I'm a DM in the zone! Are you there now or have you been in the past?

I have been running a d20 Modern campaign for the last 2 months. I am having a great time and my players are having a great time, at least that's what they tell me.

I seem to be "in the zone" with this campaign. I am better able to keep track of what's going on, divide fairly the time each player receives when performing actions, keep combat flowing, keep a good balance between roleplay and "roll" play and other assorted duties that a DM usually performs. I have DMed other campaign and, sans one other great campaign, they just didn't seem as much fun as this one.

Has anyone else ever felt this? Have you ever had a campaign in which you "could do no wrong" and your players had a blast in almost every session?

Yup, a few times actually. One of them happened to be a D20 Modern game in fact. Great feeling. Glad you're having a blast.

At this very moment I'm creating an 80 room dungeon, and I feel in the Zone too. The rooms make themselves.

Gotta stop from zoning out sometimes. I started a campaign in January and so far it's going well, but don't want to get too caught up in thinking I am doing well. After all, no PC or even major NPC deaths yet, so it's really the players that are in the zone... for now...

Yeah. I've been there. (sigh) I'm not there now. I started a campaign that was way too ambitious and I am in over my head. I spend so much prep time just to keep it together. I'm gradually getting the hang of it. Gradually...

And if I can pull it together, I think it will end up being one hell of a campaign.

Twice that I can think of...

1.) Got halfway through RtToEE with a classic party and plenty of action, tweaks, and such. The game ended because of school letting out for the summer, however.

2.) I ran a game for 2 1/2 years every week and never fumbled it once. It was a great campaign, though there were plenty of minor nit-picks (I gave out way too much magic), the rest played like a dream.

i refereed a campaign for 10+ years with 14 players. started 3 other campaigns and spawned 4 other players to run their own campaigns.

i also convinced with the help of some of my players a teacher at school to sponsor an afterschool gamers club in our high school. his son was in the middle school. the teacher liked it so much he taught his son who began running games in the middle school. when i and most of the original gamers in the club graduated, the next batch of gamers was already in place.

i made a guest appearance after graduating college and the gamers club was still at it. even tho, many of the other afterschool activities were no longer sponsored.

I ran a FR campaign in 3e a while back. Personally, I was getting tired of it: d20 burnout, Faerun's uber-high magic, the party had reached a power level I dislike DM-ing, etc. When they fulfilled a geas and had made it back to Silverymoon with loot in hand. I decided to halt the campaign in favor of something else. Not to mention my wife's due date for our first child was coming up, so it would be hard for either of us to game for a while. I think I mentioned something like "I know you all are probably getting tired of this campaign too."

All around the table were open mouths. Then everyone started protesting at once "What do you mean?? This is a GREAT campaign!!"

Who knew?

*bump for title change*

Well, since you asked...

I think I was "In the Zone" last year. I had a clear picuture of where the campaign was going, good adventure and campaign concepts, and a party that had a reason to be involved. In those days, the players did things like beg me to run extra sessions or stay up a few hours late. And all of my adventure designs just "clicked."

Right now, I am not so much there. Having a harder time coming up with a compelling premise and keeping the players involved.

Looking to get my groove back...

Yeah, the campaign i'm currently running had its heyday a couple years ago during the summer. I was definetly in the Zone. We actually haven't played a whole lot since then- I've been pretty busy with school and LSATs and whatnot, and the other players have gotten busy with their own schoolwork or real work.

It was great back then- we played at least once a week, great adventures all around this one small town. I was able to do a lot of foreshadowing, and the ideas just kept coming. The adventures wrote themselves... the players often did unexpected things (as they always do), but it always seemed to turn out great. The campaign really broke down after they left that town, though, and we've hardly played since. Right now I'm trying to get a little of that magic back, designing a new small town for them to adventure around. It's coming together nicely... hopefully I can get back into the Zone.