Running a Game can be Hard and that’s not Bad.

17 Apr, 2026

The Straight Dope

I love TTRPGs and I love running them. If you ask me if I need a break to be a player, I will almost always say no. I can’t imagine not wanting to run a game. Even when I’m a player in my friends’ games, I think about how I can fit the story, the group, and I get inspired to run again.

That being said, just because I love running games doesn’t mean it’s easy. It’s rather because it isn’t easy that I like it. It keeps my mind engaged long after the session is over and allows me to spin many plates at once. But as much fun as it is for me, it is a lot of work, and a lot of it is self imposed.

I hand draw a lot of my maps, I homebrew enemies, I make Conspiracy plots for intrigue, I keep track of NPCs, Treasure, and the dozens of languages that exist in this particular bit of the setting. None of this is necessary, and if I followed a lot of advice I was given as I started GMing, I wouldn’t be doing any of it. But I like doing it, and that’s reason enough. Telling yourself that running a game should be easy, or hard, seems to me like a waste of time and effort. It should be enjoyable. This is a hobby after all. If we don’t enjoy ourselves what are we doing?

It is my conviction that any TTRPG, no matter how complex the system or how light the rules, requires a lot of its Game masters, and that’s not a bad thing. It may in fact, be quite the opposite. But it is above all important that we acknowledge that it is a lot of work, and that a lot of it is self-imposed.

Why Does The Game Need to Run?

By design, a TTRPG does not run itself. Someone has to run it, either a single person or the entire group if it’s a “GM-less” system, but someone has to run it. Even Solo games require a GM, who is also the player, to make it run. The role of Gamemaster/Director/Storyteller/etc. is unique in gaming. Despite its origins in wargaming as a referee between players, the actual practice of running a game is far less detached than you would think. The very notion of adjudication, of making a judgment call on how rules are to be applied, implies a vested interest in the kind of game the table is experiencing.

It’s the same reason why for me, CRPGs like Baldur’s Gate do not scratch the same itch as an actual RPG or why I don’t get as invested in the fate of my minis in Carcassonne. In those examples, I’m not interacting with a fellow consciousness, but with the sum of content and rules given to me by the designers. I may ask a friend how they interpret a given rule in a board game, but I don’t expect that friend to spend hours every week making the game work. I expect the game to work fully in the bounds set by the designers. If I ask Dale to provide me with the names and backstory of every critter in Everdell lest I lose my immersion, they would have every right to call me unreasonable. But if this were an RPG, the request is understood to be a normal part of the game and it is expected that, as the GM, Dale is responsible for the answer they give me.

Because TTRPGs are not just a set of rules. They are also the application of those rules to a fictional secondary world. This means at least one person has to take responsibility for making sure that those two things work together, in other words they make sure the game runs. This function is separate from that of a character player’s responsibility and similar to that of a host. Indeed a lot of GMs are also hosting the group, if not in person, then certainly online. They have to interact and respond to the characters in-game and make sure that their friends are having a good time out of it. They need to be able to sense a narrative opportunity, know when to pull focus and when to let things take their course, make sure that the combat doesn’t curbstomp the players by accident ¹, make sure the combat isn’t so tedious everyone is checking their phones as soon as their turn is over, create npcs―often on the fly.

The GM often has authority, but it is given by the players who trust them and not by any function of the role itself. Keeping that trust alive is the bulk of the work, and it is hard work when you have imperfect tools to do so. You need to make sure your friends enjoy themselves, that your decisions will reflect your better judgement, that your NPCs are memorable, and many other things the system demands from you. This is why Running the Game is Hard.

What does the Game need to run?

Prep and Adjudication. That’s the cornerstone of all TTRPGs. Before any kind of system rears its ugly mechanical head you have prep and adjudication. Prep is the stuff that happens around the player characters― in other words, the world― while adjudication is what happens when those characters encounter and interact with the world. There are some² who would hold that prepping is not running. And they are correct in that prepping ahead of time is not the same as running the game, which is mostly adjudication. Where I do not follow the blorb is what happens after the session, for that's when adjudication is turned into prep. Or at least it does if you want your rulings to stay consistent.

In that sense running is not prepping, but running becomes the material for future prep insofar as the result of a session changes the state of the world in a meaningful way. The one who runs the game is the same who makes the world feel real and exciting, and takes note of what happens to see if it meant anything. Maybe this is closer to the idea that "Play is Canon" ³ but put in a broader context of "Play changes the world, which creates Canon".

Worldbuilding falls into prep to a point, but most of the joy of worldbuilding has nothing to do with the game you're running and everything to do with how you get into the mindset for running the game. This is why not everything you do has to be for the next session. Not everything you write will be useful, though you never know what will actually be useful until the players mention it. Deep run the rivers which hold the world.

When I run my Mythic Bastionland Game I do less prep than when I run Draw Steel, but I spend more time reacting to my players’ decisions. This is because I have prepped the world months, if not years in advance, so that when the time comes for adjudication, then all I need to do is apply the actions of the player characters to the truth of the world, such as it is. The relation of prep and adjudication is woven tight such that you cannot run a reasonably consistent game without some kind of prep (even if you're playing Calvinball, you need to know the first rule, which is that you cannot play the same way twice.)⁴ And so I wouldn’t worry about worldbuilding or prep as a barrier to running the game. It can be what makes you want to run, not because it is easy, but because it is worth doing even if it is hard.

Your Burden shall be Light

When I say running the game is hard, some may think that the solution is to find a less complex system, a “rules-light” game. After all, if the GM doesn’t have to remember a bunch of rules, then the game should be easier to run, right? There are a lot of advantages in using a rules-light system ⁵, as it gives implicit permission to make things up as you go, to think of creative solutions to problems, to push the game in unforeseen directions, but it does not make the game easier to run. If anything it is harder to run a rules-light game because the system is often not robust enough to handle anything more complex than a skill test or round of combat. The intent is to remove unnecessary restrictions but it effectively leaves everyone out on a line, expecting that the GM and the players bring their own content and not always giving them a good framework to do so.

This means is that the main difference between more robust systems like D&D or Draw Steel or Call of Cthulhu and more rules-light systems like Mythic Bastionland, Shadowdark, or ARC is the kind of work you put in, not the amount of work you put in.

A more structured game usually concentrates on the encounter as a basic unit of time. An encounter can be a combat, a puzzle, or a major social encounter. The bulk of the work in these games is setting up the encounters and then figuring out the connective tissue between them. Rules-light systems focus a lot more on a specific gameplay loop, which is why rules-light systems tend to have a strong identity and vibe.

• If the game is a dungeoncrawler (Shadowdark), a lot of attention is paid to the procedure PCs take through the dungeon and the relative challenge of surviving a hostile environment.
• If the game is about heroes trying to stop the apocalypse (ARC), the game reflects the mounting tension with a Doomsday Clock that ticks along in real time.
• If the game is about the trials a community faces (Kingdom), then the rules focus on allowing diverging opinions be voiced in a respectful and non-confrontational manner for the players.

Advice in these games often boil down to feeling the vibe or rolling on a random table to get out of a rut, but instead of empowering new GMs, it often leaves them to figure it out on their own, which is mostly an exercise in frustration. Other games like to emphasize the role of the GM as a facilitator for the players’ goals and ambitions, which works great if you have proactive players, but falls apart when no one takes responsibility for moving the game forward. As such the GM often takes the role of motivator/animator to foster creativity and gently guide the players along the consequences of their decisions.

A more robust game often has systems that a GM can fall back on when the creative juices are low (Draw Steel Negotiations are a good example) but a rules-light game lives and dies with the creativity of the GM and the Players, so when no one is particularly feeling it one night it can be hard to bounce back.

Conclusion

Running a game is hard, and that’s not bad. In fact it may be why you do it, and even if it’s not, the intent of this video is to acknowledge that it isn’t always meant to be easy, despite well-meaning advice. I think that when people say that running the game is easy, there is this expectation that people are put off by the seeming complexity of being a GM and would begin running if only they realized how easy it is. This may be true for some, but in my experience, GMing is hard and that’s why I like it. I feel that looking at the extraneous things that complicate a GM’s workload and saying that you don’t need it to get going, we might be missing the point. We don’t add in extra work if it weren’t fun, and if people spend all their time worldbuilding but don’t feel ready to GM, then the problem isn’t the worldbuilding, because worldbuilding is not running the game. Paring down the things GMs do in order to make it seem much more manageable is a strategy, and for some people it may work, but I prefer to highlight the many possibilities that await you if you choose to become a GM. There is no greater feeling than to see your friends enjoy themselves with things you’ve prepared for them.