The Cats
2019-01-13, 11:44 AM
Thank goodness!
We play every other week, and for I think three sessions in a row I was feeling more and more frustrated with the behavior of (almost) all of my players. They weren't doing anything really heinous, just little pet-peeve type stuff that wasn't worth having a whole serious discussion about, but was just piling up and making the games a lot less enjoyable for me.
So I took a break. We put our regular game on indefinite hiatus. I still ran a few one-shots for different groups, but our ongoing campaign was on hold for about two months.
We had out first session back last night and it was just crazy fun. There was no behavioral change on their part, I just didn't find the things they were doing annoying anymore. We spent the full 6 hours cheering at epic fantasy moments and laughing our asses off at epic fantasy fails.
So turns out it was all me. I guess I was just stressed about life, and kind of burnt out on DMing (one big change we did this session was switching to Theatre of the Mind and that cut down my prep time a ton).
I guess if there has to be a point to this topic it's a bit of advice to DMs that are suddenly feeling annoyed or frustrated by the little things your players are doing: Take a break. Maybe they started being annoying all of a sudden, but more likely it's just the mindset you have at this point in time. Take some time off to rest your game-running muscles, and maybe to give yourself time to work on resolving some other stressors in your life.
I'm just in a really good mood.
edit: Another thing I did differently was make sure to have a good nap and have a couple extra cups of coffee later in the day. I'm usually an early bedtime guy so I'm sure part of my annoyance was from past-my-bedtime crankiness.
We play every other week, and for I think three sessions in a row I was feeling more and more frustrated with the behavior of (almost) all of my players. They weren't doing anything really heinous, just little pet-peeve type stuff that wasn't worth having a whole serious discussion about, but was just piling up and making the games a lot less enjoyable for me.
So I took a break. We put our regular game on indefinite hiatus. I still ran a few one-shots for different groups, but our ongoing campaign was on hold for about two months.
We had out first session back last night and it was just crazy fun. There was no behavioral change on their part, I just didn't find the things they were doing annoying anymore. We spent the full 6 hours cheering at epic fantasy moments and laughing our asses off at epic fantasy fails.
So turns out it was all me. I guess I was just stressed about life, and kind of burnt out on DMing (one big change we did this session was switching to Theatre of the Mind and that cut down my prep time a ton).
I guess if there has to be a point to this topic it's a bit of advice to DMs that are suddenly feeling annoyed or frustrated by the little things your players are doing: Take a break. Maybe they started being annoying all of a sudden, but more likely it's just the mindset you have at this point in time. Take some time off to rest your game-running muscles, and maybe to give yourself time to work on resolving some other stressors in your life.
I'm just in a really good mood.
edit: Another thing I did differently was make sure to have a good nap and have a couple extra cups of coffee later in the day. I'm usually an early bedtime guy so I'm sure part of my annoyance was from past-my-bedtime crankiness.