I Started DMing from the get go but I always rotated with at least one other DM. I started in my early teens and don't recall having any difficulty. Growing up with the game is the easiest way to learn because you learn as the players learn and it doesn't take much to have fun.

Nowadays there are 5 of us in the group and we all take turns DMing with each rotation lasting 9 to 18 months. It's not rocket science and everyone brings something unique to the table.

Quote from: Bren;777060Very, very, very easy. Like skim through the OD&D rules and draw a dungeon up that same night easy.

Yeah, change that to the Holmes blue box rule book, and my experience is the same.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;777282For me it was the opposite, as I had to unlearn a slew of "the players are always right" style GM literature.

Remember, friends don't let friends play storygames!

Quote from: tenbones;777745. . . [W]hat happens where there are no rules is where you grow as a GM.

That is one of the best and truest statements I think I've ever read about roleplaying games.

I found it very easy.

Before I'd ever heard of rpgs, my friends and I used to draw a lot, and - being kids - we'd draw space ships and explosions and stuff. One subject that was very popular was to draw lairs suitable for a Bond villain, full of death-traps and the like to stop any secret agents.

As time went by, simply drawing the lairs and showing them to each other evolved into a game which we called "The Spy Game".

One of us would draw a villain's lair full of death traps, but the rule was that there had to be at least one possible route to get to the villain's control room. The rest of us would take it in turns to send a secret agent in. We wouldn't be allowed to see the map, so the drawer would describe where our agents were and we'd say what they were doing. Then they'd tell us the result. If (when!) the agent got killed by some diabolical trap or ambush, it was the next person's turn to send in an agent - learning from the mistakes of the previous one.

It wasn't proper roleplaying of course, but it did have the basic elements of a dungeon bash with us taking on a role; exploring a hidden map; a referee that would act "impartially" and relay the results of our investigation; and so on.

In 1981, when I was 11, I'd just entered secondary school. One break time I saw one of my new classmates drawing a dungeon on squared paper. This looked very much like "The Spy Game", so I asked him what he was doing and he explained that he was drawing it for a game of D&D - something I'd never heard of.

He invited me to come and play the game after school, and I did. I knew nothing of the rules, but I still remember the game distinctly. We played outside in his garden, and there were three PCs (I played a pregenerated fighter because I didn't know the rules and that was the simplest) and about half a dozen henchmen. We explored a dungeon and had fun killing goblins - with me simply rolling whatever dice I was told to roll - until we came across a dragon which breathed on the henchmen killing them all. We fled, and managed to escape with our lives but without the dragon's treasure!

After that single session I didn't get chance to play again, but I was hooked anyway. I told my parents about the game and asked if they could get me the basic set for my birthday.

They got me the newly released Moldvay Basic boxed set (at the time I thought that was what I'd played - but I much later realised that the version my classmate had was Holmes Basic, not Moldvay Basic).

So on the basis of having played only a single session of the game, I then read the Moldvay Basic set and started DMing it to my friends - none of whom had any experience whatsoever. Since we were all 11, we probably got most of it wrong; but we were enthusiastic and that counted for a lot.

But I think that the fact that we were all so young helped tremendously. One of the players in my current 'kids' group tried to DM for us recently and he had a much harder time of it. He was 12 at the time, and of course his game wasn't very good. But that's because half of his players were adults who have been gaming for decades. He was trying (and failing) to run a game in the same way that we do, rather than running the sort of loose and silly game that his peers would play. We were supportive, of course, but he could tell that his DMing wasn't as good as ours, and he lost confidence and gave up after a while, preferring to play while one of us DMs.

I think that makes a big difference. If you've joined an experienced group then DMing for the first time can be daunting because you feel you've a lot to live up to; but if you're all new to the game and there are no expectations you can be a lot less self-conscious about things and it's much easier.

The second time I ever played (summer 1998) I was forced to GM (rotating GM system in a group of three who had never played RPGs before).

The system was the third edition of The Dark Eye, as it was for approximately 93.78% of all RPG beginners in 90s Germany. There are a lot of good reasons I don't play that game anymore, but lack of accessability fortunately wasn't on the list back in the day. The system was easy enough to grasp and master for a beginning GM to get it right from the get-go.

I essentially drew a dungeon map, populated it with monsters and treasures and came up with a lackluster reasoning why our ill-met troupe of ill-motivated adventurers should go there (related by some stock peasant NPC in a nearby tavern).
(Looking back, my method for writing up and running fantasy adventures hasn't changed essentially since )

I have lost my notes a long time ago. What I do remember is that the adventure was set in the ruins of a keep, and that I had placed a buried magic sword in the overgrown courtyard (regognizable by a t-shaped patch of stunted weed grow). I also recall that the players had figured out how to find and uncover it. Those innocent days when a simple +1 longsword was something to be awed at, rather than something to be put on the wheelbarrow along with the other "junk" treasure...

The 1991 D&D black box had a solo adventure that you'd play by yourself, using the big, beautiful, game-board-like dungeon map that came with the box, with an installment after each chapter of the rules for easy learning.

After you read the rules you were expected to gather your friends and run the same adventure, which I dutifully did. I didn't use the map that came with the set, though; I thought it'd be silly to let everyone at the game see the entire frickin' map. So I drew my own.

So I suppose it was very, very easy.

Thought I should stress I wasn't a 13 year old when I started, unlike most of the rest of you. I was 21, and that was 36 years ago.

Quote from: flyingmice;780714Thought I should stress I wasn't a 13 year old when I started, unlike most of the rest of you. I was 21, and that was 36 years ago.

So you were a late bloomer?