How do you get back on the DM horse?

[Herobizkit]

I'm a long-time player and DM; I've got 25 years od D&D experience under my belt and I've run and done much of what's capable within the D&D/D20 lifestyle.

Presently, I am playing in a 4e game with three other young lads I met when I went back to college - they are 27, 22 and 21 respectively. The 27-year-old is currently running a 100% original homebrew sandbox game via Skype and Roll20 and we're having a wonderful time with it. He probably spends about 20 hours a week on his game, adding and editing tokens and maps, coming up with plot and personae, and really making it his own.

I used to be like that.

A few of you may have seen some of my other threads where I expressed that I'm in a fairly low point in my life, and a lot of that comes from a genuine lack of confidence and direction. This has reflected largely on my ability and even desire to create a new fantasy world for the others to play in.

At some point, our game with our DM will come to a close, and they may be looking to me to run something. The current DM has gently ribbed me by saying that I need to prep at least much as him in order for the game to be good. I legitimately don't know if that's true or not - I used to be able to tell an amazing story mostly off the cuff (I'm especially fond of an old d20 Modern game I improvised roughly 80% of cast/setting, and a solo campaign that was more dramedy/soap opera than action).

Now, I'm not against a bit of prep, but my DM style has often been centered around the characters first - I would get the players' ideas of what kind of game they'd like and characters they'd like to try and build around that, but with the planning stage, none of that is assured, and only when the campaign is 'ready' will the players be prepared to make characters.

Also, there are a couple of friends upstairs from where I live that I used to game with, but kind of fell away from last fall. They're still there, mind - I just stopped gaming with them. I had originally planned to do a short medieval detective/comedy campaign with them... that was literally over a year ago now, and I'm now just coming to realize that I've just been off the horse for far too long.

So, how do I get back on the horse... How can I find my passion again?

 

[ExploderWizard]

If the rest of your life needs some attention it might be better to just play until that other stuff is sorted out and you can get back to a generally more positive place mentally. Being kind of down & out will impact your DMing and I don't know of any magical game idea no matter how cool, that will fix everything in life.

I would keep thinking about ideas and recording them somewhere. I hate when I have this flash of inspiration then kind of forget about it before actually doing anything with it.

 

[dd.stevenson]

Maybe you'd be better off with a low prep indie game like Apocalypse World/Dungeon World or or Fate.

Here's a pretty sweet, short actual play of the former.

 

[Mercurius]

In addition to what ExploderWizard said, I think its important to realize that you can't force it. If you don't feel motivated or inspired to DM, don't do it. I suppose you can try to "fake it until you make it," but that only goes so far - you need at least a seed of inspiration to start from.

I look at it this way. A good DM is an inspired DM, and an inspired DM is one who "has to" DM - who has The Itch. If you don't know what I mean by "The Itch," then you probably shouldn't DM. DMing has to come out of a love of campaign design, adventure and scenario building, and story-telling. Again, you can't force it, you can't fake the Itch - it has to force you to do it.

That said, just because you might not feel motivated right now doesn't mean you won't at some point. The Itch could be latent, sleeping, waiting for the right time and place. Think of it as a seed lying dormant in the ground in winter. It needs sun and water, which in this case would be reading game books, novels, stories, whatever inspires you - and it means dabbling with world and adventure ideas. Start playing with world building ideas and see where that goes.

Above all I wouldn't DM out of expectation from others. That won't end well, at least unless you are able to find that spark of inspiration. I think first and foremost you need to see if the spark is there and fan it, see if it catches fire. This will manifest in an interest, a creative need, to build a world and/or craft a story and/or imagine scenarios. If it doesn't catch fire, don't fret about it. Enjoy playing, attend to what your life requires of you, and be clear with the others about how you feel.

Good luck!

 

[Halivar]

I am a DM who requires low-prep also. I carry a mole-skin notebook around with me and jot ideas down during mental smoke breaks at work. When my group was playing 4E, I would spend 15 minutes before game time rereading my notes and putting together encounters using the monster builder on DDI. To be honest, most of my prep time was spent formatting stat blocks.

I find that sitting down for a long, contiguous time for planning is counter-productive, anyhow. I write down my notes when the muse strikes me, and I don't force anything. I probably get a good bit of planning done sitting in my car, thinking about stuff and then writing it down later.

Now that I'm running Silhouette Core, my required prep time has shot through the roof. I am looking forward to running a game as prep-light as 4E.

 

[delericho]

The current DM has gently ribbed me by saying that I need to prep at least much as him in order for the game to be good.

There are two possible responses to that:

1 Snort and mutter "amateur" , or

2 "Ah. You realise you've just nominated yourself as permanent DM?"

So, how do I get back on the horse... How can I find my passion again?

When lacking in inspiration, my usual trick is to do something completely different. When the prep got too much, I found some really good pre-gen adventures ("Shackled City") and ran those. When D&D fantasy dragged a bit, I tried running Star Wars (or Warhammer, or...) for a while. These days, I generally try to balance one ongoing campaign plus 3-4 one-shot games a year - where the one-shots are something very different from the campaign.

And, of course, every time I play, I come away itching to get behind the screen.

 

[Jester David]

There's a book out there on low-prep DMing.
This might be harder with map tools (as you need to find and prep maps) and 4e (where you need to plan out encounters). But it's doable by relying on the maptools community and using content people have already created. For example, find monsters people have already formatted and just change the names and tokens.

 

[doghead]

Hey, sorry to hear that you are doing it a bit hard at the moment. I hope that things get better.

I think that sometimes, when things aren't going so well, its good to have a something that allows you to get away from the other stuff that is going on. This was one of the reasons I decided to start up a game here after a fairly long absence. Sometimes its a struggle, but I value the opportunity it provides to put all the other stuff aside for an hour or so.

As for what to do, most of my suggestions have been mentioned already. I like the idea of trying something new and different. Keep it simple. There are a lot of really interesting little games around that lend themselves to short simple games. (I stumbled over a bunch of interesting ones here, including a collection of free games in the Little Games section at the bottom) Or perhaps go with a pre-generated adventure.

Best of luck.

thotd

 

[sabrinathecat]

4e does not require nearly as much prep time as, say 2e did. Off-the-cuff D&D is impressive, regardless of edition. By all means, if you want to run a game, do so.

WEG d6 Star Wars, however, was the single most flexible game system I've ever run or played. If you want quick and easy to improvise, you will be hard-pressed to find better.

All that said, gaming is unlikely to fix your life, but it may provide a nice distraction so you can figure out some solutions. And I have done things like pit the players against muck-dwelling filth beasts when having to clean up an apartment that was destroyed by horrible tenants.

 

[Will Doyle]

DM prep for 4E is really easy. As has already been said above, I'd recommend taking a published scenario and reworking it as you go to tailor it for your own PCs.

I'm not sure if you subscribe to DDI, but there have been some great DM-focused articles in Dragon recently. The 5x5 method by Dave Chalker in Dragon 429 details how to run a game with minimal prep, so is well worth a look if you'd prefer to ad-lib things.