Wow, this blew up.
Just a broad sheet, sincere thing - Please don't draw too much offence at things I've said. I'm doing my best to keep my language as non-accusatory and non-condemning as possible. I don't intend to insult anyone or yell and rant. I'm expressing a very common, negative experience and perception with an active effort to trim bile and spite out of my words, as those wouldn't be helpful to anyone.
Take my tone as soft and contemplative, not accusatory or directed at you personally. I truly don't intend to make anyone feel Set To Hostile. Olive branch. Pitchforks down. Not here for that. Just trying to do my best. I'm going to double my effort to soften anything I say going forward, as I really don't want this to turn combatative.
If ninety-nine percent of my post is trying my best to be as respectful to everyone as possible, and a shred of negativity can be found in one place, then I sincerely ask people to ignore the negative place and focus on the respectful parts. If something sounds spiteful or vitriolic or causes offense, delete it from your perception entirely, it's not worth your time or energy to address, and I have
clearly miswritten it if it's had that effect.
We good?
None of this is unforgiveable or wrong, and none of this is something the DMs should feel attacked for the discussion of, so I hope that's not the impression I'm giving. My suggestion is simply to put thought into covering an uncovered timezone, and maybe attempt to push more interaction onto players that might feel left outside in the cold.
So, how do you propose DMs cover an uncovered timezone?
As suggested, bring on more DMs!
Obviously, I'm unaware if the problem is a barrier to DMing, or an absence of applicants. It's entirely probably that the latter is the case.
If there is a lack of sufficient staff, I'd suggest broadly avertising that lack of sufficient staff, to maybe give some potential future DMs a push to register their interest?
My experience was that when the day came, a DM was apparently supporting an impromptu event in Port for some important PCs, and then dropped a 30m reset as soon as they finished there. This really badly disrupted our schedule, meaning we needed to desperately run up a mountain, rather than atmospherically climb it, and meant that several people couldn't attend it as they'd hoped to due to the disruption in time. No DM attended the event.
Had you asked DMs to announce your event? DMs don't read minds, nor do they have time to scour the forums and every Discord looking for players who might need assistance. You have to be proactive and reach out, and perhaps a DM will have the time/interest to pick it up; if not, you make do without.
Yes. I'd messaged on the DM channel, provided as much warning as possible, and advertised actively in-game and on the forums. I don't have personal contacts with any DMs that would make it feel appropriate to jump into their PMs and request their personal attention, so I used every non-personal option I could find. It might be that I missed the most important one, but I'd be surprised if that was the case.
Again,
I'm trying to not put this on the DMs, I'm mainly trying to discourage the common chant of "It's your fault if you're not getting traction, run more player events and the DMs will come running! It worked for me!". As echoed by Alan -. And as you quite firmly put it, the answer might not be "You should have tried harder". You might do absolutely everything right, and find out that there is an absence of time, availability, or interest in what you did. I don't regret trying to run events - I regret making the mistake of expecting results.
Pretending that DMs don't have friends, and don't feel more inclined to run events and stories for those friends, is absurd. As echoed by many - they're not robots, they're not paid to provide a public service - I'm no more entitled to have a DM attend my event than I am to barge into a gaming store, slap my character sheet on the nearest table, and declare myself the new party leader of whatever game they're playing.
My frustration came from following all the advice I was given when I asked, and not seeing the result described, and fishing for a reason why. I'm not known well enough for any DM to have any personal objection to me or my behaviour, as far as I know (this has obviously changed since, and I have no expectation at all that I'd attract interest after rocking the boat like this, but that's entirely on me.)
When fishing for this reason, being told to do things I already did, is very frustrating and unhelpful, and I wanted to make it clear that people can follow every piece of advice commonly given and end up in radio silence. To sum up what Alan described well -
Everyone who gets results did the work, but not everyone who did the work gets results.And that should be clearly communicated to people, as the message I got was "Just try to make a player-focused event, and I'm sure it'll get DM support!", and the reality of it is "Plan for a story that requires no DM support, and only that of your fellow players." And those stories are more than worth pursuing.
And there's nothing wrong about giving people that message. That's the crux of everything I'm trying to say. I was given a false expectation that actions would have results - I want to avoid other people making the mistake that I did and experiencing the same frustrations, because they're the seed of toxicity that can lead to ruining your own mindset about what should be a great place to be.
tl;dr:Telling people who feel 'on the outside' that they're just doing it wrong is not healthy or productive when factors entirely outside of their control may be the entire reason for this.
Whilst your advice might increase their chances of takeup, the prevailing advice should be to plan for a character whose story never requires DM oversight or responses, and focus mainly on interpersonal things with other characters.
I mean
no offense to anyone in communicating this.