Gamer Burn out

[Mark]

Gothmog - Cool! Like GeekusMaximus, I'm keen to hear more!

That would be an impossible sell to my group members. Too many of them enjoy stating out their characters and making them as uber as possible. They would never go for a game like that.

If it comes down to a choice between your sanity and not gaming at all, I think you'd be surprised what your friends would accept trying...if only for a handful of sessions. You might even consider Co-DMing with your wife, taking turns keeping track of the player stats and running the encounters. If you don't find some way to mix it up, I fear you will find out why the word "Crash" is often paired with the word "Burn"...

Best of luck with whatever works out to be the best approach! We're all in your virtual corner!

 

[Belen]

I've been missing something from my game sessions, too, lately, though I'm not sure what to do about it:

-Until a year ago, my group and I used to game from say 3pm until 11pm or midnight. We'd game until 6:30 or 7, then we'd break for dinner, eat at an inexpensive restaurant, and "shoot the bull" for an hour or so. We'd go back to gaming, game until 11 pmm or midnight, and break for home. Then, at several players' request, we rolled it to 12 noon to 6pm, and then break for the day. In some ways, I miss those bull sessions, because we got to know each other in more than just our esoteric game knowledge; we'd discuss politics, religion, philosophy, current events, etc.

Our schedules only permit us time to get together once a week, and we don't want to miss our gaming time, which is still going strong, but in some ways I miss that B.S. time in between the gaming.

Heck, at the ENworld Gamedays, the dinners are half the fun, for the same reason - you're more than a screenname and a character.

Ah...we do the 3-11 thing currently. We do break for dinner and usually a few people stay after the game to chat until midnight, one in the morning. I really enjoy the hanging out time and that has not changed. I find that to be fun (if only we could cut down on political arguments (sigh)).

 

[Greatwyrm]

I'm going to take a little different take on this than everyone else has. Sometimes, enough is enough.

I'm a dyed-in-the-wool gamer. No doubt about it. But even I reach my limit sooner or later. I just walk away for a month or two. I still read game books. I still hatch plots for games I'll probbaly never get to run. But I don't play or run anything for at least a month. Usually by then I've got the shakes and just have to get a set of dice in my hand and an orc to kill.

 

[Kapture]

I think the last time I really burnt out on gaming, it was because of the players in my group. Lots of high maintenance types. Maybe you should leave some of the mediation and group maintenance to other members. Definately find another hobby to share your time with. If DND is your only social activity, there really is something the matter.

That said, I know I burnt out on message boards a long time ago. If I see another thread about whether or not you should allow PCs to kill gods, I will stab out my own eyes. Perhpas you should bow out and lurk for awhile. Often works for me.

 

[Ibram]

I started suffering form burnout about a year ago now. I had plenty of ideas but no real motivation to to impliment them in game, so I tanked that campaign and let another guy take over. he ran for a few months then I took over again, this time running an Orental campaign. Though I was highly motivated it seemed to me that my players were not, so when the adventure came to an end I gave up my chair to the other DM who was going to run a "classic" D&D game. Now hes droped out of our group, probably for a long time and the DM chair comes back to me.

Now I'm getting ready to resume my Orental campaing, this time armed with new knowledge. You see a big part of my burn out was that my players are a rather passive group while I am a very active player. I was designing adventures from my PoV, throwing out lots of plot hooks and waiting for them to jump on one (a very non-linear way to design an adventure). My players dont seem to like that, they seem to prefer a bit of railroading which is what I'm going to start dooing.

 

[Desdichado]

I went through a bit of a burnout period recently. However, getting together a group of really good players, running a game that's ideally suited to my tastes, with a lot of house rules and changed assumptions, etc. really got me excited again. Sometimes, as a GM, you just have to say, I think, "we're doing this my way, or we're not doing it at all."

And for the most part, that's not a bad thing. So, my two wizard lovers are stuck in a setting that has very little magic, and what it does have tends to drive you insane. They're still having fun, so far at least, if the reports I'm getting back are accurate.

 

[BSF]

I would suggest an indefinite gaming vacation. Here is the thing, the way you are describing your current goal sounds too much like "work". Your wife is running a game to give you time to work on your game? You are having a hard time getting motivated to do so. Go figure. It's not something you are doing for recreation, it's something you are _supposed_ to be working on.

Nah, my advice is to just bag it for a while. Don't give yourself a time frame. Don't put any pressure on yourself to be more than just a player. Just hang out and coast. If the people you game with are good gaming friends, they won't mind. They will pick up the slack and new things will come out and sooner or later you will get the itch again. A story, situation, scene, or whatever will pop into your head. You will need to bring that to fruition. Once again, you will want to take the DM seat. When the time is right, that will happen. I wouldn't force that to come though. Talk with the gaming group. Be honest about how you feel. If it is a good group, something will come through and they will all still keep playing.

As for the focus on mechanics - I know what you are talking about. I am bad about mechanics myself. Heck, I chose to play a Bard because it would be a sub-optimal combat choice so I would have to focus on other ways to shine. That was roughly three years ago and I have fun with Stephen. I have a lot of mechanics in how his character comes across. But, that is not as important as the fact that most of my gaming group thinks that Stephen comes across as a multi-faceted character with believable motivations and personality elements. That feels good. I keep my inner munchkin in check by leveraging the mechanics, but it is geared toward representing a character believably. That's for the game I play in.

For the game I run, I get my mechanics urges with some NPC's. Perhaps not the strongest case to not feel burned out eh? But, let me tell you about my current group! See, for this campaign, I changed some of the rules. First of all, we use point-buy. As well as ability scores, the PC's had to buy their social status. The game was initially set in a city-state with very byzantine politics and a nearly feudal social structure. If the PC was going to be a true city resident, with all the benefits that entails, they had to spend some of their points to buy that status. They could also be foreigners, or they could be run-of-the-mill serfs. I figured most of my players would twink the stats and just be serfs. Nope, most of them are foreigners.

Skills all cost 1 skill point/rank and all can be purchased as if they are class skills. (Well, except for Psychic Skills, those are basically RAW.) I wanted characters to be able to do things outside their normal "class roles" if it fit a concept.

There are a few spoilers here for my game. If you happen to be one of my players, read further at your own risk for surprise.

I also asked them to all give me a character concept and I would help them find a class out of all the books I have. As a result, I have some interesting characters.

- A wacky little shaman, named Ceru, from an island chain (using the Green Ronin Shaman). His gig is that he has trouble understanding things like money, politics and other trappings of Civilization. He is also a very skilled Dreamer. (Using the dream rules from Penumbra's Occult Lore). Part of the group has already had an adventure in a dream. They barely rescued the fey princess that was trapped in the dreamscape of a green dragon.

- I have a "Wanderer" (From Swashbuckling Adventures), named Felix. This is the player that typically plays your big barbarians that hit things very, very hard. The hook for the character is that he is really good at making things. He is 4th level and has 6 skills with a +10 or greater modifier. He is really good at crafting arms and armor! In fact, he has just got done crafting a nagamaki that the local lord will be giving to the next character. Anyway, this character, is not a combat fiend like the players other PCs have been. In fact, the player wanted a skill hound that did not have Sneak Attack.

- I have a Psychic Samurai, named Li Xian Gao. This PC is being played by Macbeth here on the boards. He wanted to play a wannabe Samurai in a foreign land. He is trying to find his honor and then teach his concepts of honor to the people around him. Did I mention that he is Psychic? (From Green Ronin's Psychic Handbook). He has a few interesting abilities, but nothing really over the top. He has found a potential lord! And this upcoming session, during the annual Fall Festival, the local lord is going to present Li with a mithril nagamaki crafted by Felix in their downtime between adventures.

- I have Tormal the Martial Artist (Beyond Monks) who is on a quest to find secret books hidden by the founder of his academy many centuries back. Tormal hits things well. He is also a sculptor, oh and a bookkeeper.

- I have Ayla, the unruly Ranger. This is a new player and bit more along the lines of the "My whole family is dead" background. She is also a core class. Ayla has an odd version of modesty. She is convinced that she isn't good at anything.

- I have Brother Oceas. The cleric that has amnesia and doesn't remember his (thoroughly written out) past.

- Then there is the 7th character. I am not too clear on this one because he keeps changing. His first character apparently died at the hands of hobgoblins in a dungeon. The group was not able to retrieve the body. His second character is a big, buff fighter that is a runaway slave gladiator. But, the player is finding that he doesn't fit the group very effectively and is working on a Sun Mage (Path of Magic) to introduce in the next session or two.

The majority of the PC's are non-core classes and are builds that would be considered sub-optimal. Most of the PC's have fairly detailed backgrounds. Many of the players have written out part of the campaign environment. Tormal created the small island nation where his Academy is. Oceas has created his diety. Ceru has developed a small island nation. Felix has dropped in a pirate crew as part of his background. These and more have helped give the world a little more flavor, and it was done through the work of the players with my guidance on how it might need to be tweaked to fit into the game world.

I managed to get around the player need to optimize based on the experience system. Many, many months ago, Rel sent me his exp system. It removes the reliance on combat and provides a quantifiable system that the players can see for things like socialization, creating items (and not just magic items), reaching story goals, etc. By using Rel's system, it became apparent that the exp awards are not arbitrary judgement and are not geared toward combt only. I believe this gave some of my players an incentive to think outside the combat box and has given me back the opportunity to work with non-combat encounters without the players feeling cheated of exp.

Last week and this week have been focused on the PCs attending a Festival. There are martial contests, there are crafting contests, there are social interactions with a variety of NPC's. The players are not worrying about killing monsters and taking their treasure. They are more concerned with other aspects of the game, and I am enjoying that.

OK, a lot of non-related stuff in this post. But, my audience is BelenUmeria. It is possible to seize the game and shift the focus back to less mechanical aspects. I am hoping that the majority of my post serves to show you how I have tried to do that so you can think of ways to bring the game back to what you enjoy. Take some time off from running a game and just enjoy being a player for a while. Then, when you are recharged, change up the game in a couple of little ways to make it more enjoyable for you.

 

[billd91]

OK, I can kind of see a few things going on here. Gaming is pretty much your main social function and you're the martyr who organizes it all. That can be a pain. You could really stand to get up and do something else.

If you want to do something with your gamer buddies, instead of playing one week, suggest going out to a bar to play darts. A few rounds of cricket over a pitcher of beer.

Or maybe suggest a very different sort of game like Formula De, Settlers of Catan, or Munchkin. Something you can banter over without getting too wrapped up in rules. A good social event.

Maybe host a few weeks of movies for a break. Movies you can have a good time watching whether bad (in a good way) or really good movies. Pick ones that most of the group hasn't seen and probably wouldn't see without prompting.

Go out to a restaurant and don't worry about getting back to gaming. We did that one night instead of playing the game as usual. Went out for ribs at Famous Dave's and chewed the fat (literally and metaphorically).

And I would also suggest delegating responsibility for keeping the schedule, mustering the players, and all that, to someone other than yourself or your spouse.

I'm probably pretty lucky in this regard because we just like to chat and bs with each other. And my wife and I are also involved in a large friendship group where we all have kids around the same age and most people are hobbiest in overlapping areas (stamping/scrapbooking, gaming, camping, computer geeking, swinging, ah-HA, just trying to see if you're all paying attention, etc). So we have a variety of excuses for getting together with the same people.

 

[Gothmog]

That sounds really cool!

How did/do you handle level ups?

Gothmog - Cool! Like GeekusMaximus, I'm keen to hear more!

Sure guys, I'd be happy to elaborate. They rolled up their character's ability scores, and I started them at level 1. Back then there were non-weapon proficiencies, and I told them how many they got, and they got to choose, but they didn't write down the score for it. Weapon profs were the same way- they took the ones they wanted, and noted them down. So basically they had their ability scores (which if you roll them or point buy, you can't keep secret), skills, WPs, and equipment. They have a pretty good idea of what level they are, but not XP totals.

After they made their characters, I went and made up a big Excel spreadsheet with their AC, HP, THACO (BAB now) for each weapon and damage, movement, saves, feats, and skills on it. I think I put it in 6 point type, and it takes up about 1 page. On a second page, I have a list of any magical/unusual/unidentified equipment they might have. I NEVER told them the plus on an item, nor did I tell them exact dimensions or game info on the item- only what it did and a general idea of how it worked once they discovered its powers.

During play, I found that I needed to refer to the spreadsheet less and less as I began to memorize the pertinent info. If a player wanted to use a skill, roll an attack, or make a save, they just announced the d20 result to me, and I figured in any modifiers. If they want to use a feat (say Power Attack in this case), I assume they make a max power attack unless they specify a Controlled Power Attack, in which case I count the attack penalty/ dmg bonus as 1/2 their BAB. This sped up play greatly, and let them focus more on roleplaying and character development than tweaking every value on the character sheet. During combat, I started using more vibrant and cinematic descriptions of events, and at the end of every round someone got wounded, I'd let them know if they were lightly wounded (1-25% HP gone), moderately (26-50%), severly (51-75%), or critically (76-95%), or mortally (96-99%) wounded. This gives them a rough idea of how much fight they have left, but as in real life, its impossible to guage how badly injured you are during a hectic situation like a battle. They told me this made combat for exciting and enjoyable for them- wondering if the next blow would be telling, and they seemed MORE willing to take risks and use unconventional tactics in combat (using tables as shields and rushing archers, using elevation, leaping into a pile of orcs during ambush, etc). I also found that instead of saying "I attack, does an 18 hit?", they started describing and acting out their actions more, and really got into it.

They was I handle level-ups is kinda sneaky, but it works. Under 3E/3.5 I have each character give me a list of skills and feats they want to develop in their spare time, and rank them according to how much they prioritize their training. Its assumed that during their downtime they are practicing the skill or feat. Between each adventure, the character is free to reprioritize which skills or feats have first pick. Once they level up, I go with the most recent skill and feat set, and apply one rank to each skill, and give them the feat they have been training most with. If the PC wants to improve the skill by more than one rank, he gives it a 1' signification, which means I apply as many skill points to it at that level as is possible. I give 60% of max hp at each level, so rolling HP isn't a big deal. They actually seem to like this method, since it cuts down on paperwork for them.

Spellcasters still have to deal with spells per day, and there isn't much of any way around that short of a power point system, which is too complicated for the good it would do (we tried it for a while). If a character wants to take a certain prestige class (which are VERY rare in my world), they need to meet up with someone who can train them and convince them they should be inducted into it. I'm usually pretty loose with PrC prereqs since they aren't cherry-picking feats and skills for what the books have in mind, but as long as they have similar power level prereqs and the same set of skills, I usually allow it. This has only happened twice though, so it hasn't been a big concern.

We have found that using the no-stat method has brought back the "magic" in the game for us, and that the players see the game world as a living world rather than as a series of numerical challenges to be overcome. I think if you get your players to try this for a few adventures BelenUmeria, you and they will be pleasantly surprised at how much the game changes, and how different your perspectives about the game become.

 

[Mr. Lobo]

DM Burnout

A little heresy maybe.

What about trying an earlier edition of D&D that is more rules lite?

I was talking to my bro's the other day and one of the things that popped up was playing D&D. We couldn't get a session in because of other things happening (family events and all) but one of my brothers made a telling remark.

He said he liked playing a lot better in the earlier days with the edition that had less rules. I'm talking Basic or 1st edition AD&D. My other brother agreed. They both commented on how the 3rd edition games just got too bogged down in looking up rules and making sure everything was by the book.

Granted, it doesn't have to be this way with 3rd edition. But sometimes if the nit-pick rules aren't there you may never even know that you've missed them!

After a few years of the new edition rules being out I think enough playtesting has been done to get a real feel for the game. And it seems like a few players are finding that the rules may be a little overbearing for their style of play as judged by some of the threads on these boards.

Maybe if you made your campaign based on Basic D&D you might find what you're looking for. I know I'm going in that direction myself.
Plus you can buy the PDF's for the Basic rules for a relatively cheap amount of money.

Just my $0.02

Mr. Lobo