Swamping the DM-ing apprenticeship model with players

There was a twitter thread mentioning the passing of tribal knowledge within D&D players. The key point was that many assumptions are not made explicit in the guides as it is assumed that the players are embedded within play groups, learning to DM from other DMs with very few DMs starting from the books alone. This can no longer be sustained as the high growth following the release of D&D 5e has changed the paradigm.

From previous post on the rate of new joiners I thought to try and estimate how many new joiners might have been expected to join based on the long run trajectory from the past 30 years.

If the trend of the present day OSR players can be taken as broadly representative of the long-run trend extending through to today then we can make an estimate of what players would have joined if the long run trends had been sustained - approx 20% of the current population.

This suggests that the need to transmit the craft of dungeon mastering must be transmitted through different channels than the apprenticeship model. The original thread suggested this needs to be better DMs guides but I suspect we may see a more multi-channel approach such as watching actual plays such as Dimension 20 and Critical Role, DM guides such as Matt Colvilles Running the Game series or finding assistance in peer communities on Discord or forums such as Reddit or in wise writings on blogs.

I think calls for 'DMs to do more work' and accept more people to their tables are misplaced - DMs cannot do the work required even if they turned their tables into factory farms. Not every player wants to DM, not everone will be local to someone who could teach them even if they wanted. Far better if the conditions are created to allow tables to spontaneously generate. Let a thousand flowers bloom. It worked for me.

Sources are:
OSR Gateway Survey (2019, N=2764)
R/DnDNext 5e Survey (2019, N=745)
NB: link to PDF
Dungeons and Dragons and Data: The Demographics of Players and Their Impact on Character Creation and Game Play (2019, N=1130)