Mostly play, sometimes GM. I just enjoy playing more. And frankly, I find it hard to be DM. I don't mind spending hours building classed NPCs for the party to kill, I actually sort of enjoy that. But I struggle with thinking up a plot/story, can't name things easily, and really really hate mapping. Thinking up specfic rooms or environments to have a fight in with difficult terrain, high ground, enemies coming from multiple places, etc... is fun. Putting together a dungeon map or world map, or even the layout of a town? Hate it. I don't want to run mindless dungeon crawl hack and slashes, and I also don't like using adventure paths much. So...I end up seldom DMing.
Sounds like you have mastered the hardest thing, which is making a villain or monster that is challenging but not a TPK, so I would gladly play at your table.
I am like you in that the long term plots and storylines that are fun and interesting are really hard. But, I don't know anyone, even professional writers, that this comes easy to so I try to do the best I can and come up with something. I do have a secret resource though :
The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It has some good plot ideas, theoretically ALL plot ideas.
For names, when I am tired, there are a lot of Bobs, Steves, and Joes that end up in my games, but when I am on the ball I will try something like:
Character Name Generator
to generate names for me.
As for maps, I couldn't make a decent map to save my life. So I steal, like crazy. If I find a map for a town, I use that as my town, just change the people that are in it. So I have used the city state of the invincible overlord many a time. Hommlet shows up all the time, etc. I have been gaming since '77 so I have built up quite the collection that I can scan in and use.
For dungeons I do the same. I take a dungeon someone else made, repopulate it with my monsters, and then throw it into my game, presto, professional looking map. I can upload a jpg of it to image shack and link that to OpenRPG, do a little shading and the game is on.
Trust me, I am noone's idea of a perfect DM, I am a much better player, but the game must go on. So when noone else will step up, I try to take my turn at it. It is work for me, not like back breaking ditch digging work, but still work to think of and write decent adventures. I don't know many, though I do know some, that it comes easy to, so don't worry that you have to struggle at times. Most of us do. If your players are DMs/GMs as well then they will certainly appreciate the break and will be supportive.
If I remember correctly, the last time I got to actually play in someone else's campaign was in March, and we had just hit second level when that game hit the skids. I've tried playing in organized play events, but it's not the same as playing in someone's home game. It looks like my FLGS is about to wind up a new 1E campaign too... So hopefully I'll get some good ol' play time in that.
