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View Full Version : Turns out I don't hate my players!



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.

Malifice
2019-01-13, 12:14 PM
DM burnout is a thing mate.

Its how 99 percent of campaigns end.

Having a good party and good group of friends helps, as does taking an extended break every so often in the campaign (taking the odd few weeks away from the game and doing something else) to get the creative juices flowing agian.

farothel
2019-01-13, 02:30 PM
A friend of mine has a very nice solution to it: run 2 campaigns and switch them off.
We have an L5R campaign that runs over 3 in-game years and the Pendragon campaign (a number of periods) and he would switch them off at times. Like after every L5R in-game year we would do one or two Pendragon periods and then switch back to L5R and so on. That prevents him from getting fed up with one campaign and during the other, he would get ideas for the first campaign.

Malifice
2019-01-14, 03:42 AM
It helps if you have a second DM running his own campaign.

Its nice to crawl from behind the screen and just focus on one PC from time to time.

Friv
2019-01-14, 12:08 PM
Yep, burnout is a real thing and a big deal. It's important to take breaks from time to time, and that goes double if you have a busy life that prep time is cutting into.

Glad to hear that things are going well now!

The Cats
2019-01-14, 12:31 PM
It helps if you have a second DM running his own campaign.

Its nice to crawl from behind the screen and just focus on one PC from time to time.

Yeah I'm really hoping I can convince someone to start doing this soon. So far all my players have not been interested (besides one who does run a game, but she doesn't think her English is good enough to run a game in English and I don't speak French). We just got a new player though who is super keen on the game and has a crazy imagination so I might be able to convince her to at least run a one-shot some time.

I've never actually been able to just be a player in my entire DnD career (barring a couple PbP before I realized I am horribly unreliable in that format). Sure would be nice!

Satinavian
2019-01-14, 01:14 PM
Yes, this has happened to me too before. It is normal and a break is a good idea.