A query for the DMs...

[Dr. B]

I'm just wondering, how would you say you spend most of your time while you are DMing? Obviously I know you handle requests, answer questions, attend to issues and player conduct, run quests, etc. But do you ever get to just sit back and watch people roleplay, hatching plots behind closed doors or playing out their personal relationships with other characters? Do you ever feel like you've gotten to intimately know a character or certain characters during your tenure as a DM, watching their personality develop over time? Or is most of it just micromanaging and doing tasks?

I'm just curious. Always have been.

[Kreydis]

Schrodinger's DM.

They are always watching.
But they are never watching.

[DM Avalon Soul]

As the newest of the DM team I can offer this as my own perspective approximately:

About 40% of my time goes to helping with queries and similar, 30% Observing RP , 20% Running Small interactions/RPs/Events, and 10% exploring and trying to ensure I have more of a handle on this world and it's maps.

[Queen Titania]

Most of my time is spent answering PMs, and then interacting with players, with observing, especially tens, being third.

Personally I think it's very important to have a connection with the playerbase, and sometimes will study characters by going through logs before interacting with them, especially the relationships they have that are precious, which I might have NPCs exploit if appropriate to the situation. That's why I spend a lot of time on the interaction. I definitely pay attention to the relationships, but also try to spend a good time amount as a player to see what I might miss as a DM, since your DM eye is very spread compared to your player eye.

There are definitely some characters I got to know very well from interacting with them more than once during DM events, and most have spoken up about really enjoying it as it's really changed and developed their characters. So personally, outside of PMs, my time is not spent as much micromanaging.

[DM Atropos]

I mostly handle reports and requests. I'm not terribly organized for quests, though I enjoy watching them. Ingame, I'm mostly there for questions, concerns, or the like.

[DM Slide]

Other newest DM here reporting in!!

I spend most of my time observing RP while handling IG queries and issues. A lot of that time is also used to get familiar with the tools at my disposal, there's a lot to learn when it comes to DMing on Arelith.

I spend a little bit of time running small scale quests and interactions with players. If I find a group doing quests or just RPing somewhere i'll try throw in some NPC encounters or interactions to add to the immersion, and a little bit of flair, if I can.

Beyond that the rest of my time would be spent learning from the other DMs, I tend to creep on them a lot while they're online to pick up what I can from them, both IG and on the Forums.

[The GrumpyCat]

I'm taking a slight Dm Break myself, hence why not being around much. But when I do DM, I tend to spend 80% of my time either running quests OR just helping players out.

Just 'watching' player is sadly a huge weakness of mine. I do it occasionaly, but no where near as much as I should. As I say, it's an aspect of Dming I'm poor at and not something I'm proud of. But it is what it is. I like being active when I DM.

[DM Always This Late]

There are a lot of aspects to it, sometimes I get more focused on requests and solving issues etc, and sometimes I really get focused on a quest, whether it's one I'm planning to insert, or one that a player has requested. It's neat to do the player requested ones because that's a great like, template to work off of.

Being aware of the in game climate, like what PC factions are in power? Who are notable characters that are moving about? All of those are important. I do the quests and plots a bit sparingly, just because a lot of consideration needs to be given on how those may or may not play out. More recently, I've really enjoyed focusing plots more on character attributes and building small quests or plots that take the abilities of the character (Beyond their ability to whack things!) into account.

Building like a plot/quest you have to consider a lot of details! Otherwise you've got to make them up on the spot. And it's funny because you really need to pay attention to the mundane things, like the smallest details could be pivotal in the perception a Player has of an event or their understanding of a plot. Having super fleshed out concepts is important, and all of that takes time and consideration.

So my time is spent all over. Sometimes I'm more keen to just do requests, sometimes I'm keen to really focus in on a quest/plot. Other times just 'existing' in game as a DM gives the opportunity to watch things- and there's always someone with a request or question hah, so there's never nothing to do.

Addition: Also! Just -building- for an upcoming quest, plot, or whatever can take hooours. Hours of renaming NPCs, setting descriptions and adjusting stats. Maybe taking one of the 'template' areas and designing it on the spot to accommodate a quest. It can really be a lot of setup just in game! I've spent an entire morning setting things up for events that were to happen late in the afternoon!

[DM Apollo]

My time is spent similar to Titania's time. Since the EE move about 60% of my time is PMed reports, PRCs and questions, about 10% is spent on things like the new Portal, 10% running events/quests, 20% IG requests/questions and observing character interactions/relations for when they interact with my events.

I find it is important to ensure that the world keeps moving and people keep having fun (requests/reports/prcs/questions), especially with the never ending flood of PMs we get. After that, observing characters to understand their unique traits/relations/etc can make the world feel more alive for the players involved when DM controller portions of an event are influenced by those aspects of a character.

Much of my prepwork for an event actually happens when I'm not at a computer, so not counted above. I come up with descriptions, characters, and plots away from the screen.