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How do I recover from a DM burnout?
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<blockquote data-quote="Shades of Green" data-source="post: 5029442" data-attributes="member: 3297"><p>I'm suffering from a chronic case of DM burnout.</p><p></p><p>In the past, about a dozen years ago, I was able to prep for and DM three sessions of D&D (2E back then) per week, with at least two hours per session. Prep took me about an hour per session, all while creating a very enjoyable game. that was the first campaign I've ever DMed.</p><p></p><p>About ten years ago I was able to prep for and run a session of Babylon Project (the old, pre-D20 Babylon 5 RPG) per week for a very long, somewhat wacky campaign.</p><p></p><p>But now I find it difficult to sit down and prep more than one two-hour session of D&D or Shadowrun PER MONTH. It is not a matter of time; sure, I have university studies to deal with and freelance translation contracts to work on, but I still have a few hours to spare per day. But for some reason I can't get myself to sit down, prep a session after a session and run a fast-paced RPG game.</p><p></p><p>I don't know what happened. I still enjoy running RPG games as the DM/GM very much; I've even become much better than before in playing interesting NPCs and inventing cool plots. But I tend to have writer's blocks and blackouts in regard to D&D (now I'm using the excellent BFRPG rules) or other games I play (such as Shadowrun or Traveller).</p><p></p><p>It might be a loss of self-confidence. back then I didn't give a damn about quality; I just rolled on with whatever idea I had in my head, creating cool things which, while occasionally cheesy, were downright fun. now I'm sometimes anxious about how my D&D game would look, about its quality, its originality... Maybe I worry way to much, and maybe these worries create a great burden for me, making DMing more difficult.</p><p></p><p>I'd love to return to one session per week or per two weeks with as much inspiration and drive I had back then.</p><p></p><p>Any advice for healing my burnout and returning me to a healthy pace of prepping and running games would be very welcome <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shades of Green, post: 5029442, member: 3297"] I'm suffering from a chronic case of DM burnout. In the past, about a dozen years ago, I was able to prep for and DM three sessions of D&D (2E back then) per week, with at least two hours per session. Prep took me about an hour per session, all while creating a very enjoyable game. that was the first campaign I've ever DMed. About ten years ago I was able to prep for and run a session of Babylon Project (the old, pre-D20 Babylon 5 RPG) per week for a very long, somewhat wacky campaign. But now I find it difficult to sit down and prep more than one two-hour session of D&D or Shadowrun PER MONTH. It is not a matter of time; sure, I have university studies to deal with and freelance translation contracts to work on, but I still have a few hours to spare per day. But for some reason I can't get myself to sit down, prep a session after a session and run a fast-paced RPG game. I don't know what happened. I still enjoy running RPG games as the DM/GM very much; I've even become much better than before in playing interesting NPCs and inventing cool plots. But I tend to have writer's blocks and blackouts in regard to D&D (now I'm using the excellent BFRPG rules) or other games I play (such as Shadowrun or Traveller). It might be a loss of self-confidence. back then I didn't give a damn about quality; I just rolled on with whatever idea I had in my head, creating cool things which, while occasionally cheesy, were downright fun. now I'm sometimes anxious about how my D&D game would look, about its quality, its originality... Maybe I worry way to much, and maybe these worries create a great burden for me, making DMing more difficult. I'd love to return to one session per week or per two weeks with as much inspiration and drive I had back then. Any advice for healing my burnout and returning me to a healthy pace of prepping and running games would be very welcome :) [/QUOTE]
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