Ask around any tabletop community and you'll hear the same quiet complaint: everyone wants to play, but nobody wants to run the game. Players outnumber Game Masters by a wide margin, and that imbalance is the structural bottleneck of the entire hobby. A table can have five or six eager players, but it cannot start until one person agrees to sit behind the screen.
This is why so many groups stall before they begin. It's why experienced GMs end up running three campaigns at once until they're exhausted. And it's why a brand-new player can wait months for a seat at a table that already has too many adventurers and not enough adventures.
But here's the flip side. If GMs are the scarce resource, then becoming one makes you the most valuable person in any group. The shortage is a problem, yes — but for you, personally, it's an opportunity. Let's talk about why the shortage exists, why you should consider running games, and how to do it without burning yourself out.
If running games were easy and obvious, everyone would do it. So it's worth being honest about the real reasons people hesitate.
Each of these is real. None of them is a wall. They're more like speed bumps, and the rest of this article is about driving over them smoothly.
Let's start with the upsides, because they're bigger than people expect.
First, the most practical reason: you get to play more. When tables are short on GMs, the person willing to run the game decides when and what the group plays. No more waiting for a slot to open. If you want to explore a particular setting or system, you can simply make it happen.
Second, you get to shape the story. Players experience the world; GMs build it. There's a unique joy in watching your players fall in love with a villain you invented, or take a wild left turn you never planned and make the whole night better for it. Few hobbies give you that kind of creative authorship in real time, with a live audience.
Third — and this is the part newcomers rarely believe until they try it — it's more approachable than it looks. You don't need to memorize a rulebook. You don't need to be a brilliant improviser or a voice actor. You need a problem for the players to solve, a few interesting characters, and a willingness to keep things moving. The rest you learn one session at a time, just like you learned to play.
The biggest mistake new GMs make is starting too big. They plan a sprawling, years-long campaign with a hand-built world, then collapse under the weight of it. Don't do that. Make your first attempt as small and forgiving as possible.
The goal of your first game isn't to be impressive. It's to finish a session and want to run another one.
If the first challenge is starting, the second is staying. Most GMs don't quit because they're bad at it — they quit because the load grows unsustainable. Here's how to keep that from happening.
Share the load. You don't have to carry the whole table alone. Rotate the GM role between sessions or arcs, so no single person is always "on." Use a session zero to set expectations up front: how often you'll play, what tone everyone wants, how much prep is realistic. And let your players help. Ask someone to write the recap, someone else to keep track of names and notes, and a third to manage scheduling. A campaign is a group project, not a solo performance.
Prep smarter, not harder. Reusable tools save you the most time. Keep a list of names you can grab on the fly. Build a small stable of NPCs you can drop into any scene. Prep situations and threats, not exact outcomes — players will scramble your plans anyway, so don't over-invest in a single path.
Give yourself permission. Permission to improvise when the players surprise you, and permission to say "I'm not sure, let's make a quick ruling and look it up later." Just as importantly, permission to say no — to a request that doesn't fit your table, to an extra campaign you don't have energy for, to a session when you're running on empty. A GM who protects their own enthusiasm runs better games for longer.
The shortage isn't only the GM's problem to solve. If you're a player, the way you show up directly affects whether your GM keeps running games. A supportive table is the best retention tool in the hobby.
A lot of the perceived workload of GMing is really just friction — shuffling papers, hunting for a rule, drawing a map mid-session. Good tools remove that friction so you can spend your energy on the story.
Digital prep keeps your notes, NPCs, and plot threads searchable and in one place instead of scattered across notebooks. Handouts and player-facing images make reveals land harder. A virtual tabletop (VTT) lets you run games online with maps, tokens, and shared dice, which is a lifesaver for remote or hybrid groups. And generators — for names, NPCs, loot, or random encounters — give you something usable the instant a player wanders somewhere you didn't plan.
This is exactly the kind of friction a platform like Mini Kraken is built to remove: notes, handouts, maps, and a virtual tabletop together, so the prep gets out of your way and the storytelling stays front and center.
The Game Master shortage is real, but it isn't a mystery and it isn't permanent. It exists because the role looks harder and heavier than it actually is — and every one of those barriers can be lowered with a smaller first game, lighter prep, a supportive table, and tools that carry the busywork for you.
Your first session won't be flawless. You'll fumble a rule, forget an NPC's name, and improvise something you'll laugh about later. That's not failure; that's the job, and it gets easier every time. The skills you're worried about are the ones you build by doing.
So pick a short adventure, gather a few friends, and try it once. The hobby has plenty of players already. What it's waiting for is one more person willing to sit behind the screen — and you can absolutely be that person.