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View Full Version : I don't have time/will to prepare sessions anymore



Madeiner
2011-11-21, 04:02 PM
Hi there.
I'd like to hear some opinions about a problem of mine.
I have been a D&D DM for 7+ years straight, mostly with the same group.
I love DMing sessions, i love creating stories and adventures, i absolutely love the game.

I recently started an adventure of mine (one of the many), that was supposed to be a big masterpiece of an adventure, concluding a chapter of the world's story, and also dealing with time travel, one of my preferred topics.
I am also designing the dungeon myself for the first time.
All this work takes about 12-20 hours each week. I am kinda a perfectionist, so every little detail MUST make sense to me, else i won't find the adventure credible or enjoyable.
I have always spent this amount of time and while sometimes it was tiring, it never was unbearable.

Lately though, i have much less free time. Preparing the session takes about 2 full afternoons. I can relax for one day. The fourth day the session is due, and then i'm off to my girlfriend for the weekend.

In the past few weeks, preparing the session has become a chore. Sometimes i sit at the PC, unable to find the strength to start what is becoming a "job" for which i don't have the time nor the inner will to do it.
It is very hard for me to sit down and start writing. I feel bad, i feel sad, i feel the pressure because i never know if i will make it in time for the session or not.
I feel like starting this adventure was a big mistake, and i don't have the time to manage it. I most of the times want to send my group an email and tell them the session is canceled, but it really only happened once.

Still, DMing is one of the things i like most. I love my campaign world, i like my players, i like the story that is unfolding, and the players do, too. I often think about it, and when i travel to my GF's place (which takes 90 minutes) i usually come up with some ideas to add to the story.

So, i am here asking for help. I don't want to cancel my session, nor i want to stop DMing. I also recently take a 2-months pause while someone else DMed, but it didn't help much. In fact, i look forward to each session, and i hate when we have to cancel it for whatever reason, be it my fault or not.

Also, i am in the middle of what should be my "masterpiece" adventure, and i don't wanna abandon it. But i feel like the quality is starting to decrease, as preparing this adventure is really really hard for me.

What should i do?

valadil
2011-11-21, 04:11 PM
Nobody I know can write a weekly game anymore. There's too much life going on.

Instead we do biweekly games. My last group met up every other week. The group I last played in ran two games that alternated weeks. This worked really well for us professional types.

I also like biweekly way better as a writing schedule. Once a week is too demanding. I end up writing furiously and don't enjoy it. At two weeks between sessions I have time to let all my ideas incubate and then I colelct the best ones and write them into the game. It's better quality and more fun to write this way.

Krazzman
2011-11-21, 04:41 PM
Nobody I know can write a weekly game anymore. There's too much life going on.

Instead we do biweekly games. My last group met up every other week. The group I last played in ran two games that alternated weeks. This worked really well for us professional types.

I also like biweekly way better as a writing schedule. Once a week is too demanding. I end up writing furiously and don't enjoy it. At two weeks between sessions I have time to let all my ideas incubate and then I colelct the best ones and write them into the game. It's better quality and more fun to write this way.

Exactly this.
Maybe a little break would do you good. Speak to your players, make the campaign biweekly and after this campaign retire for some time.

Pigkappa
2011-11-21, 04:45 PM
Play some pre-made adventures? There are lots of them and a few are really good.

This doesn't mean you won't have to prepare sessions again, for you'll have to understand well how things work each time, be ready for unexpected ideas from the PCs, edit the parts you don't like. But you won't have to do most of the work, and will focus on the parts you like more.

eulmanis12
2011-11-21, 04:46 PM
If its becoming harder to write in depth for every week try just doing an outline one week and then adding details that feel apropriate during the actual campaign.

When I DM Sometimes I will work to get every detail just right, but sometimes doing things a little more off the cuff worked better. I knew where we were starting, where we would hopefully end, and who would show up in between. Everything else is filled in by the actions of the players. Improvision is not always a dirty word. When the players enter a new town I give them a vauge descripiton of what the town is. It is up to them to color in the outline by meeting the people and interacting with the locals.

I find that improvision often leads to a stronger sense of realisim in many situations. I don't know what PC A will do next and niether does NPC Q who they happen to be interacting with. When PC A does something unexpected, my surprise will translate into the suprise of NPC Q and lead to a more realistic response.

it doesn't work perfectly 100% of the time, but the occasional unstructured session can be beneficial for everyone. Its what you do to get a night of less serious more comedic rolplaying.

DiBastet
2011-11-21, 04:49 PM
There's no real good awser coming from me...

If you look foward, you wouldn't like biweekly games.
If you don't want to decrease quality, you wouldn't take a lighter creation method, like I do, 'cause they wouldn't be masterpieces for you.
If you like the campaign you wouldn't put it on hold and dm another, 'easier', campaign. You would feel like it was a defeat.
If you like dming, you don't want to stop.

But I would urge you to choose one of them. Personaly between you and me, put it on hiatus with a good nice event IG, a natural stop. The dm some ready campaign. Don't frown. There was a time I would really frown.

Paizo has some great adventure modules with well-made plot, characters and even encounters, taking chars from very low level to high levels in the course of 10+ long adventures. Try it.

Yitzi
2011-11-21, 05:33 PM
I'd say warn the players ahead of time, then when you get to a natural stopping point, call a hiatus while you run a few premade adventures, and meanwhile work on what you can ahead of time so that when you start again after the worst of the time crush (assuming it's temporary) is over it'll be substantially easier.

But I'd say the most important thing is to get to a point where you can write on your own schedule; that should make it a lot less of a chore.

Mr.Moron
2011-11-21, 05:43 PM
20 Hours of prep per session? To be frank, that isn't just perfectionism it's just downright overkill. For every hour you spend playing you're spending upwards of 5 hours prepping (assuming a normal 4-6 hour session). That's nuts! Of course you're burning out.

Try relaxing the pace of your adventures. Put some on-the-fly content between plot points, give the players time and reason to RP between themselves or otherwise generate their own content at the table.

I mean with that much prep, I can't imagine the players are seeing even half of it. I don't know about anyone else but it can take my players 4 hours of play to go through 1 hours worth of content prep (if they don't' stop to make small talk with the NPCs!)

TheThan
2011-11-21, 07:38 PM
Yeah it, sounds like you are suffering from gaming fatigue. It’s something that happens to people, particularly Dms since they spend so much more time and effort than the other players do.

It happens to miniature war game players, and video game players. Eventually they just burn out and need to take a break from the game; that might mean putting it down entirely for a while, or just switching games.

SO my suggestion is to take a break. Let someone else DM for a while. Give it a campaign or so and you’ll be fine.

some guy
2011-11-21, 08:55 PM
Hm, normally I would suggest a break, but you've already taken one. A different game with different system sometimes works for me.


All this work takes about 12-20 hours each week. I am kinda a perfectionist, so every little detail MUST make sense to me, else i won't find the adventure credible or enjoyable.
This might not jive with you, but how about making everything random? You spend about 3-8 hours making some random tables (or looking for some good ones (and believe, there are very nice tables to be found on the internet (even for city/dungeon lay-outs))), after that you never need to spend time preparing sessions.
And if you roll something that doesn't make sense? Well, make it make sense. Even better, your players will try to make sense out of it for you.
Making use of random tables will require some improvisation and thinking on your feet, but can save time. Also, what I really miss in DM'ing is the lack of surprise. Randomness will surprise you. Surprise might be what you need to get spring back in your step.
Of course, not everything needs to be random. Make a table for things that you don't enjoy preparing but still feel that it needs to be in the game, only prepare the things you enjoy preparing. Bring back your enjoyment of preparation. Read some books, watch some movies, take a hike. These things might inspire you. Inspirations make preparations more enjoyable.

I wouldn't really advise adventuring modules, as they still require preparation. Though, what they need less, in comparison with your own adventures, is inspiration (this is also a benefit of random tables). Sometimes inspiration is hard to find, when you're struggling to DM.

ImperiousLeader
2011-11-21, 09:29 PM
Our group generally rotates DMing to prevent DM fatigue. We've got about 3-4 campaigns on the go, one of us DMs until the campaign hits a natural break point, then we switch to a different campaign and rotate through.

shawnhcorey
2011-11-21, 10:05 PM
I am kinda a perfectionist...

Try for excellence, not perfection. Perfection will lead you to an early grave. I used to create fairly detailed maps. Now, I create just the player's map and use that. My "random" encounters have are at least one-to-one and all the monsters have maximum hit points. My NPCs rarely have anything but the info they have for the PCs. My notes are all in point form and I don't write any descriptions. I just make things up as I go. It's all much simpler that way.

Quietus
2011-11-22, 12:49 AM
Simplest way to reduce your workload is to look at what you're doing, and ask, "Will my players ever see this?". If the answer is no, then stop. You don't need to plot it. Give it a general overview, sure, but you don't need a unique, fully functional, self-contained, complex, and fair legal system for each different city/region in your setting. Set the high level stuff (Murder, arson, and jaywalking are illegal and will get you jailed or hung in Redville, while in Blueville, they're a bit easier on crime; jaywalkers get fined, the others get thrown in a cell forever), and then don't worry about how many years sentence a person would get for a crime that's X amount of terrible. The players won't care unless they get into a crime drama, and that's when you spend time that coming week fleshing out that part of the world.

Tvtyrant
2011-11-22, 02:01 AM
I think you should consider either having less sessions, or insert premade stuff liberally. You could get a map of WLD, and then just tear it into portions and run the portions as their own dungeons and the problem there would be solved effectively forever.

Totally Guy
2011-11-22, 06:32 AM
I think that considering the game to be your masterpiece is an unhealthy attitude. It simultaneously puts pressure on you to do more work and emphasises that your creative input is more meaningful then creative input from others.

I would be interested to know what degree of player input there is to the direction of the game.

Eldan
2011-11-22, 06:37 AM
A few suggestions:

Write less intense adventures. If your world is detailed out, let your players just explore a little. Do some sandbox gaming where the players just go out and do their stuff. Try improvising a little.

Change game systems. If you like writing the story more than the stats, change to a system that is more rules light. There are systems where writing the rules for an NPC takes five sentences of writing and a handful of numbers. You can probably adapt your world.

nedz
2011-11-22, 08:07 PM
I'd take a hoiday from DMing - or experiment with a different style.
Ideas :

Try improv :smallsmile: (Actually the best improv requires a lot of rehersal.)
Try writing a simple encounter that will take them all session.
Send the party on a journey and just run 'random' combat encounters straight from the MM
Write an encounter thats easy for you but hard for the players, i.e. delagate.

A change is as good as a rest perhaps ?

Eric Tolle
2011-11-23, 03:15 PM
Obviously you should drop the girlfriend. TRUE gamers know that romance and relationships are dangerous distractions from gaming.

charcoalninja
2011-11-24, 12:14 PM
I recommend adding some extra social or plot focused encounters. Combat encounters and dungeons and such take a lot of prep time to design, but a social encounter takes considerably less. You essentially decide what each party wants to get out of the talk session, write up basic personalities for them and then bust out the RP. These more story sessions let the PCs interact with the world in a very meaningful way while eating up a tonne of in game hours, thus allowing you to slow the "plot pace" down a bit to give you more time to catch up. It's all still meaningful and expanding and driving your story, but it'll let catch your breath.

For example, if the party decides to sleep in an inn, rather than a fade to black its moring and we're adventuring again, you could play out the night, with them resting and interacting with NPCs that could become recurring mooks for them to joke with and get attached to. Thiings like like really eat session time, but are absolutely fun for the PCs to do.

PresentPresence
2011-11-24, 11:29 PM
Obviously you should drop the girlfriend. TRUE gamers know that romance and relationships are dangerous distractions from gaming.

I was waiting for somebody to put this up. I'm still waiting for someone to say, "90 minute drive? Is it really that far to your kitchen?" Stupid jokes aside, I understand your frustration. I GM on a PbP site with about 7 players. I like to write a long, descriptive few paragraphs, draw simple pictures of the important NPCs, create maps in paint, etc. Sometimes I'll spend an hour on two paragraphs! And then another 30 minutes on the formatting and getting the pictures the right width for the site, etc. It gets tiresome, but since it's a PbP game, I feel like it's necessary. It does drag, though. I also have an epic plot line planned, and even though I set it up in a "floating islands" style, I still over-plan. Hope that was an interesting second perspective.
I would second those who said trying out a new system. It usually makes me feel refreshed, even in my other system, and gives me cool ideas for characters and villains and settings and all the other stuff you put in a campaign.

Soniku
2011-11-24, 11:39 PM
Personally, and I know it's a very personal thing how you prepare for running a session so this may not help in the slightest for your situation, I make a habbit of running with absolutely no preperation.

Sounds crazy to some but I find it works so much more effectively than otherwise. Sure I might end up making a mistake with some plot point or another and have to twist my story to fit this version of events, but it ends up with a lighter workload and less of an urge to 'nudge' (or railroad) players towards a spesific highly-detailed plotline.

It takes a certain sort of GM to run completely planless well, just as it takes a certain skill to be able to plan something epic. It might not work for you but it could be worth a shot.

Vella_Malachite
2011-11-25, 02:19 AM
I sympathise entirely; I often get much the same thing with writing, where I love what I'm doing, but I just want to take a break for a while.

It's also very difficult to not try to make something perfect, but sometimes you do have to realise that if the players probably won't see it, you can let it slide. I assume at this point you're working on the story, not worldbuilding, anyway? This is what I do - I get all of the worldbuilding done before the players even know I'm creating it. I also never write further than a major decision by the characters, since with my group I can't predict them at all, really.

It might sound bad, but maybe cancelling one session or maybe two or three and working up a buffer (if possible) would reduce your workload by a large amount in the weeks to come. It really does sound like you're burning out, and giving the story and the players a couple of weeks so you can rest and rejuvenate might be painful, but ultimately might be the best thing you can do.

Knaight
2011-11-25, 04:55 AM
Improvise everything. There will be a bit of a decline in quality, but it won't be permanent - it is merely a sign that you need to improve your improvisational skills, which is done by practice.

Eldan
2011-11-25, 05:27 AM
I was waiting for somebody to put this up. I'm still waiting for someone to say, "90 minute drive? Is it really that far to your kitchen?"

I have a large house :smalltongue: