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Message: <blockquote data-quote="scourger" data-source="post: 1932516" data-attributes="member: 12328">D&D burn-out curesI've been there, so I'll offer my solution.  The short version is to take the W*O*R*K out of the G*A*M*E and just P*L*A*Y.  This lesson really hit home for me eariler this year watching one of my gaming buddies DM.  He didn't really know the rules or spend a lot of time preparing.  He just ran the game and had fun doing it.  I was coming off a year of not wanting to DM weekly due to some player boycotts.  I called it my DM embargo.  I was running an alternate game on weekends and playing weekly.  I had the best of both worlds.  Then, I lost 3 gaming friends.  One moved away, effectively killing the weekend games.  One quit our group.  The other took a "hiatus" (essentially quitting but trying to leave a foot in the door).  I decided I had exactly two choices: game or not.  I chose to game on.  I wanted to do something different but based on the D&D rules.  I also had few reliable players.  The options were dwindling.  I knew Judge Dredd d20 would work for 2 or 3 players, but I couldn't figure out how to run a D&D game for 2 players (the third lives out of town and is sometimes sketchy about showing up).  Then, one of the players suggested that each of them could run 2 characters.  That brilliant suggestion led me to envision The Shackled City adventure path with human judges, jedi and mutants mixed in with the standard D&D races/classes and aasimar paladin for good measure.  I knew the first adventure is good and tough.  I made it a condition that they had to play one "alternate" character and had the option to then play one standard character or alternate as their second.  Also, I told them they were the good guys.  Period.  I didn't think the players would go for it.  But they did.  It's been a great few months of gaming.  Attendance has been good, and we even brought back another player who had dropped out some time ago (not one of the 3 mentioned before).  I don't worry too much about the rules, conversion or preparation.  I do as much (or as little) as is fun for me and then just show up every week and have fun running the game.  It's been great.  I'll continue for as long as it lasts.  So, my advice to you is to do the same.  Buy Dungeon.  Better yet, get a subscription.  The Shackled City was developed in that magazine over the last couple of years.  They have a good little 3-part series going now.  Get issue #94 on paizo.com or eBay so that you have the awesome Omega World mini-game.  It is based on D&D but presents an awesome d20 version of the classic Gamma World game.  Its best feature is that it is only about 40 pages.  It is from this game that I sprinkled mutants into my current game.  You should be able to import any adventure you want or easily make your own with the couple of pages of DM advice in the game.  If that doesn't get you there, pick up Judge Dredd d20.  Again, it is based on the 3.0 D&D rules, but it presents a very cool, established world for some great gaming.  I use the judges from this game in my current D&D game.  There are 4 published modules available plus one I found on the Internet and one presented in the publisher's magazine over 2 recent issues.  The published adventures are good enough to run for a fun, mini-camapign.  If that fails, get the Star Wars revised core rule book and download a bunch of free adventures from wizards.com.  I would love to do this for an all-jedi campaign, but there just isn't enough time.  Maybe one day.Otherwise, get Mesopotamia.  It is a great D&D camapign book and module in one.  I would use the variant human races and gods to run a great bronze-age game that would be as much like the stories of Robert E. Howard as I could make it.  Lastly, I'll recommend The Giant's Skull.  It's a nice one-off with a twist that can then be incorporated and recycled in a regular campaign.   If I were at a standstill, that's what I would do.  I find reading new material that puts a new twist on the old game of D&D puts me in just the right mood to DM.  When my current game ends, I'll likely turn to one of the above options to keep on gaming.  And there's more on deck...I'm looking forward to Slavelords of Cydonia.  It's almost here.  There is a thread about it in  the d20/OGL section.  It looks like it could be awesome.  You might look at Grim Tales, too, since the publisher produced SoC for it (but I have passed on GT since it looks too much like d20 Modern for me).  I'll get it and see if it is as good as it might be.  If so and if I can run it in a system already familiar to me, then it gets to stay on the shelf.Similarly, Mongoose is retooling their line of Slaine modules to make them useable for a standard D&D game.  Those adventures looked good, but I loathed the Slaine game for various personal reasons.  I will pick up those modules to read and explore.  If they are as good as the reviews say, then it could be the basis for my low-magic Celtic game; probably all-human with barbarians, bards, druids, fighters, and rogues (and maybe rangers).  There is just too much great material out there that is easy to run.  There is no reason not to DM.</blockquote>

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