D&D General DM Pause?

[Umbran]

How any times in a year do you take as step back from the DM chair to recharge your batteries and play instead?

In a year? Typically none.

I mean, there are sessions my group does not play, for one reason or another. But what time to play I get is typically elsewhere, and does not mean a hiatus of my GMing.

I am, at the moment, in the middle of the only real hiatus I've had in... a decade or so? One game wrapped up, and one of my players said they'd run a side-game for a while, to give me a bit of time to relax, play, and build my next campaign. I'm about to send out my first "so what do you want to play next" questionnaire. I'll have weeks or months of downtime to work with.

 

[MarkB]

I've currently paused a game that I'd been running for well over a year. It was down to a combination of writer's block and burn-out - I tend to get very down on myself after a session, second-guessing everything I'd done. It got to the point where I can't even envision a next stage of the campaign, and the harder I try, the more I shy away from it.

If I can just put it out of my mind for awhile, I may come back to it with a fresh perspective. Or I may just move onto something totally different.

 

[Tallifer]

Whenever I feel too stressed from work, but more often whenever my players can't get their naughty word together.

 

[R_J_K75]

I try and stay relatively consistent through the year but I'll generally cancel a game here and there when Ive hit a block trying to come up an adventure or just dont feel like playing. Summer sees us cancelling here and there as well just so people can go to a concert or some other outdoor activity. Both of these are not the norm. Last few years I started breaking for the holidays, Thanksgiving thru New Years. We may run a pickup game or two during that month and a half but seems enough downtime that Im ready to get back to playing once the holidays are done.

 

[the Jester]

I've been DMing since about 1981, and I only recall one time where I needed or voluntarily took a break. That lasted about a month.

 

[Richards]

None of my DM breaks have been voluntary...we once had several scheduling problems in a row that made our once-or-twice-a-month Saturday game go 11 weeks between sessions, but that wasn't me needing a break - it was family vacations, business trips, illnesses, etc. (And at that point I was desperately needing a break from not DMing!) And in recent years my son started up a once-a-week workday evening campaign so I've gotten to be a player as well as a DM.

Johnathan

 

[aco175]

We try to play every week and 4-5 times each year there are weeks off from work or sick or whatever. There may be weeks when I'm not feeling it and we talk and goof off for longer before we start and may only get through a few encounters. Can't say that there has been a planned break for a few weeks or month.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

How any times in a year do you take as step back from the DM chair to recharge your batteries and play instead? I'm taking the month of June off. My campaign is starting to get on my nerves. Best to take a step back and return to it later.

I've never had to do this, like, ever, have run for years on end before, but there are two caveats to that. First off, when I get bored of a campaign, I typically just make people play a different one, and I have pretty reliable players for that, and I also love to play, and so if anyone else wants to DM, I generally let them, which has probably helped this not become an issue.

 

[ccs]

In my Sunday group we alternate DMing.
So I'll run a campaign - be it 3 months, 18 months, or whatever - then when that ends someone else will run a campaign. Then either me or yet a different person. The typical pattern though is Me/someone/me/someone else/me....
So my breaks last as long as the other guys campaign does.

In my Thur 5e game I'm pretty much the only DM. In-between campaigns there might be several weeks off. Or not.

None of that counts the random/planned weeks where there's no game for whatever reason.

 

[Lanefan]

So far my only intentional breaks have come between campaigns, i.e. about once per 10-12 years, during which time I plan out the next one and give the rules system a good long once-over to fix things that didn't work in the campaign just ended.