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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BSF" data-source="post: 1629063" data-attributes="member: 13098">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.</blockquote>

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