hi hi! i've played in one short dnd 5e campaign, and one long dnd 5e campaign. I miss TTRPGs as collaborative storytelling, and was thinking that maybe the best one to find a group is to try and run a game myself.
The catch is, I also have ADHD and anxiety. Does anyone have advice for managing those to make sure you're giving everyone at the table the proper level of emotional connection and world-response they're there for? (It's also cool if the advice is "maybe being a GM is not for you")
I think pre-game communication and setting player expectations (so you know what you want to provide) is your best bet here. Some players want their character drama to be heavily involved in play, and others want character info to simply justify why their character is involved in play.
And if what a player communicated didn't end up being satisfying, that's okay! We can always learn from out mistakes, understand what we want out of play more precisely, and do better next time.
Trying to get everyone on the same page is biiiiiiiig. If everyone knows what they're signing up for, then it doesn't matter if you all decide on kick down the door, action romp, a slow burn mystery, or any other types of things you want to try in between.
The biggest difference from going to a player perspective to DM in my opinion, is not getting too attached to the stuff you make. You can have characters you and the players like, sure, but as the GM you can always make a new Villain or City or whatever, even on the spot if need be. As a player, you only got the one, until they die.
And the last major tip is "just do what you can" Don't think you need to prep everything ahead of time, nor do you have to just make up nearly everything on the spot. Find a place where you're comfortable on the spectrum of prep/improvise.
In regards to the ADHD part, I found from my own experience that running games that are deliberately built more around table collaboration and improvisation to be a better fit for me, since it made prepping much easier. There's still some preparation work involved, but it was more centered around things I enjoyed preparing (characters the players may run into, potential things that could happen and so on).
In terms of running, there's no shame in asking your table for ideas, if you can't think of something cool. Sure, you're technically "running" the game, but in the end the table as whole creates the story, plus people tend to be more interested in the story, when they feel they have some degree of control over it.
But overall, just finding a space that lets you get used to running games in general, is probably the most helpful thing. In the end, what parts of running a game you enjoy and how you run games, are completely unique to you, but to figure those out, requires a space to experiment and to also make mistakes.
Edit:
More practical ADHD things:
Have dedicated notes for anything that might be important but is something that is easy to forget as well.
For me it's things like player character names and pronouns, a list of potential complications for failed rolls, a list of potential NPCs, another list with additional names, in case I quickly have to invent a new person, and so on.
Hi! I have ADHD, so I can speak to that side of the equation. My main advice is to find a game and system that fit your needs and that play to your strengths. For example when I started GMing I recognized that I would struggle to juggle a whole world's worth of "lore" or NPCs, so I found a game (Heart: the City Beneath) with a relatively contained setting and a tight narrative focus on the characters and their immediate surroundings.
I also recommend starting with a game that's built to be run with little or no out-of-session preparation. A lot of the popular ideas of what a GM is or "should be" like come from big actual-play D&D GMs like Matt Mercer, but unlike you, Mercer &co can afford to spend a full-time job's worth of time and energy on preparing - it's literally what they do for a living! We don't have to hold ourselves to that standard, and thankfully there are games which are designed to call for less pre-session planning.
Anyone can be a good GM! Not everyone's GMing will look the same, and that's a good thing.
I could probably ramble about my GMing experiences all day, but those are the first things that come to mind.
I have my fair share of maladies and here's what I do to combat some of them:
Make a giant list of names for NPCs. Not giving each one a wholeass title, literally just names.
Assign them in order when PCs want to chat someone up, record them in your notes. Helps a lot when PCs want to both go back to someone, and for you to come up with plots and shit.
This is one of those "loljustdoit4head" tier advice but, getting familiar with how much damage and HP and saves and such work for stats can help immensely to come up with stuff on the fly.
Some tech to borrow is Neverland's Good, Average, and Bad saves, where a creature has different, generic save scores for stuff they'd be good, average, and bad at resisting, so you don't have to make an entire statline [for games with 5e style statlines].
Or do dnd retroclone stuff of just having the one save score.
As others have said, learning what level of world response and emotional connection everyone is there for is key.
Like, I'm fine with a pure dungeon crawl 'cause I eat up classic roguelikes and dungeon RPGs.
Other people might want to also smooch a lizardman or a robot whatever.
Be blunt about it, outright say, "hey what kind of experience are you here for?"
And once you gain confidence and style, you can say something like, "Here's what I'm offering/pitching as a campaign."
Lots of good advice in here! I’ll add that the end of session procedures from Stonetop have been a great recent addition to my gm-ing: everyone calculates xp together and then the game asks everyone to share something they enjoyed about this session and then a wish for a future session (more/less of something, a chance to do something, handling something differently, etc.).
This helps the table remember the little things that happened and gives the players a way to signpost what they want (fictionally or otherwise). It’s a nice little come-down from the game, has been super helpful in curbing my “oh god everyone probably hated that session” anxiety, and keeps my scatterbrain focused when prepping the next session.
