How to deal with GM burn-out?

[Majoru Oakheart]

I used to have this problem all the time as well. I would feel entirely burned out and wouldn't want to prepare or run my game each Saturday. I'd take a break and do something else for a week and come back the next week only to start feeling burned out nearly immediately again.

I remember almost the precise moment that I realized exactly what was causing the problem:

I was running a published adventure from Dungeon, Return to Castle Maure. In it was a Lich, he was CR 20, I believe. The party was level 16 and this campaign had started at low levels and proceeded all the way to 16.

I was thinking "This is going to be awesome, a Lich whose CR is 4 levels above the party, he can cast 9th level spells. This is going to be EPIC. I'm going to see maybe one or two party members die in this fight have have to be brought back to life. Or at the very least they are going to be scared for their lives."

So, the battle started, the PCs won initiative(or at least their Wizard did). The Wizard cast a spell that I can't remember the name of right now, but it does 2d12(or about that) damage per spell effect that is currently active on the target. So he cast it and the Lich had 6 spell effects up before the battle started. So, he good 12d12 points of damage. He only had around 85 hitpoints. He survived it and I quickly looked at his list of spells to find a way to escape since he had almost died in one spell. Then the Wizard said "I use Sudden Maximize to cast a second copy of that spell I have prepared." And killed the Lich in one round before it even acted.

That moment finally made me realize the reason I was so burned out was that each week I'd spend an hour or 2 reading through the next part of the adventure, I'd make sure I knew what all the spells and abilities the enemies had did, I'd read through their tactics and I'd imagine how cool it will be when the PCs encounter these tactics. Only to be followed by none of that mattering because enemies died before they could take actions 90% of the time. It seemed like it was pointless to even bother running a game, since there was no challenge at all and nothing interesting ever happened.

Immediately following that campaign I dumped 3.5e and started playing 4th and it renewed my interest in DMing for a couple of years.

I've gotten kind of burned out from DMing again because as books came out and my players learned to power game, the same thing happened in my 4e games until I stopped running it as well.

I'm actually just now offering to run a game in D&D Next again after taking a break for a while because it seems like the game will focus less on battles as being the all-encompassing part of an adventure to the point where I'll care less if the PCs totally destroy an encounters. Plus, it seems balanced enough that absolute destruction of all the enemies on round one simply won't happen that often.

 

[Piston Honda]

That moment finally made me realize the reason I was so burned out was that each week I'd spend an hour or 2 reading through the next part of the adventure, I'd make sure I knew what all the spells and abilities the enemies had did, I'd read through their tactics and I'd imagine how cool it will be when the PCs encounter these tactics. Only to be followed by none of that mattering because enemies died before they could take actions 90% of the time. It seemed like it was pointless to even bother running a game, since there was no challenge at all and nothing interesting ever happened.

This is one reason, I don’t like doing anything over E6. Everything being superpowered and requiring tons of effort to prepare and it amounts to nothing, but even at low levels what’s supposed to be a major battle can be run over in a round. The golden rule for running an epic battle is to realize that the dice are just sound effects.

Having had a ton of DM burn-out myself, the best thing I ever did to fix that mid-campaign was getting better at improvisation and not worrying about the rules. My PCs tended to prefer to do what they want rather than pursue certain things I had worked on anyway. As it went, the less I prepared, the less frustrated I was, then I had more time to work on ideas that would sometimes flesh out in game rather than paths. Sometimes it’d be a dungeon, the party could be in it for weeks, sometimes it was possibly a new hook that enticed them, sometimes nothing came of it, but it’s still something for the vault.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

The golden rule for running an epic battle is to realize that the dice are just sound effects.

Yeah, I'd lose all my players in a second if I did that. They are very rules oriented and any inkling that I wasn't following the rules precisely would be enough to have them dump me as a DM. It's also not very satisfying to me. I like the idea that the game is "Set an appropriate challenge, see if the PCs can beat it by following the rules. Hopefully interesting things will happen." 3.5e just did a very poor job of allowing me to set appropriate challenges so the whole thing fell apart. I just need a ruleset that when I adhere to it, it ends up creating the feeling I'm looking for.

Having had a ton of DM burn-out myself, the best thing I ever did to fix that mid-campaign was getting better at improvisation and not worrying about the rules.

I'm bad at improv. I've tried so many times and it almost always ends up with a trite contrived plot with nothing surprising in it. I'm lazy and don't like to do work so I hate planning in advance. Yet, my favorite stories are ones that have grand story arcs with lots of twists and turns along the way: Babylon 5, Fringe, etc. I really like stories that drop clues really early about stuff happening way later.

To create those stories requires a lot of planning. So, I let other people do the planning for me. That's why I almost exclusively run prewritten adventures that I purchase from other people with a preference towards multi-part adventure paths. That way I can do almost no work to prepare and still have a well planned out story.

Though it also causes my problems because I look forward to seeing stuff happen. I'll read a page long description about this demon and his motivations and all the interesting things he's planning to do and the cool combination of powers he has that will cause the entire party to be paralyzed and unable to fight back.....only to have none of his motivation or powers ever show up in game or be found out by the players.

My PCs tended to prefer to do what they want rather than pursue certain things I had worked on anyway. As it went, the less I prepared, the less frustrated I was, then I had more time to work on ideas that would sometimes flesh out in game rather than paths. Sometimes it’d be a dungeon, the party could be in it for weeks, sometimes it was possibly a new hook that enticed them, sometimes nothing came of it, but it’s still something for the vault.

I'm lazy. If I work on something, it WILL show up no matter what I have to do to make it show up so as not to make the effort I spent writing it worthless. Which is precisely why I don't generally write anything myself. I've seen DMs come up with their pet plot of that just had to happen regardless of what the players want.

At the very least, if I'm running a prewritten adventure and someone says "I don't want to do this, I want to do something else instead" I can say "I bought this adventure and we all agreed to play it. If you don't want to play it, I'm sorry but we'll find someone else to play with us instead."

If I had written it myself, I'd have no excuse and have to just toss it.

 

[Halivar]

My suggestion: take a break, do lots of reading (and not just genre stuff), and when you come back do something very different from what has gone before.

Also, I find that any time I play a game, I immediately want to get back behind the screen!

"Must spread experience, blah blah blah..."

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I used to have this problem all the time as well. I would feel entirely burned out and wouldn't want to prepare or run my game each Saturday. I'd take a break and do something else for a week and come back the next week only to start feeling burned out nearly immediately again.

I remember almost the precise moment that I realized exactly what was causing the problem:

I was running a published adventure from Dungeon, Return to Castle Maure. In it was a Lich, he was CR 20, I believe. The party was level 16 and this campaign had started at low levels and proceeded all the way to 16.

I was thinking "This is going to be awesome, a Lich whose CR is 4 levels above the party, he can cast 9th level spells. This is going to be EPIC. I'm going to see maybe one or two party members die in this fight have have to be brought back to life. Or at the very least they are going to be scared for their lives."

So, the battle started, the PCs won initiative(or at least their Wizard did). The Wizard cast a spell that I can't remember the name of right now, but it does 2d12(or about that) damage per spell effect that is currently active on the target. So he cast it and the Lich had 6 spell effects up before the battle started. So, he good 12d12 points of damage. He only had around 85 hitpoints. He survived it and I quickly looked at his list of spells to find a way to escape since he had almost died in one spell. Then the Wizard said "I use Sudden Maximize to cast a second copy of that spell I have prepared." And killed the Lich in one round before it even acted.

That moment finally made me realize the reason I was so burned out was that each week I'd spend an hour or 2 reading through the next part of the adventure, I'd make sure I knew what all the spells and abilities the enemies had did, I'd read through their tactics and I'd imagine how cool it will be when the PCs encounter these tactics. Only to be followed by none of that mattering because enemies died before they could take actions 90% of the time. It seemed like it was pointless to even bother running a game, since there was no challenge at all and nothing interesting ever happened.

Immediately following that campaign I dumped 3.5e and started playing 4th and it renewed my interest in DMing for a couple of years.

I've gotten kind of burned out from DMing again because as books came out and my players learned to power game, the same thing happened in my 4e games until I stopped running it as well.

I'm actually just now offering to run a game in D&D Next again after taking a break for a while because it seems like the game will focus less on battles as being the all-encompassing part of an adventure to the point where I'll care less if the PCs totally destroy an encounters. Plus, it seems balanced enough that absolute destruction of all the enemies on round one simply won't happen that often.

I’ve had this happen a number of times in my game. In my 3.5E game I allow all of the WotC splatbooks on the provisio that anything outside of the core rulebooks (PHB, DMG, MM) needs to be approved by me and I reserve the right to veto anything at a later date if it turns out to be too powerful.

This has worked pretty well for the most part. There have been a few spells and items that I have rejected, or approved with modification, but not too many.

However, even with that, by increasing the number of options for my players, it ultimately makes their characters more powerful than they would be if they could only use the core still. I’m generally ok with that. I just put them up against higher challenge rating creatures, add a couple of extra creatures to combats or, since I’m running the Age of Worms AP, I their characters run at level lower than the recommended level for that point in the AP.

Even when I do that, there are still some encounters that are meant to be a significant challenge that they simply all over. On the other hand though, I’ve had encounters that almost ended in TPK’s that I simply didn’t see coming.

Part of the problem is my group is well equipped to deal with some types of encounters with ease and others, not so much. For example, they generally can’t put out a heap of ranged damage. This has changed a bit in the last few levels since they’ve now gained access to more Wizard and Cleric spells that do ranged damage, as well as the Mass Fly spell. Before that though there were a number of ranged encounters that caused them a heap of trouble.

In your situation a simple solution might be to arbitrarily increase the number of hit points for the bad guys. This is a nice and simple way to increase the challenge of the fight. So it’s easy to do, and it also means you don’t need to worry that the bad guy will now be too powerful. He still dishes out as much damage as he did previously, but he can last a bit longer. So you have a few more rounds of actions to use his funky abilities.

Another simple change that can help is to give him some lower level help. I’ve found single enemies don’t last very long at all in my combats. If 5 PC’s can all attack 1 bad guy he’s lucky if he will last more than 1 round. Throwing in some flunkies to help the baddie means that the PC’s at least have to split their attacks for a couple of rounds.

 

[scourger]

...the reason I was so burned out was...3.5e and...4th and ...D&D Next...

Try Savage Worlds. I find it much more sustainable.

 

[Swedish Chef]

It is most likely a combination of reasons for your burnout. A new baby on the way. DM overload from the rule system. And disappointment in the results the system generates.

The first will evolve as the due date gets closer and then passes and the child begins to grow. Having 2 already, you know what to expect with all of that. It is still stressful, if manageable.

As we've all learned, the higher the level, the more the power creep, the more problems it can cause. It is inherent in the majority of RPGs out there. Others have suggested other systems, and you have tried that with the group without success, so the only solution that I can see is to artificially limit future games. Set an end point that will occur somewhere around level 10-12. The party achieves their grand goal and retires at that point. That's what our group tends to do. It works for everyone.

The third option is harder to deal with. My own personal example is this - I am currently on hiatus from DM. Another player in the group has taken the mantle and been running Pathfinder for the past several months. He has chosen to run a modified version of the old Menzoberranazan boxed set and has stated he expects the party to get to level 20 before completing it. He is a decent DM and has great enthusiasm, but he is starting to burn out because of the system disappointments.

Our most recent session had us facing off against a half giant/half orc and about 40 minions ranging from lvl1 to lvl 7 orcs (mixture of barbarians, shamans, clerics, wizards and fighters). We are a party of 6, with a tiger (druid companion) and quasit (my familiar) in the mix. At the beginning of the session we made a joking boast that we'd have the combat wrapped up within 5 rounds. Our DM took that "bet".

He lost.

Six minds against one. He didn't stand a chance. Our tactics worked in such a way that the "boss" was entrapped in solid earth by my summoned, huge earth elementals in the first round. Everyone else concentrated on the minions. A couple of mass damage AoE spells (druid and quasit using Wand of FB), some really good dice rolls (high damage rolls, many failed saves by the orcs) and the entire thing was done on round 4. And the DM was very annoyed. He didn't get to do anything "cool" with the big baddie at all. The minions, there to slow us down and allow the BB to act, really just slowed us down a bit.

As much as everyone says the DM is just the referee and is there to help the players create the story, I think many of us really want to play as well. And since we generally can't (or shouldn't) run an actual PC at the same time, all the monsters become our "PCs". And after planning how best to use their abilities and spells and items to challenge the party, only to have it completely negated in round 1 or 2, is a major letdown for all of us.

YMMV, of course.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Just had an unexpected cakewalk encounter for the PCs last session. They were facing off against a Spellweaver Liche in the AoW AP. Group had spoken to him before, so they knew what they were facing.

I was actually worried this could be a TPK. He had the ability to cast multiple Maze spells, which would have taken the big combat beast out of the encounter. He also had multiple Power Word Stuns, could cast up to 6 levels of spells per round, his touch caused permanent paralysis, etc.

All his spells and abilities had saves in the mid-to-high 20's. So it could have ended horribly.

As it was it went like this. Party opens door. Rogue moves in and misses. Liche goes next. Casts Repulsion (failed save means you can't move towards him, so the melee guys would be useless). Everyone except the Wizard, who wants to stay at range anyway, passes.

Party deals 70-odd points of damage via a charge from the melee guy and an empowered Disintergrate. Beguiler readies an action to counterspell.

Round 2, Rogue hits for small damage. Liche casts Maze on himself to get him out of combat to recover. Beguiler successfully counterspells with Greater Dispel Magic. Maze spell therefore fizzles. Cleric mistakenly casts Destruction (doesn't work on Undead). Doesn't matter as melee guy finishes the Liche off.

So my possible TPK lasted all of 2 rounds!

 

[jcayer]

There have been several comments to give Savage Worlds a try. After running a 4e group up to epic and taking a tour of it(quick level ups, etc, just to try it), I was burned out as well. One night I got them to try The Great Hunt. It's a free Savage World adventure with horror tones...Something totally different for my group. They quickly got the hang of it and it's been a couple years now. It's a fairly simple, rules light system that you can improvise to the point of sometimes my prep for a 3-4 hour session is 3 bullet points and a couple monster stats. Yup, that simple. The number of genres it supports is silly large. The core rule book is $10. My only other comment is don't try fantasy as a first couple of sessions. It runs differently than D&D.

If they are very resistant to change, you are getting a nice break soon, but have you considered pausing the game and playing some board games on game night? Settlers of Catan is a load of fun. And Wizards put out several D&D themed games. You might want to give those a look. Much less prep, but still fantasy. Enjoy everyone's company. My group realized a few years ago, that the game doesn't matter nearly as much as getting together and hanging out.

Let your players know how you feel. When I mentioned it to my group, one of the guys dug up some old superhero game and a 3 night mini-campaign became 3 months and really let me enjoy being a player for a change. It also opened my horizons to being more flexible and made me a better DM.