DM Burnout or DM Frustration With His Players?

[Edgewood]

As a GM myself I would definately drop the journal. Just delete it and tell them at the next session. I too like to write about the background of my campaign Morvia. However I do it purely for my own enjoyment. My players certainly are aware of the basic backgrounds of my campaign, but I would say that they have only read about 5% of what I have actually committed to writing. If they want to see more I'll show it to them, but I know they won't read it all because of their short attention spans (although there is one player who likes to read everything about Morvia but he's the exception).

If your players don't appreciate your efforts then either stop doing the journal or do it for your own satisfaction.

 

[Stalker0]

My DM starting offering bonus XP to people who did summaries of our game sessions. Even with that, I was the only one who did them, but they got done.

Its a game, and can be time consuming at times (especially if you meet on a consistent basis). Understand not everyone has the passion for writing you obviously do. Write the journal if you enjoy doing it, but don't expect them to do it.

But if your game is going well, isn't that enough?

 

[BlackMoria]

There is player 'expectations' and DM 'expectations'. Sometimes those expectations never converge, sometimes they converge and sometimes everyone thinks they converge.

I think this is a case of the latter. What the players had in mind in regard to a journal (content, maintenance, contribution, etc) and what you had mind seems to have passed each other like ships in the night.

You had one set of expectations and they had another so while it seemed everyone was singing the same song, it was not the case.

So, your choices are:

1. Drop the journal and tell the players it is being dropped due to lack of input and / or interest on their part. No accusations....just the plain reality of 'reward to time invested' is unsatisfactory to you.

or

2. Ask your players why the journal is not being utilized by them. Lack of time? Not what they had in mind? Etc. Get the reasons and then put it to them for the solution - kill the journal if interest has waned, or have them commit to the time to contribute meaningfully, etc. Whatever they chose, honor the decision. Make it clear to them that both sides must hold up their end because your time is valuable and you don't have time to waste it on activities that they don't fully support.

Lastly, don't have heightened expectations. A journal is a nice touch but it is not a necessity. It is icing on a cake, but the cake is the thing, not the icing.

 

[SiderisAnon]

I've been DMing now for about 22 years and it took me most of that time to learn one important lesson: Never prepare anything for the game that you don't enjoy preparing. The add-on to that is that you should never prepare anything where the preparation isn't the reward unto itself.

I know it's a little broad. You have to have at least a basic adventure or something similar for the session, whether it's pregen or winging it. However, anything extra you put together, from handouts to maps to descriptions to backstory to campaign notes to special treasure cards to whatever else you can think of is all stuff the DM should be doing because the DM enjoys doing it. (Or maybe because they feel/believe they cannot run the session with out.) That's all that matters.

Yes, sometimes players will love something you do. Sometimes they will ooh and ah over it. Most of the time, the majority of the players will never notice the work you put into it. That's just how players are. Unless they DM a lot, they just don't get it.

I realize my comments sound very cynical. Well, they probably are. That doesn't mean they aren't spot on. It's a common curse of being a DM. There was even a strip about it recently in DM of the Rings.

Don't let this get you down. It shouldn't take the fun out of the game, it should just let you know where to focus your efforts so you get the most fun out of the game.


As a side-note on this: I don't believe this is a RPG player thing. This is a human thing. I see the same thing at work. People don't care about the great training materials you create to make their job easier. People don't think about all the work you did to get project X done on time. Most people just generally don't notice the things that happen outside of their own headspace; they just don't realize.

Yeah, okay, definitely cynical.

 

[TerraDave]

It is all too familiar...

I would paraphrase another poster: don't do something that doesn't directly impact the game, unless you enjoy doing it as an end in and of itself. And while you can always post in other places (like the story hour here) if you would like an audience, it really needs to be worth doing just doing.

As an aside, players can do this to the DM. I have had a few cases of long PC backstories that didn't seem to really mesh with my vision of things, and, more importantly, I did have to read to be polite. It was kind of annoying, and gave me a much better apreciation of the other side of the issue.

EDIT: prev poster basically just said same thing as my first para...so we are not alone!

 

[+5 Keyboard!]

Hey, everyone. Your suggestions and input have definitely helped. I'm feeling a bit more grounded as far as what I need to do to keep ME happy. It's easy to lose sight of the fact that not everyone's at the same place I'm at. The fact is, the group is really having fun and I'll just have to focus on the 4-5 hours of their attention spans that they give me each week and make the most of it.

 

[molonel]

As others have already suggested, dump the journal. It's too much like homework.

I give XP awards in my games for people who write fiction or fiction fragments based on the game. It works extremely well. It's not enough that people who don't enjoy writing are penalized, but it's enough to reward those who go the extra mile.

When you've got a group of players who get together on a regular basis and enjoy your game, don't spit in the eye of that. Enjoy what you've got, and don't force stuff like this.

 

[scourger]

The only time I've gotten the players to write up a campaign log was in a Savage Worlds Tour of Darkness game in which I gave an extra bennie to every player who wrote such an email between sessions. It could be a mission report, a letter home, a personal journal or whatever. I collected them in one big Word file with editing and some summary notes. After the campaign concluded, I had copies printed and gave them as Christmas gifts. I think it made a nice souvenir, even though one player did the majority of the writing. One of the players only wrote one or two entries, but he contributed otherwise by buying & painting minis for all the PCs for more bonus bennies. The lesson is that different players enjoyed the journal at different levels.

My current campaign is a core 3.0 game using Greyhawk as the default setting. The player who wants to know the most about the setting is playing a character with no (repeat: no) knowledge skills. The player also actually knows the most about the Greyhawk setting. So, it's frustrating to me to try to prepare information for a player character who really doens't know much about the world. But, last session, I gave each player a short handout with an adventure option that they know about from some source. The characters with more knowledge skills got more information, but everyone was immersed to a lesser or greater extent. I only spent the amount of time I alloted for the handouts, so they varied from 2 to about 8 pages. It worked pretty well, and now the party are on a path to an advneture that is more manageable then me trying to stat the whole world.

So, do as much or as little as is fun for you.

 

[SavageRobby]

Before you give up totally on your journal, you might check to see if any single player wants to keep it up. I've found (both in work and in games) that if multiple people are responsible for something, then no one will be; everyone thinks someone else will do it. But when responsibility lays with one individual, they are far more likely to be accountable.

Do you have a player who is an aspiring GM? Or one who likes to write backstory and gets into the world history/politics and all of that? If so, recruit him/her to do the journal. Reward them with extra XP. Often, if you have a player like that, you can ask them to help (in a limited way) develop aspects of the campaign. I had a player once who was gifted at that sort of thing, and it helped lighten my load (and make it more fun) by making some of my GM work a collaborative enterprise, instead of just an individual one. As a side benefit (and not a small one), it also made the creative process more fun.

 

[Friendless]

Never depend on anyone to read anything. I'm a programmer and I tell you the reason developers don't document their code is because nobody ever reads it. They might say they want it, but they still won't read it. Give up and find some other way to solve the problem. People are even more reluctant to write than to read. Check out how many people read this thread and didn't post a reply!