#event coordinator

I’ve been an Officer/GM for various RP guilds since 2016. I’ve also been a Dungeon Master for a DnD group since September and a regular player for the past couple years. Prior to most events I’m putting in 2-3 hours of work to set it up.

Above you see my notebook, binder, 4 different content books, dungeon grid, and map building tools. I can honestly tell you that each session I set up I used almost all of those tools. Replace those books with webpages and it’s the exact same level of work for a Warcraft DM event. Not to mention your leaders have to build their own roll system.

So when the day comes for that event, or that session, and I get the messages saying “I can’t make it,” it hurts a little bit. We aren’t doing this for ourselves. I don’t spend 2 hours a week per session setting up a story, building encounters, just for myself. I do it for you, the players. You put faith in your DM to give you a fun story and event to attend, and we do our best to deliver because we enjoy watching your characters shine. We, the DM’s, rarely exist in these sessions. We build the events so you, the players, can experience the surprises and challenges and rush of victory.

But again, we as DM’s will never scold you for not showing up. We always smile and say “it’s alright, we’ll see you next week, get better soon,” and keep our disappointment to ourselves because we don’t want you to feel guilty.

But maybe it’s time you did start to feel at least a little guilty. Real life will always trump role play; no one disputes that. But each time you back out for whatever reason, real or imagined, you hurt the people who worked so hard to create something for you. You also hurt your fellow players who got excited about this weeks events, only to be told “sorry guys, we have to cancel, not enough people.”

This doesn’t just apply to a guild event. This is everything from your small RP with friends, guilds, faction events, server events. The whole realm of role play. Role play is a group activity. When you back out, you’re affecting everyone involved. Not just yourself.

Now this isn’t meant to attack anyone or to some how imply that RP > IRL. No one believes that. But I know before I started being a DM on any platform and was just a player, I had no idea how much work and effort went into creating a single event. Now that I know, I strive to attend as best I can because I owe those leaders my respect for all they have built, and sacrificed, for me.

If you can’t commit regularly, do the right thing and simply excuse yourself from the group. Don’t leave people trusting and relying on you if you are going to continuously be unreliable. It sucks, I know. I’ve had to make that hard decision and say “I’m sorry, but I can’t attend regularly, my schedule won’t allow it, I have to excuse myself from the guild.” No one feels good about that. But it’s better to say goodbye once and maintain a friendship than be a constant disappointment to the people who work so hard to give you the gift of RP.