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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Olaf the Stout" data-source="post: 6231015" data-attributes="member: 13703">For the last few months I’ve had a bit of GM burn-out and am looking for advice on how to deal with it.To help, here is a bit of a background about me:- I’m in my early 30’s and have been gaming since 1994.- Excluding a couple of sessions that I GM’d, I was exclusively a player from 1994-2001, playing once a fortnight (with a couple of years break in 1998-99 while I completed high school/started university)- I’ve been GM’ing exclusively (apart from about 3 sessions as a player) once a fortnight since 2005.- The vast majority of my GM experience has been with the D&D 3.5E rules, but I have ran one-shots of other games such as Call of Cthulhu, Feng Shui, Paranoia and Gamma World.Here’s my GM’ing history- GM’d my first campaign in 2005 using D&D 3.5E rules (I’d ran a few sessions in years previous, but nothing more than a couple of sessions).  Group dissolved a few months in due to a dispute between me and a player over his Paladin PC losing his powers.- GM’d my second campaign in mid-2006 using D&D 3.5E rules.  We played fortnightly until the end of 2007 when a couple of players left the group and the campaign ended.  PC’s were around 10th-12th level when it ended.- GM’d my third campaign (Shackled City AP) using D&D 3.5E rules from 2008 to 2011.  We played fortnightly with a 6 month break in 2009 after the birth of my second child.  Before resuming the D&D campaign after the “baby break” I ran some Call of Cthulhu, Gamma World, X-Crawl and Feng Shui one-shots.  This campaign successfully ran to its intended conclusion, with the PC’s around 17th-19th level at the end.- GM’d a few one-shots using different systems after the end of the third campaign including X-Crawl, Gamma World and a session of Paranoia (which was a horrible failure).- Started GM’ing my fourth campaign (Age of Worms AP) using D&D 3.5E rules from March 2012 until present.  We play fortnightly and have nearly finished the 7th adventure out of 12.  PC’s are around 12th-13th levelI had a great time GM’ing the Shackled City AP.  The storyline was awesome and I made a lot of use of the material others had come up with on the Paizo boards to make the campaign even better than originally written.  However, I did discover that running a high-level D&D 3.5E game wasn’t as much fun as I thought it would be.Once the game gets above 11th-12th level most monsters normally have a host of different abilities and rules related to them.  Similarly NPC spellcasters have a long list of spells that they can cast.  I found prepping for combats became a lot of effort, even with the fact that I was running a pre-written adventure.  Just figuring out what ability to use each round took a fair amount of time and each combat normally meant looking through a completely different long list of abilities to use.  However, I really enjoyed the storyline.  I read the adventures when they first came out and was excited to finally get a chance to run a group through it.With the Age of Worms I’ve found the going a little tougher and have definitely been suffering from GM burn-out for some, if not all of the campaign.  I still enjoy gaming, but I’ve now gotten to the point where something as simple as reading the next adventure is a bit of a chore.So, given that I don’t want to stop gaming, what advice do people have for dealing with burn-out?My wife and I are expecting baby number 3 in February next year.  At which point I’ll take a few months off from gaming.  When we start back up again one of my players has offered to run a Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil campaign.  This will allow me to duck off mid-session to help put children to bed, etc. without the game coming to a halt (we play at my house) as other players can run my PC for me.I think that playing, rather than GM’ing will definitely help my burn-out.  However, that’s still a few months away.  Any ideas as to what I can do until then?</blockquote>

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