Have you ever gotten bored of your own story?

[tedcahill2]

When I started my campaign I had this great idea for a story where the players were the reincarnations of ancient heroes brought together once again to battle the same demon general they thwarted in their previous lives.

However, I mistakenly revealed some things sooner than intended and now my story is off the rails and I'm not sure how to proceed. Currently the group in in possession of a demon stone, a soul gem if you will, that contains much of the essence of the demon general. He can't summon his demon armies back to the material plane without first obtaining the power stolen by the demon stone.

My players will soon reach a point where, if things go as planned, they will lose the demon stone to him. So I was thinking that, after that happens, I will open up the world to them a bit more. So far the campaign has been running primarily on some loose rails, but now that everyone is firmly established into the world I was thinking that, instead of dropping obvious hints and pushing toward the next story arc, that I don't give them any clues and see what they do.

If they decide they want to pursue the demon and defeat him again fine. If not, he'll be busy raising a demon army.

So to end with an actually question prompt: What do you guys do when you've completely lost your inspiration for a campaign?

[Kianlon]

When I lose inspiration, I let the players wander around with no guidance for a bit - sometimes their interactions with the NPCs that they've either met previously or that I've made up on the spot will generate a story.

[DuelingBlue]

Depends. Is it a minor bump or a major snag?

If it's minor, I start looking around for inspiration. Stories, pictures, whatever. I'll ask the players if there's anything they want to focus on. Odds are, one of them has something from their backstory or some aspect of their character they'd like to focus on. I'll run a mini-arc of 2-3 sessions using those as the focus. Usually, by the time that's done, I'm fairly reinvigorated for my own plot. This is also a great way to advance the timeline for any villains or events you've got going in the background.

If it's major, I take a break. Let somebody else DM for a while. If nobody else wants to DM, we'll go for boardgames or DMless one shot games for a few weeks.

[Florian]

When I started my campaign I had this great idea for a story where the players were the reincarnations of ancient heroes brought together once again to battle the same demon general they thwarted in their previous lives.

As a young gm, I was also very fascinated by the stories we could craft, by the sheer joy when everything clicked into place and "bored" when things didn't work out or fell apart en route, because the grand plan didn't work out, either I botched, the players botched or it didn't provide to be that "grand" after all.

I´ve since given up on the whole "epic" thing and it´s been better for it.

[Jiece18]

What do you guys do when you've completely lost your inspiration for a campaign?

Have the group run through Ravenloft or similar setting that can work disconnected from the main campaign. It lets me take a mental break from the story and relax in a prebuilt world for a few sessons. My players don't mind much because they can bring whatever loot the acquire back into the main campaign. You can even weave it into the main story by having the players trip some kind of portal that pulls them from their world. Even have events in the main campaign jump forward a few years where it was only a few days for the party. It can help reenergize a plot that was starting to run low on steam.

[Yahzi]

So to end with an actually question prompt: What do you guys do when you've completely lost your inspiration for a campaign?
I agree with Kianlon, except that I start there. I run a sandbox world, so wandering around is the whole deal.

I create a static snap-shot of the world with the click of a button (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/217951/Sandbox-World-Generator). It naturally has various plots and schemes arising from the politics and monsters. When the players wander into an area, it starts the action; from then on the plot progresses, even if they ignore it, until it (hopefully) it produces a result that engages them again.

I still prep adventures and dungeons, but the inspiration comes from the randomly created world. So I don't lose inspiration, because the players are always making new inspirations based on their interactions with the world.

[martixy]

Well, I am now running my first long-running campaign, and we've been at it only for a couple of months really - like 10 sessions, so I don't know how valid you'll consider my experience.

I am aiming for an epic long campaign, and I find myself continually motivated by just wanting to see what happens, wanting to reach that moment of epicness as soon as possible. Which is incidentally a good motivation to keep things moving along. In some of the first sessions I found myself dragging out things, but with how much sheer "content", if you will, we have to get through to start really making progress, there is no such need.

What I'm kind of saying is, it's important to be enthusiastic about the future of your campaign. If you feel like the plot isn't progressing in a direction you find cool or epic, think of a way to finagle the details the party is aware of to a story you'd enjoy running. Maybe your demon general is a puppet to something else, maybe the whole thing is a substance-less conspiracy concocted by somebody just as an excuse to intervene in things they have no business meddling in.

As for your proposed change in DMing style - you have to tailor that to your group. Some groups flail around like blind kittens without a choo-choo to ride on, others thrive if allowed a sandbox. You would know your group best, and you probably should by now.