Friday, March 8, 2013

GM Burnout

One thing I haven't written about is GM burnout. Everyone who ever helms the mantle of game master eventually goes through this. I am currently experiencing this. Hard.

I've been running games pretty consistently for about three years now. I don't know if it's because I've almost exclusively been playing fantasy games or it's more of a general burnout, but it is has sapped all motivation to work on some of the longer term projects I had going (patrons, megadungeon, new classes,).

Which is unfortunate, because it's my turn in this rotating GM campaign a friend and I are running. I have an adventure in mind, too, but there is no gas in the tank to draw maps, create monsters, and draft a compelling narrative. I would much rather just play complicated board games or paint the various miniatures I have acquired.

But I can't, so I've been thinking about ways to break this. The short term is module dependency. I have greedily snatched up every single DCC adventure that Goodman Games has put out and only played a handful of them. I also backed the Appendix N Adventures Kickstarter, and those should ship by the end of the month giving me more crutches on this road to recovery.

I have, as of yet, not come up with a more long term option.

2 comments:

  1. When I've been burned out, the recovery comes from a mixture of time and new input. New input is seeing a movie I haven't seen since I was a kid, reading an author/genre I've never read before, visiting some place I've never been before, and/or playing something completely different to the game that I'm blocked on. Basically, it's changing up whatever I can that I'm exposing my brain to... Even changing my 'exercise routine' (such as it is) like when or how much I ride my bike will help.

    Still wanting to play, but feeling tapped out simply sucks, doesn't it?

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    1. I've been doing that and it still hasn't broken my fatigue. I've been playing DCC RPG since launch pretty much weekly, sometimes 2-3 times a week. And I love it. The prep is really what is killing me.

      I think I'd like to switch gears to a more story-centric game, which, sure I could do in this system, but I'd rather run something that encourages that type of play.

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