How to deal with a "cooled down" campaign?

[Temennigru]

I made the mistake of putting too many of my ideas into the campaign I'm DMing at once (since I have a problem with anxiety) and now I have no new ideas as to how to make the story progress.

How can I fix this?

[Zanos]

Could you expand on what you mean by too many ideas?

[Temennigru]

Could you expand on what you mean by too many ideas?

All my ideas for dungeons, cities, artifacts, NPCs, etc. got expended in 10 sessions.

I also don't know what to add to the story.

[Scorponok]

Tell us the story! :)

Best solution is something the PCs did created a new problem. Then the PCs need to go fix said problem.

[Telonius]

There are two general ways you could go about this (and they aren't mutually exclusive): focus on the plot, and focus on the characters.

Plot is one that you have a bit more control over. Is there some over-arching goal that you want the players to explore? Some enemy or situation that's tying everything together? Think on that and see if any ideas pop out at you.

Character is another way to approach it. Think about the characters your players are playing. What do they care about, what are their goals? If the Cleric wants to evangelize, maybe have him sent on a mission from his deity. Rogue wants to be the best thief in the world? A rival appears and tries to outdo and/or disgrace him.

Either way, a little more information on what's gone before might help us to figure out anything more than general suggestions.

[EldritchWeaver]

Character is another way to approach it. Think about the characters your players are playing. What do they care about, what are their goals? If the Cleric wants to evangelize, maybe have him sent on a mission from his deity. Rogue wants to be the best thief in the world? A rival appears and tries to outdo and/or disgrace him.

Asking the players about the characters' goals is a good idea. Or you could go and steal some adventure module and add to your own setting. At this moment, Raging Swan sells a bundle of PDFs at d20pfsrd.org. I think there are some adventures included. The very least, there is a wealth of ideas which can inspire you. I at least like to use them, given the opportunity. If you want something for free, you could look at Jacob's Tower instead.

[Elder_Basilisk]

You have a few options:

1. Just keep going anyway. If you don't have ideas, run published adventures. If you don't like published adventures and your players are up for it, let the players drive and create the campaign. (I can't emphasize this enough though, your players need to be up for it--despite the message-board and indie RPG community insisting that open world/player driven RPG campaigns are what everyone wants, I have only had one group of players who could actually drive a campaign this way (and when I say one group of players, I mean one player; when he left, the other players were back to floundering aimlessly then grabbing onto the first thing that looked like it might possibly be THE DM's Prepared Plot (TM) like a drowning man grabbing a life preserver).

1.5 If your campaign to this point was more episodic and did not necessarily have an overarching plot connecting all of the stops, published adventures can fit in just fine. Alternately, homebrewing a paint by the numbers scenario is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes it's fun to be hired to help defend a village from bandits or orcs or to have a landslide reveal the entrance to a long-forgotten tomb/portal to a demiplane where an ancient evil was imprisoned. They're familiar scenarios but that doesn't mean they're not fun. In some ways, their familiarity is what makes them fun. The players can imagine their characters in the Thirteenth Warrior or Stargate etc and can fill in the gaps in your telling with the familiar sources you are using for inspiration (or blatantly ripping off).

2. End the campaign. Every campaign doesn't need to go on forever. If you want to keep playing with the group, run an adventure path (Paizo or WotC or whoever provides the ideas for you) or see if someone else wants to run something. Or start a new campaign if you have an idea for it.

2.5 This may be most appropriate if your campaign to date did have an overarching story that was now finished. Let Frodo go back to the shire and quit adventuring after the One Ring is destroyed. Your next campaign can be Game of Thrones or Monster of the Week instead. For good storytelling, there is no real substitute for knowing when the story is over and finishing. The number of TV shows, books, or movies that were ruined because they didn't know when to call it quits and say, "we're done" is amazing. Don't be those shows. Instead, emulate CS Lewis who quit writing Narnia stories before he had squeezed the life out of the series. He said, "there are two times you can quit writing: either before people are tired of it or after." Quit before people are tired of it.