D&D General "I have Experienced What I'd Call 'DM Burnout'" (a poll)

[overgeeked]

Yeah, and it's that mindset that is the problem, IMO.

Agreed.

The best you can do is be clear about your expectations and playstyle at the very beginning, and then stick to it for the first few games, until that mindset changes...gradually and peacefully.

I've tried. Nothing I've done has moved that needle one iota. In my experience, players want RAW, RAW, and nothing but RAW. Any change will be a constant fight. I ran a 5E West Marches game almost constantly for the better part of a year...first day to last day...players complained about the tiniest house rule. Players there from the start or new players coming in, didn't matter. They expect RAW and they'll tell you all about it and how wrong you are for making house rules. It never seems to occur to them to not play though. They have a right to play and a right to RAW and you're a terrible referee if you violate either.

Changing the rules won't always change that mindset (and even when it does, that change isn't always positive.)

I've only ever seen it evoke a negative response, never a positive one.

I don't really trust the game devs and publishers to try to change my table's expectations; that should be on me. (I promise that's not meant as criticism; the devs do great work...I just need a line between "what the publishers create" and "what I bring to the table." And 5E makes drawing that line really easy.)

I can't change the expectations players have when they sit down at my table, the devs can. In part, the devs set those expectations in the books. The rest of the players' expectations come from the community. There's nothing I or the devs can really do about that. And don't get me started on players just shouting out skill checks without describing what their characters do in the fiction.

I have to work with what I'm given. But I can't change people, nor their preferences, nor their playstyles...and honestly I don't really want to. That's not my job. I can marginally affect their behavior at my table, but I can't really affect their attitudes. If someone's a hardcore power gamer, nothing I say or do will change that. If someone's a hardcore roleplayer, nothing I say or do will change that. Best I can do is get them to tone things down ever so fractionally to keep the game moving and not suck for the rest of the table. I can't break players of the notion that they should get to win effortlessly 90% of the time. Nor can I seem to break players of the notion that they're entitled to whatever they want at the drop of a hat.

If a player isn't a good fit for my table, no harm no foul. We'll go our separate ways. That's not an attitude shared by most players, however. They seem to have this notion that any and all 5E games are open and friendly to whatever style or preferences they bring. Regardless of whatever the referee explicitly tells them when first discussing the game in question.

DM: "This is a game for X. This is not a game for Y."

Player: "I dislike X but like Y, therefore this is a game for Y but not X. Got it."

 

[Yaarel]

When you say the DM is carrying the load, do you mean the prep work? Or is there more to it in your view?

I enjoy worldbuilding. So the "work" that I do anyway, might be alot for other styles.

On the other hand, as a worldbuilder, I am tired of fighting against the Players Handbook that the players read.

I am tired of the Forgotten Realms gods hopping up and down on the sand castles that I am trying to build.

So. 2024 could do MUCH to make my DM job easier.


But other DMs complain about the prep. Creating monsters/NPCs. Micromanaging fiddly rules. And other stuff. That seems could be easier.

 

[R_J_K75]

Yep. Every single time I've sat down to prep an adventure for the last few years. I don't do much prep anymore but sometimes it's hard even to get the bare bones of an outline together. But I usually get through it enough that when an hour before game time comes around, I'll drink a few beers to loosen up and I'm good to go. My players are happy to just hang out, have a few drinks and game. Our expectations at this point aren't very high, nor is the game too serious so that actually works in our favor and makes our sessions more fun.

 

[CleverNickName]

I've only ever seen it evoke a negative response, never a positive one.

I can't change the expectations players have when they sit down at my table, the devs can. In part, the devs set those expectations in the books. The rest of the players' expectations come from the community. There's nothing I or the devs can really do about that.

DM: "This is a game for X. This is not a game for Y."

Player: "I dislike X but like Y, therefore this is a game for Y but not X. Got it."

Yikes. Thankfully I've never had to deal with that kind of disconnect...I don't have any real advice on how to fix that. At any rate, "Oh yeah? Well the rules say this!" probably isn't going to help your players fall in love with X.

If you've only ever seen a negative response, maybe try getting their input? Ask them if they have any ideas on how to make X more appealing, and be willing to sacrifice pieces of Y in order to get there?

 

[overgeeked]

I enjoy worldbuilding. So the "work" that I do anyway, might be alot for other styles.

On the other hand, as a worldbuilder, I am tired of fighting against the Players Handbook that the players read.

Just so.

DM: "In a world without drow..."

Player: "But the drow are in the PHB! They're my favorite! I have to be able to play a drow!"

DM: Sigh.

Every single change from the PHB is a fight waiting to happen. Players have expectations set by the books. The referee can either conform to those expectations or get ready to fight. Doesn't matter what it is. Doesn't matter if it's something anyone at the table wanted to actually use or not. Someone will fight you on any change you make just on principle.

So. 2024 could do MUCH to make my DM job easier.

Yes, please.

But other DMs complain about the prep.

Depends on the prep. I like rolling on a bunch of tables to see what's in the world. That's my prep.

Creating monsters/NPCs.

As long as you don't use the official rules to make monsters it's great. Use the 5E MM on a business card and/or action-oriented monsters and you can make fun monsters in minutes.

Micromanaging fiddly rules.

That's the one that's the biggest sticking points for me. Arguing about ranges. Arguing about how many spells a PC can cast in a round. Thanks internet for making my players think they can cast like 9 spells in a round, btw. Arguing about LOS on spells. Arguing about the legality of some stupid power gamer build. Arguing about cover. Arguing about carrying capacity. Arguing about whether their characters and their pack animals actually need food. (Yes, really.) On and on and on. The players expect the referee to run the game like a computer would. With the same precision and perfection. Input, output.

 

[iserith]

I enjoy worldbuilding. So the "work" that I do anyway, might be alot for other styles.

On the other hand, as a worldbuilder, I am tired of fighting against the Players Handbook that the players read.

I am tired of the Forgotten Realms gods hopping up and down on the sand castles that I am trying to build.

So. 2024 could do MUCH to make my DM job easier.

I'm not sure I understand this bit. Do you mean perhaps that you change things and the players don't know that you did or ignore it? For example, dragonborn are not a thing in your world, but players are clamoring to create dragonborn anyway? Or like you're using Greyhawk gods but they want to suddenly be clerics of Ilmater or whatever?

But other DMs complain about the prep. Creating monsters/NPCs. Micromanaging fiddly rules. And other stuff. That seems could be easier.

The DMG could do better on telling people how to prep. There are also a lot of tools online that DMs can use to make things quicker. I'm not sure whether that's the best thing to publish in something like a DMG though as those tools' availability may change over time. Certainly encouraging DMs to look for things online would be useful. Some more guidance on creating sandboxes and using tables to generate content would also be good. It has some of that in the DMG, but it's not obvious how to pull it together in a way that's going to work easily. I just put together an island-hopping hexcrawl using the Saltmarsh ship rules and overland travel and it's really tight and easy to manage. It will generate content for over a year easily. And I'm not even planning on running it for my group. I just wanted to do it.

I don't find the rules all that fiddly, but then I've been playing for 7 or 8 years now so maybe that's just faded to the background for me. I also don't really pay attention to the players' sheets. That's on them to manage. I have a general sense of when something doesn't seem right for this edition and ask occasionally if I'm not sure if something the player did was rules legal. Other than that, I don't see this as much in the way of overhead.

 

[Yaarel]

I'm not sure I understand this bit. Do you mean perhaps that you change things and the players don't know that you did or ignore it? For example, dragonborn are not a thing in your world, but players are clamoring to create dragonborn anyway? Or like you're using Greyhawk gods but they want to suddenly be clerics of Ilmater or whatever?

Some flavor stuff is "containable". I could literally cover it with one or two post-it notes.

Or if I wanted, take a black marker and simply delete a sentence, and never deal with it again.

But other flavor sprawls everywhere on almost every page, in class descriptions, in race descriptions, in spell descriptions. The "gods" and the especially the Forgotten Realms version of gods, are everywhere.

I would literally need to rewrite the Players Handbook from scratch to delete the gods.

I even tried to do that. Tracked down a Players Handbook on a Word doc. But it just is much too much. Not worth it.

Anything relating "setting" must be in the DMs Guide. It doesnt belong in the Players Handbook. Especially doesnt belong in the Cleric class.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I've absolutely experienced burnout. It's been a while. For me, I think a lot of my burnout came from other problems beyond the "DMing isn't fun for me right now/Can't come up with any ideas I like" that I think comes to mind most frequently when I think of burnout. When the game is going well, with good players that all gel together, and no external factors horning in, D&D becomes a machine that just generates more ideas and more desire to play.

When it's not, though, when scheduling is a nightmare, or one or two players are causing trouble at the table, or there's a mismatch between DM and player expectations, I think it can be easy to lose the joy of the game and view it as a chore, or lose that spark of inspiration. For me, that's what frequently leads to burnout. I'm not tired of the game, I'm tired of dealing with the problems at the table.

 

[overgeeked]

Yikes. Thankfully I've never had to deal with that kind of disconnect...I don't have any real advice on how to fix that.

You're lucky. But then in talking with people on here and other forums, apparently I have a uniquely bad experience with players. Doesn't really help stopping it, but at least it's not wide spread...I guess.

At any rate, "Oh yeah? Well the rules say this!" probably isn't going to help your players fall in love with X.

I don't need them to love X, just to not sign up to play a game where X is a thing only to endlessly complain about X being a thing.

If you've only ever seen a negative response, maybe try getting their input?

I did. The responses I got fell into two camps. 1. Don't do that. 2. Reward us for playing along, don't punish us.

I tried 2. They just ignored the rewards so they didn't have to deal with the limitations. Effectively reaching 1.

As an example, wearing armor while resting. I used the Xanathar's Guide rules for limiting armor wearing while sleeping. The players objected, I asked and they told me 1 and 2 above. So I started rewarding inspiration for not wearing armor while resting...so everyone just kept on wearing armor while resting and accepted they wouldn't get inspiration for playing along. I also increased the amount of inspiration a PC could have, so they could have more than one and keep them so there was no "lost" inspiration for playing along.

Ask them if they have any ideas on how to make X more appealing, and be willing to sacrifice pieces of Y in order to get there?

Literally nothing. RAW or RAW or RAW. Your options are RAW. In my experience, 5E players do not want anything limiting their characters in any way at all. They will sacrifice nothing. They will risk nothing. I've had players rage quit over their character taking 1 hp of damage.

 

[CleverNickName]

You're lucky.
[....]
They will risk nothing. I've had players rage quit over their character taking 1 hp of damage.

Player: "But the drow are in the PHB! They're my favorite! I have to be able to play a drow!"
[...]
Every single change from the PHB is a fight waiting to happen. Players have expectations set by the books. The referee can either conform to those expectations or get ready to fight. Doesn't matter what it is. Doesn't matter if it's something anyone at the table wanted to actually use or not. Someone will fight you on any change you make just on principle.
[...]
Arguing about ... Arguing about ... Arguing about... Arguing about ... Arguing about ... Arguing about ... Arguing about ... On and on and on. The players expect the referee to run the game like a computer would.

Ugh...that sucks. I don't know of any DM (myself included) who would put up with that for long.

The more I learn about your gaming group, the less convinced I am that the 5E rules are the problem. Were they this contrary to earlier editions of D&D? Because I get the feeling that no matter what the game developers produce in the years to come, your players are going to find a way to make a problem out of it.