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View Full Version : Burning Out as a GM, aka Knowing When to Quit



PrinceOfMadness
2012-03-03, 10:33 PM
For those reading with short attention spans, I'm looking for stories of GMs who became burnt out on a system/setting/miscellaneous, and how they handled the situation.

Myself, I've been GM-ing a game of Deathwatch for a few months now. For those not in the know, Deathwatch is a d10 system based on the Warhammer 40k setting. Deathwatch is also, like all things produced by Fantasy Flight Games, horrendously complicated. So with that in mind....

At first, everything was going pretty smoothly. I was taking over the game from one of the other guys as he wasn't interested in running anymore. We had a pretty long (6 or 7 sessions) adventure aboard a Chaos Space Hulk, and that went pretty well. Since it was my first time GM-ing Deathwatch, and only my second game GM-ing ever, I made mistakes, but I was willing to correct them. Whenever one of my players felt annoyed or angered by a ruling, I did my best to explain my viewpoint and usually converted them to my way of thinking, or in some cases reversed the ruling.

Unfortunately, an issue cropped up that still has yet to be rectified. Deathwatch Space Marines, especially those of high Rank such as my players, are incredibly resistant to damage. They have multiple Reactions (Dodges/Parries), force fields that completely negate incoming damage and have a 50% chance to go off, and amazingly high Toughness and Armor. On top of that, they're literal murder machines - I had to triple the Wounds of one of my bosses because the Assault Marine would have killed him in one round. The problem has been compounded by the fact that we've mixed in rules from Black Crusade as well, so often rulings end up changing from session to session.

As GM, I found it incredibly difficult to challenge my players. Most combat situations were steamrolled by them. What few social situations cropped up were mostly solved with violence, or shrugs from the Kill-Team if they failed.

I made a decision here. I decided I would ramp up the difficulty of various monsters, in hopes of bringing some fun back into the game. At first, things went pretty well. By making extensive use of Hordes (which cannot be Dodged or Parried), I actually managed to land some damaging hits. The playing field had shifted. My Kill-Team invested in abilities and weapons that let them slaughter Hordes, so my advantage was largely neutralized. I eventually made the shift back to single enemies.

I made a mistake. Those single enemies were evil, nasty mobs with ridiculous stats - Greater Daemons, Obliterators, Daemon Princes, Primaris Psykers....I eventually murdered one of the Kill-Team members. At the time, it was mostly okay, because the challenge was great fun, but it hasn't abated.

In the last session, the Kill-Team was fighting Orks. The Orks had perhaps 20 Hordes of Boyz, 4 of Squiqz, 3 of Nobz, 1 of Mega Nobz, and a Warboss-equivalent. I burned two of the Kill-Team's Fate Points, and I realized something.

My players weren't having fun.

I wasn't having fun.

It had become a classic DM vs The Players scenario. At the end of the session, I informed everyone that I was sorry about what was happening, and I would need a break from DM-ing for a while. Everyone seemed relieved that I had finally come to my senses.

Now, part of the problem was that Deathwatch is very combat-oriented - it's easy to fall into that trap. But I SHOULDN'T have fallen into that trap - I started out by working with my players, and I ended up trying my best to murder them all - all in the name of making things fun. I'm glad that I managed to pull myself back from that brink.

So what are your stories?

valadil
2012-03-03, 11:11 PM
I have a tendency to focus on a single plot arch. Once it resolves I can't get excited about anything after that point. This works favorably if that plot arch happens to be the arch the players have invested themselves in, but does not lead to long games. I usually go for something in the 8-12 session range, barring my recent 1.5 year game, which I did just to see if I could sustain something.

I've come up with a technique for dealing with burnout. Basically I write the ending long before I've burnt out. This feels a little dirty because I don't like to dictate where the game will end. I want to it be free to go anywhere. So I tell myself that it's just a predicted ending and we don't have to stick with it. But to date, all the games have ended where I expected them to.

Anyway, this involves choosing a plot to be the main plot arch and writing material for letting it resolve. Usually I'll have three sessions sketched out like this and a couple bad guys statted. I don't do too much statting because I don't know when I'll burn out. But as soon as I decide I've had enough, I cut to the prewritten stuff as fluidly as I can. I don't mind running a game I've grown tired of so long as I don't also have to prep for it anymore.

I've been GMing for almost 10 years and I've burnt out of every game I've run, but they've all had endings (and I even managed to merge the end of a friend's dropped game into mine, just to give it some closure). Based on what other forum goers have told me, this is a rarity and something to be proud of.

Shadowknight12
2012-03-03, 11:54 PM
I've long stop GMing precisely because I can't avoid burnout and I think it's fairly unfair for the players to start a game when you haven't finished a single game you've ever run.

The only game I still GM is partly because of my own ethics and mostly because the player is a selfish manipulator who isn't above preying upon an alleged friend's ethics in order to keep the game going. I mean, who cares if the DM isn't having any fun at all and actively dreads the thought of posting in it when you get to have fun at his expense? And what's worse, he doesn't even have the courtesy of speeding up the plot along to make it end faster, oh no. He has to grind the game to a halt to ask meaningless questions, get a description on everything under the sun and explore every nook of every area he's in.

But hey, plus side: it taught me never to offer to DM for anyone ever again! :smallsmile:

Gralamin
2012-03-04, 02:31 AM
I avoid burnout by focusing most of my creative energy elsewhere - whether another campaign I am running for others, Programming, weird homebrew, etc. This allows me to stick close to my original plan, with only a small amount of tweaking.

I also don't generally write to far in advanced - while I have sketches of the overall plot, filing in the details tends to be dangerous for my interest in the campaign over the long term.

TechnoScrabble
2012-03-04, 02:55 AM
Running a game of D&D 3.5 that goes from 1 to 20 is amazingly hard. Taking it further? That was even harder. And I'm not even talking about how long setting it up and playing it out and finding replacements when people had to move was.
But it the end?
Totally worth it to see the smiles on the player's faces when they're told that the little characters they started with a year and a half ago have all grown up and managed to kill the god of death that held their souls hostage.

HunterOfJello
2012-03-04, 03:36 AM
From my 2 years of DMing for my friends:

It's easy to change a game to add in or subtract different elements from a game if a single or few players are unhappy about how a game is going. It's more difficult to revamp everything if all of the players seem unhappy about how a game is going. The hardest thing I've found to do is changing/fixing a game where the players are all having fun but the DM is miserable.

~~~

I really don't know a good way to fix a game where the DM is miserable because of how things are going, but the players are all ecstatic with the events, gameplay, and gametype balance.

Personal Story of how >2 year campaign fell apart:
We were playing 3.5 D&D and I was getting frustrated and miserable because there was a MASSIVE excess of metagaming going on. It was my fault for ever letting metagaming enter and grow in our games, but it had now turned into a gorilla on my back. Any time I'd try to enter any roleplaying into the game the players would attempt to subvert any roleplaying processes by metagaming the entire thing. It quickly became evident that once the players had access to playing by using tons of metagaming, they didn't want to actually roleplay ever again. Also, the more items and gold they obtained, the more they attempted to focus purely on building up their character's strengths by boosting each stat to the maximum amount. This was not through actual optimization, but through brute forcing the wealth system of the game.

Eventually I got frustrated as DM because I wasn't having fun. Attempting to put any kind of elements into the game that I thought were fun were only complained about. Then, even as I backed off, the complaining began starting in full. The entire group ended up acting like a whiny bitch of a girlfriend towards me as DM instead of a roleplaying group. There were multiple 10, 20, or 30 minute complaining rants in each session that would pop up like clockwork when anything happened that didn't go exactly as the players wanted.

In the end, the players became unhappy and I had been very unhappy for a long time anyway so I cut things off. The final session that we had ended by one player (who had been part of the group for the 2 years) standing up and slamming his chair saying that he didn't want to play with me as DM anymore. I sighed and calmly, non-antagonistically replied that I don't think anyone here wants me to be DM and that includes me because I really haven't enjoyed DMing for a long time. We also have the problem that none of the players are willing to DM for the group either. I'm not sure what will happen in the future, but I don't think this campaign is going to continue for a very long time.

I'm still good friends with the players and hang out with them all the time, but we don't play D&D anymore.

Once you stop having fun as a DM/GM, there are going to be very seriously problems quickly popping up in any game. You may continue to play your role in the process, but it won't be a worthwhile effort and will ultimately fail. Pizza, soda, and starbucks coffee aren't enough of an incentive to spend 4 hours a week working on a campaign and then playing it out for long hours during the weekend.

I think that gaming styles become more pronounced and harder to reconcile once PCs get to higher levels. The character that wanted to just bash down every door possible while ignoring all other options will at level 10+ gain the ability to actual bash down every single one of the doors in the multiverse. Also, any doors that are introduced that are somehow have Immunity to Bashing-Downedness will just make that player feel inadequate if another solution is not immediately present.

There are many solutions to breaking the monotony, distaste, or boredom of a campaign. Switching to having a different DM/GM can be great, but you have to find one. Changing over to a new game may or may not work for everyone, but that depends on the willingness of everyone to change. Starting a new campaign at a different level or with new characters in the same system can also be revitalizing.

Note: All three of these solutions were strongly rejected and refused by my above-mentioned group. I think that's one of the stronger reasons it fell apart.

~~~~~~

I think the definitive moment to just quit the process is once you've realized that you've been burned out for multiple sessions and you don't see a chance in sight that you'll change that position. The longer your distaste for the situation, the more likely you should shut things down. Try something else out before you end up ruining the game for non just yourself, but all of the other players involved.

Totally Guy
2012-03-04, 03:47 AM
I run games that are short. Usually I tell the players that we're going for some estimated number of sessions. I find the old assumption that because its a roleplaying game it's going to be at least a 3 year thing is not manageable.

By setting a time limit on things the players are forced to bring the conflicts they want to play out into that time frame. If the player wants a battle for the guild with their uncle, Kelvin Blackstaff, they've got to bring the conflict to the table or the game will pass them by and it won't ever happen.

W3bDragon
2012-03-04, 03:47 AM
So what are your stories?

In the two longest games I ran, I felt some pretty serious burn out towards the end.

The first long game was CoC, and the campaign lasted about 6 months from start to finish. About halfway through, I started to hit some serious burn out and really had to struggle every week to deliver a good session. The main reason was that I didn't feel inspired enough to prep for the game, but I just slugged through it really, trying to find inspiration where I can, waiting to hit the final arc of the game. Once I got to the final arc, I was happy and managed to GM them to the end without issues. It all worked out and it ended up being a very memorable campaign for everyone. Once my campaign was wrapped up, I had someone else take over GMing for the next few games so I can take a break.

The second campaign I ran went much smoother in terms of burn out, mainly because I had sketched out the entire campaign's main plot points and the big encounters before the first session. That gave me a sense of direction and control over the plot that made life much easier for me. About 5 months into it, I started to feel some burn out, mainly because I'd reached the endgame, and wasn't happy with what I had planned for it. I ended up having to consult with my friend and former DM for ideas. His fresh perspective on the game gave me some great ideas for managing the end game, and it worked out okay. The ending wasn't my favorite, but it was satisfactory for the players, and the campaign leading up to it was good.

TL, DR:
I think overall, I tend to feel DM burn out when I'm unprepared for the next stretch of the game I'm currently DMing and am deep enough into the campaign that the creative energy is pretty much gone.

Keeping a good campaign sketch, along with a few backup throwaway plots that can be dropped in whenever needed goes a long way towards avoiding burn out.

Moofaa
2012-03-04, 05:42 AM
I get burned out all the time, and unfortunately never discovered a way to handle it.

Part of the issue is I am the only one that seems to have the inclination to make time to actually work on campaigns, making characters, planning sessions, etc. Everyone I know always claims they are "too busy" to work on anything.

So I get thrust into the role of being the GM, which puts things into a doomed-to-fail status right from the start. If you don't want to GM then you probably aren't going to do a very good job at it.

I usually spend countless hours on a new campaign idea, pitch it to the players who all exclaim "this would be awesome!", only to lose interest after the first handful of sessions because I would much rather be on their end playing the characters.

For reasons of availability, finding another group isn't possible right now. I basically told my group either they start GMing or we stop playing. It's been more than a year since my last real D&D session. I still get bothered at random times by them asking if I want to play DnD to which I respond "Great! Which system are you running, I'll make a character." at which point the conversation dies.

I had one good Cthulu group I was playing with that was going great and was exactly what I wanted in a RPG group. We laughed, ate pizza, rolled dice, and played interesting dysfunctional characters. Then the GM decided to move out of state and the group died because nobody else will take up the mantle.

:smalleek:

Kalmageddon
2012-03-04, 09:47 AM
I love DMing but sometimes I get burned out too, mostly when we play on a new system and some players complain about the game mechanics mid-session, that's something that really bothers me... If it persists I usually propose to begin a new campaign with another game system or I pass the DM mantle to someone else for the next campaign.

Need_A_Life
2012-03-04, 10:15 AM
Happens often enough.

Thankfully, somehow (I haven't a clue how), I can be "going through the motions" of a campaign that I honestly wished that I could have wrapped up 3 sessions ago, trying to get to a good stopping point and people keep telling me it's great.
So that's always nice.

I tend to plan for it.
I drop anything like long-running arcs, slow build-up or spending inordinate amounts of time describing things. Quick, to the point, roll some dice, bit of flavour here and there, 3-session plot in a single sitting.

Campaigns are planned thusly:
First Adventure: Stuff happens. Lots of possible plot hooks thrown in there for good measure. Make sure that players have reason to finish the first adventure before they really get started on any of them, though, because...

Second Adventure: During their first adventure, they met someone that the players thought "hey, he was kindda cool." If not, then pick someone that someone might conceivably have found interesting.
He's got stuff to do and the players are asked to help out. Try to guilt-trip them or something (if they inconvenienced the NPC or got them hurt in the first adventure, there's your hook) or, failing that, offer a reward.
Let them do something you think is fun or cool. A session or two should be enough for this. It'll give you time to plan for the...

Third Adventure: Where you take some of the random plot hooks from Adventure One that the players expressed interest in, spice it up with elements from Adventure Two and add in a couple of cool new elements (if in doubt, go to TVTropes.org and search for 'cool,' 'awesome' or 'crazy' and look through examples).
Make it an "[excrement] has really hit the fan" situation or an "[excrement] has just gotten real!" kind of deal, because it'll need to be ready for:

Fourth Adventure: You think you were awesome before? Well, get ready to get more awesomer! Shut up, it's a technical term!

Are you Exalted? This is where you get to storm the Gates of Yu-Shan to defeat the Incarnae! Defeat the Yozi in freakin' kung-fu fights! Steal the Scarlet Empress for a wife during her wedding ceremony to the Ebon Dragon!
Are you a Shadowrunner? Well, there's a big payday coming up. The "retire forever on an island built of credsticks, drugs and strippers" kind of big. But it won't be easy...
Are you a D&D adventurer? Saving the city, kingdom, world or multiverse. Depending on level and tone, of course.
Are you a Dark Heresy agent? How's about dealing with a mother[flower]ing Greater Demon of Nurgle? Ascending to Inquisitor-status? Getting the grudging respect of Space Marines?
What about the Vampires of oWoD? You get to change the political landscape of the city, get enough dirt on your enemies (or get to bump them off) and become loved and feared by the rest of your clan.


Not to everyone's taste, but it avoids the issue of player boredom. Unless it doesn't, in which case, this style isn't for you.

Thomar_of_Uointer
2012-03-05, 01:51 AM
My last campaign, I told everyone "this campaign is over at 6 sessions unless we all agree to continue." They accomplished all the major campaign objectives in 6 sessions, all with solutions they came up with on their own initiative, and it was an awesome campaign.

It seems to me like 6 sessions is a nice number for finishing a single major quest. If you want more, go for it. Otherwise, wrap things up and make it awesome when you do.

Zerter
2012-03-05, 08:18 AM
I dislike it as a player when a campaign ends half-way and everything everyone invested into it can be thrown out of the window. But I also realize that burning out exists.

The solution I devised for it was the following: I put a new group together and did so with some basic guidelines (some of which developed over time):

- We play a consistent campaign world (all adventures take place in the same gigantic city), but one with many options (very diverse city).
- DMs rotate (everyone is willing and able to DM, so that's good).
- DMs make sure they work towards an ending in their campaigns.

This prevents burn out because of the rotation and defined endings. It also allows for PCs to be carried on between adventures (so you could try to go 1-20 under the right circumstances). The city also gets fleshed out with each new adventure with NPCs (some of which are former PCs) making comebacks or plot-lines being derived from other campaigns, but because large parts of it remain unexplored each new DM has the freedom to build an entirely new world.

This has worked for about 1,5 years (we play every week, 11 hour sessions). A DM generally lasts for about 10-11 sessions. Recently two of the members have been becoming more absent due to pull from real life which has a negative effect on the sessions, but that's not really relevant to the subject discussed here.

kyoryu
2012-03-05, 11:47 PM
The only campaigns that I've ever seen last really long are sandbox-style games.

I think they can last as they require less prep time for the DM, and that makes them more resistant to DM burn-out. I think DMs are less likely to burn out if they have to invest less time to keep the game going.

Jay R
2012-03-06, 09:45 AM
We had a game that morphed from OD&D to AD&D 1E, with 12 player-character, that went from one DM to another. The 2nd DM inherited 6th level characters, who went up a level every single time, until 15th level.

The treasure and number of magic items (this was a world with no magic item sales) were so big that I needed to create an Excel spreadsheet just to keep track. We had +3 swords and a Rod of Lordly Might in the hands of henchmen, because we just has too much stuff.

The characters rose so fast that nobody really knew what their character could do. Once, we defeated a force of over 100 giants, trolls, and other high-level beasts in two or three rounds, with most of us still undamaged.

When we were three adventures away from the main bad guy, we just sort of shrugged because there weren't going to be any challenges. One player said that he was considering starting a new game, and we all jumped to say, "Let's play it now," including the DM.

We never did bother to face that demon.

boredgremlin
2012-03-06, 11:00 AM
I really only enjoy running games at the lower levels because I like a good gritty, dangerous game and the lower levels just feel right for that. So my burnout tends to happen if things get beyond 9th or 10th level.

I find it helps me if I just tell players up front I like my campaigns to end around 10th level. Then everyone can plan their goals and such appropriately.

tedthehunter
2012-03-06, 02:15 PM
I often find myself in the position of being the DM by necessity.

I was introduced to the game around the release of 4e, so I bought the Core Rulebooks and read them front to back. My gaming group really loves playing, and I love DMing, but there are several things that make my enjoyment of the game wear thin.

RPing issues
First off, I have a serious issue with roleplaying. It's not so much a metagaming issue, as a severe lack of roleplaying. I usually require my players to create semi-detailed character profiles. Enough so that at the very least, we can understand who the character is and why they do what they do. But it seems like no matter how detailed the PC profiles get, the game ends up being run as a turn based combat simulator. It's once in a blue moon that I can even get my players to speak in character. Or even have their characters speak.:smallfrown: It seems like every character my group has ever created is a tight lipped death machine that only speaks when necessary, even when the character sheet says he's a bard who's favorite activity is singing and he's deathly afraid of blood. :smallmad:
I do have players who enjoy roleplaying, but they usually seem to be stifled by the sheer amount of powergaming going on.


Being the "Boss"
The next big thing is that I hate having to babysit my group. The worst feeling in the world as a DM is to spend hours coming up with a fleshed out adventure worthy of Tolkein, only to have two players show up to the session. (We don't play without a minimum of 3 players now because of this).
Worse than that is I hate being the boss. I can't be the only DM who catches TRUCKLOADS of flak for every little decision that I make. I seriously get like 20 minute arguments over whether or not thunder damage should spread through water like lightning. Really not that big of an issue. Honestly, I hate that no one wants to take the reins, but they're all perfectly content with nonstop complaints about the game. :smallannoyed:

We have tried to alternate DM's before, and it just hasn't worked out very well. None of my friends actually read the rulebooks, relying on me to tell them the rules, which always makes me seem like sort of a Co-DM, and sort of takes the fun out of the adventure for me, because they generally end up needing to tell me big secrets so I can help them with rulings.

Dissatisfied Player Experience
The final, and worst, thing about being the DM in my group is knowing that I'll never get a proper break. If I stop being the DM, one of two things happens
1) we don't play D&D
2) the game isn't fun for me to play, because I'm still technically the DM
I never get a chance to play an honest to goodness PC because I basically have to coach my replacements through their job. Also, when I try to have fun with roleplaying my character, with things like (short) dramatic monologues, catch phrases, and signature attacks, I get flak for "slowing down the game." I apologize for delaying you beloved combat for two seconds. That's probably the thing that kills our campaigns the fastest. Knowing that I'll have to put in the most effort to keep the game rolling, and will invariably get the least enjoyment out of it.

Now I realize that this post was something of a rant about my current gaming group and I apologize :smallsmile:. In short, I feel that three big things that contribute to DM burnout are as follows:
1) Players who don't enjoy the same aspects of the game (i.e. "Powergamer" DM vs. "Roleplayer" PC's or vice versa)
2) Wasted effort due to lack of cooperation between the DM and the PC's (no matter who's fault it is, it is very frustrating to the DM when countless hours of work are wasted)
3) Not getting to play a Character of their own without bothering the PC's (the dreaded DMPC :smalleek: oh noez!)

Kalmageddon
2012-03-06, 04:09 PM
tedthehunter, playing 4th edition is probably making this issues worst. That edition is not for roleplaying, it's simply not. Try some games in pathfinder or 3.5, it should make roleplaying a bit easier for everyone.

GoodbyeSoberDay
2012-03-06, 05:26 PM
tedthehunter, playing 4th edition is probably making this issues worst. That edition is not for roleplaying, it's simply not. Try some games in pathfinder or 3.5, it should make roleplaying a bit easier for everyone.If a player only wants combat, they'll find a way to do it in any system, including Dogs in the Vineyard, Maid RPG, and Candyland (the boardgame).

As far as burning out goes, I usually see players do it. It's really hard to keep a game going when half the players are always absent for one reason or another. I am somewhat guilty of this, but the worst incident happened when I was DMing. One of my players had repeatedly flaked out; one time when he didn't show up I knew, for a fact, he had no other obligations, so I gave him a call and asked him what was up. In so many (bizarre) words, he basically said he didn't need an excuse. That group ended up just meeting up to play video games and do one shots with any ol' DM.

tedthehunter
2012-03-06, 05:45 PM
If a player only wants combat, they'll find a way to do it in any system, including Dogs in the Vineyard, Maid RPG, and Candyland (the boardgame).

See therein lies the issue. Some of my players do want to branch out from combat and do other things, but it seems to me like 4e isn't giving a wide enough array of options. There's so much time spent in character creation on powers that just aren't useful for anything other than brutally murdering things indiscriminately.

The players I have who want to do other things besides combat are practically forced to participate because while the combat crazy players fight, the other characters have very few options mechanically that promote non combat activities. Perhaps I need to boot some players of mine.

I apologize OP, I don't want to start an argument about editions :smallredface:.

smashbro
2012-03-06, 07:30 PM
My issues as a DM are keeping players very interested for a very extended period of time, and pacing.

The campaign I designed was supposed to be spread out to around 6 sessions or so, honestly it depends on how deep the players wanted to go. I forget when exactly it started... probably around late October, early November last year. We'd meet every week or two, on Friday nights.


First night went pretty well. People enjoyed it.

Second night built up a bit, learned more about the world, got some answers on questions, entered a plot relevant location, stopped halfway through.

Third night finished up that, learned about what was really happening in the world, and how to fix it. Players have item to help find key items, are given the choice of what they want to go after.

Fourth night, choose one, go after it, have fun in a dungeon-esque. Half the group, however, decides to create a crime syndicate through which to control the country. The guys who care about the plot continue to progress the story, the others break off and work on their own.

That night, it devolved to creating sort of rival groups, between the ones that split and the ones who did the plot. Unfortunately, the more exiting plot elements never got to be seen, because of what they chose to do first.

After the fourth night, we had finals, so we took a break. Then there was a lull over winter break. We were busy for a while, and eventually people's interest waned. Now we're starting someone else's campaign, (we've only played one intro adventure) and mine may or may not be returned to.




So yeah, partly circumstance, but I need to figure out better pacing, shorter adventures, and make sure everyone is interested in the main part every step of the way. Maybe a smaller group next time too.

kyoryu
2012-03-06, 08:36 PM
Fourth night, choose one, go after it, have fun in a dungeon-esque. Half the group, however, decides to create a crime syndicate through which to control the country. The guys who care about the plot continue to progress the story, the others break off and work on their own.

Okay, so I read this and did a full stop.

The guys who want to create a crime syndicate care about the plot. They just care about *their plot* more than they care about *your plot*. That's unsurprising.

And besides, a plot involving the rise of a crime syndicate sounds pretty interesting to me. Lots of chances for all sorts of stuff to happen. So why not run with that as a plot?

Katana_Geldar
2012-03-06, 09:02 PM
When it stops being fun, it's time to take a break from the chair.

Angry Bob
2012-03-08, 10:37 AM
I've had something like this going on. One of my players is an absolutely untouchable Sorcerer/Initiate of the Seven Veils counterspeller hiding behind layers and layers of contingent wings of flurry and god knows what else. After the last session, I was kind of depressed, even though I had told them that I expected them to effortlessly butcher all of the intermediate bosses in the penultimate session as a product of their level grinding. What I didn't tell them was that I expected them to do the same to the final boss. Then I had a break where we couldn't play and had a chance to relax and think about it.

I devised a three-part boss battle:
The first stage would just be a humanoid caster type whose purpose would be to die quickly.
The second stage would be a Gibbering Orb with enormous HP to wear down his contingencies, veils per day, and spells per day.
The third would be simply an advanced Umbral Blot with the psionic power and other abilities of a 50ML mind shard of pandorym, but with his depleted resources, it might actually legitimately threaten him, something that hasn't happened more than twice since he was level 12(He's level, like, 35 now).

Not sure how that was relevant except for being my story of DM burnout.

EDIT: That said, if my players weren't lying to me, they were still having fun, which is almost certainly what made me come back to it instead of just giving up. They deserve nothing less than the most brutal final boss I can devise.

Gorgon_Heap
2012-03-08, 09:33 PM
Oh, it feels so good to be in like company.

I'm another of those people who loves getting together and roleplaying, yet if I wasn't running the game we would never do it.

Other have tried, but rarely do games last more than two or three sessions.

I've also burned out numerous times, but it does take me a long, long while. I've run super-long games, beginning with a StarWars D6 campaign that lasted 10 years.

But sometimes you start to get complacent or annoyed or even jealous of the players and the fact that they don't have to make any effort to enjoy themselves ... grrr.

Today I know it's time to start consider wrapping things up when I get everybody together and I don't want to start running until their furtive glances guilt me into it.

PairO'Dice Lost
2012-03-08, 10:36 PM
I've been a full-time DM for all four of my regular groups (which have been composed of middle school friends, high school friends, college friends, and other random friends as the time period warrants) since 1998 and have played fewer than 10 PCs in that time period, so I can certainly sympathize with all of the crazy stories here. I've managed to avoid burnout as much as possible thanks to our campaign scheduling and our tendency to change things up with every campaign.

"Scheduling" means having a defined time limit on my campaign, as some others have already mentioned; nowadays, a campaign lasts 1 semester (so roughly 4-4.5 months, playing once a week for about 6-8 hours per session), and all the players know it, so they and I can plan arcs and plotlines and such and know that (A) they will resolve at some point and (B) they have a limited amount of time to make things count.

"Changing things up" means running a low-level gestalt steampunk mystery-ish campaign in the vein of the recent Sherlock Holmes movies right after running a mid-level intrigue-heavy "Eberron sky pirates" campaign right after running a low-level old-school Greyhawk dungeon crawl right after running a high-level plane-hopping demonic invasion campaign right after running a mid-to-high level gestalt "nature-y people against the encroaching industrial empire" campaign on an alternate Earth right after running a high-level psionics-only full-scale-war campaign right after.... (And those are just the 3e D&D campaigns; add in SWSE and other d20 stuff and there's plenty of variety!)

One of the things that really helps is that one of my players in my current group of college buddies is a good DM who's willing to run campaigns at the same time I do, meaning that (A) I actually get to play sometimes and (B) people who don't want to play in whatever campaign I'm running can play in his, leaving me a small group of dedicated players instead of a 9-person group of players with various levels of enthusiasm about the campaign. If I didn't have that as a safety valve both for myself and for my players, I'd have burned out with this group years ago.

Madeiner
2012-03-09, 10:51 PM
Feel for you :(

I've DMed for 7-8 years, in my life i played like 3 PCs

A paladin, a warforged artificier, and a wizard for 3 sessions :(

DropsonExistanc
2012-03-10, 10:19 PM
Most of my burnout has been because of running 4e D&D organized play for work. For the last year or so, I've only been able to run a season of Encounters at a time (about 3 months) before explosively burning out. It seems to be due partly to material and partly more due to the group.

I'm a heavy RP DM, which obviously causes some clash when dealing with pre-written 4e material, though I can generally stretch it into a shape I like with cooperation. The group (which has been basically unchanged for at least a year) is extremely dedicated to hack'n'slash, and will often stare blankly even during WotC-proscribed RP. Additionally, they can be difficult to deal with personally.

Any burnout with personal games is related to life (read: work) stress, and D&D being easier to brush off than work or other real life stuff. Thankfully, my personal groups are composed of confident, competent, creative people, who already have something in mind to move on to.

So that was my rant... :smallredface: