritten, and our "audience" made up of fellow performers who are just as invested as we are. Like all performers, we fear falling short, letting others down, not being good enough.
I’ve reluctantly come to accept this fear as just part of the process. I can’t say I enjoy it, but I’ve learned to live with it. If nothing else, it’s a reminder that what we do at the table matters. It matters to our players, certainly, but it matters just as much to us. We care. We want to do a good job, because the shared world we build with our friends is worth the effort and, yes, even the worry.
I also feel that anxiety, or a close cousin to it. Mine is coupled with a conviction *after the game* that what I have just been doing for the last three or four hours has been boring, scrappy, and un-fun for my players, which then rolls in and adds to the anxiety for the next session.
ReplyDeleteThis is more like me: I have little anxiety before GMing, but there is a letdown after. If I've driven across town to the game site, it usually shows up on the drive home.
DeleteI feel you. 30 years as a litigation attorney and I still get nervous every time I appear before a judge or jury. It goes away when I actually start talking (whether I'm doing well or not, oddly) but it's definitely a thing, and it's got nothing to do with my level of preparation.
ReplyDeleteOut of curiosity, have you ever had a refereeing session really badly? Like, so completely off the rails that you still cringe?
While I don't necessarily feel that way when I DM an RPG, I most certainly do feel that way when I teach my weekly class at the local university. Your post exactly sums up the anxiety I feel about teaching a college level course - just change all your references of "refereeing" to "teaching" and you've hit it on the head! It's funny how even though I have been teaching for years, I still have some self-doubt both before and after the classes - part of human nature I guess. At least we can adapt and deal with it, even if it never quite goes away. My heart goes out to those who are absolutely crippled by things like this.
ReplyDeleteSir Laurence Olivier suffered from stage fright. We're in good company.
ReplyDeleteThat is very interesting. I found for me, that the first time I refereed a game of D&D was the first time I had ever experienced doing anything with other people where I did not have stage fright. Not then, nor even once since then. I was someone that could not get up and do a book report in front of the class except under extreme duress from the teacher and then it was a very difficult experience. Refereeing D&D was the first thing I ever did where I experienced total confidence from the very beginning and over the years that seeped over into all other areas of my life. In fact, refereeing D&D for four years in college (75-79), was the bridge that enabled me to even do my first post college job, which partly involved interacting with executives in the companies I dealt with. I went from severe stage fright in any social situation to now 50 years later to almost none in any setting. Refereeing D&D is the completely safe place that gave me a starting point. Even better, I have been able to use D&D help other people develop confidence.
ReplyDeleteThat’s fascinating to know. Did you start referring with old friends, or new people? I’m generally fine with old friends and we tend to collaborate to gather in building the adventures. With new people I get those deer caught in the headlights moments. Anyhow, it is a wonderful anecdote that some people overcome their stage fright, or fear of public speaking through RPGs.
DeleteI started in the fall of '75, one guy bought it and refereed his senior year of high school and then brought it to college. College started on Tuesday and that Friday evening we played our first game with him refereeing and 12 players. None of us knew each other before that Tuesday. A few games in, I talked him into letting me referee, after that I refereed about 85-90% of the time since he preferred to play, now that he had that option.
DeleteI loved refereeing, after playing a few games, I knew I could do it. We generally played every Friday and Saturday and each game session ran 8-12+ hours. Over 4 years we averaged 16-18 players per game, 50/50 men and women.
Largest game was 1 referee and 29 players. Over people that were not playing would come and hang out and watch the game. That was usually another 20-30 people. Over the course of my four years we had about 60-70 different people play as some graduated and new players came in. The core group played the whole four years, of the other people some played regularly and others played now and then and watched the rest of time
To the comments in your other post, my style is the players decisions drive the game and I operate 99.5% improvisation. I don't do story, story is what is told after the game is over. I provide a world with lots of options and possibilities, the players decide what they want to pursue.
I still run OD&D and the only bad part about running games now is that it is hard to get more than 8 people together and generally about 4 hours is the time limit.
Thanks for sharing that. It’s inspiring to hear of archetypal old-school games having been played, with “10-50 players”. Unfortunately, we were kids in those years, and looking back I would say my friends and I didn’t really know how to GM.
DeleteDon't sell yourself short, I often wonder what it would have been like to have been a kid when OD&D first came out. I think one of the primary things that helps make a good referee is having done the foundational reading - fairy tales, folk tales, myth and mythology, legends and fantasy (especially the pre-1900 and pre-1970 fantasy).
DeleteOh, no, we were bad. We had read plenty but that didn’t prepare or even make us aware of sandboxes, something I really learned about here, so our scenarios often became railroaded. I remember one game where the GM didn’t pay attention to our characters’ alignments and after we decided to rob our potential patron (who accidentally opened the wrong briefcase, which was chock full of drugs - something the GM had intended as foreshadowing) the GM basically killed us all off by fiat and restarted.
DeleteAs young players we often weren’t terribly wise either. I tried GMing one of the classic AD&D published modules and the PCs barged straight in and were all snared by a net dropped from the ceiling, then captured. I ended up having the adversaries strip them and drop them in the lowest dungeon level, which their capturers were afraid to enter themselves.
It’s not hard to see why it may have been hard for us to sustain a campaign.
Hmm, that is interesting. Despite all that, you still had fun and no one expect kids to run games like adults. I still think you are being to hard on yourselves. Besides if you can't make mistakes, that will restrict the fun you can have. The best was to learn to referee is to have someone experienced to teach you, you were kids doing the best you could. So no regrets, IMO.
DeleteWe on the other hand were all 18-19 and older, the entire group had read all the things I had mentioned above. We two who refereed had probably read 90% of the most useful things Gygax and Arneson had read (being extremely voracious readers), watched most of the most applicable movies and had complete buy-in from our players.
I started playing at 19, the guy that brought the game played it his senior year of high school (summer 1974 through summer 1975) and brought it to college Fall of 1975. He did a little prep, but mostly ran it through improvisation. I started refereeing and did it almost all (99.5%) improvisation. The original books really did not talk much about prep aside from dungeons. Also remember that we did not have contact with anyone else playing OD&D, nor did we ever write anyone with TSR. We eventually got the Greyhawk, Blackmoor and Eldritch Wizardy supplements, but not right away and we treated all parts of them as entirely optional.
However, my friend never did a dungeon, his game was all a tiny bit in small towns and villages and mostly in wilderness. So when I started I ran mine the same way. We ran sandboxes (although we did not use that word) that is, a self-created world full of options. The game world was full of options and player choice of what to pursue was the primary driver. The concept of a railroad never occurred to either of us. There was no off the map, ever. New areas where created on the fly in real time during play.
On a whim over Christmas break I wrote down nine (9) quotes and when I came back from college the first game session ran 28 hours across two nights and each quote was used on the fly to improv a different dungeon level. One referee and 20 players. That was our first dungeon, now it would be called a megadungeon. I have never used a module, it makes my skin crawl to even consider doing that.
You said it was hard to sustain a campaign. Not sure how old you were, but there are a lot of things that go into sustaining anything. Being at a time of life where there are major changes occurring constantly in your life are one of those things.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever got came from one of my grad school mentors, who told me that the day you’re not nervous when you step in front of a class is the day you should retire. Good nerves are good! It means you care.
ReplyDeleteI would have to disagree that not being nervous means you do not care. I think it is rather odd to think that confidence means you do not care.
DeleteI'm glad I'm not the only one. For me it isn't quite stage fright so much as a build-up of worry that I'm not doing things right, or forgetting important stuff from previous sessions or don't know the rules well enough. These days I am better at recognising it and understanding that it is not rational, and once the session gets going it will ease off.
ReplyDeleteBeen GM’ing for 43-ish years now: same thing. There’s a lot of pressure on you to “bring the fun”. But I’ve come to realize a couple things. One, the sessions I rely on improv, rather than heavy prep, seem to be the most fun and memorable. I think this may be that I, and the players, end-up bouncing off one another more (than in a pre-prepped session where it feels more that I am presenting information).
ReplyDeleteWhich brings me to number two: the onus to create an enjoyable session isn’t on me. It’s on everyone at the table. If a CV player (or players) are disengaged, well, that’s on them. We’re all in this together.
I guess what I’m saying is the more I throw caution to the wind and go for it, the less anxious I am.
Thanks, I feel much better now that I know that I'm not the only one feeling anxious before a game night. I particularly share the fear of letting my players down or not keeping them engaged. You managed to give words to latent stuff that was gnawing at the back of my mind. I don't know if it will help but at least now I know that is part of the process of caring. I needed this post and I didn't even know it. Thanks
ReplyDeleteI get the same anticipatory anxiety every time I GM any game, feeling the pressure to somehow deliver a good experience for everyone else. Yes, it's on them too; yes, the answer to "What's the worst that could happen?" is "The players only have a good time rather than a great one," but it's still there. But hey, uncertainty is at the core of any RPG, where anything can be attempted, and it's hard (for me, anyway) to imagine being nonchalant about the responsibility to adjudicate, or even just roll with, whatever unexpected actions your players may throw at you.
ReplyDeleteSome of the worst games I’ve played in the DMs felt obligated to deliver a story. I think the same could probably be said for the worst games I’ve run. Over time I’ve realized that the most fun I’ve had with RPGs came in the back and first collaboration between players and the DM, with players driving the narrative and the DM willing to drop the reins and improvise. I’ve never done gaming conventions or tournament adventures. Those must have a different feel. For Rdpeyton, the worst adventure I ran was Skarda’s Mirror. It was probably my senior year in high school and three friends of mine from the edgy but cool crowd decided to join along with three of my friends who played D&D regularly. I couldn’t deliver and it must have come across as very boring. We quit after about 30 minutes. No one was sucked into the mirror. The edgy friends never played RPGs again in high school as far as a know. Another bad session was running the first of the Dragonlance adventures. I had the characters doing an hour of combat with goblins in the opening encounter. It wasn’t the stage fright that made it bad so much as the pacing.
ReplyDeleteI totally have a similar feeling before running a game but the moment the game starts all of that dissappears. I'm a lazy DM myself and I can fully run a decent session straight out of my head but I always worry that I don't have enough ready before we start.
ReplyDeleteI suspect you don't really need to do this, but check in with your players immediately after a session to see how it went by asking not went wrong but what went right. My stage fright is horrible, crippling and ultimately gets in the way more than what I was afraid of: forgetting my lines. I had the script in hand off-stage every time I was about to walk on stage. Fast forward many years later and I can lecture for hours with only bullet points because I know the material. Now I need to get over the 'page fright' that is even more crippling.
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