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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AaronOfBarbaria" data-source="post: 7045699" data-attributes="member: 6701872">It's no pain for me, that's why I put 'afflicted' rather than afflicted.I love being DM. It's a natural part of me, and I live and breath it. All of my hobbies that I've had so far in life end up as a means to feed something into my being a DM (Art? Game aids, character portraits, miniatures, and terrain. Carpentry? Bookshelves and tables are my favorites, go figure. Music? The same day my buddy that had enough talent to take our brand professional said "music is just my hobby, I'm going to be a mortician," I found myself incapable of composing any music not intended as background to play during gaming sessions [and so heartbroken that I've near completely forgotten every song I ever learned to play on any instrument, but that's a topic for a different kind of forum), and whenever my bipolar depression kicks me into the lowest of lows, it's invariably launching myself into a new DM-related project or getting my group together at my table for a session that helps me climb out of it.The only time I ever experience pain as a DM is if it seems like my players are taking me and my efforts/passions for granted - but luckily that hasn't happened in years, though there was a close call the other week when one of my players gave vague notice of their taking a break from gaming for an indeterminate amount of time only hours before session time; One of my players, upon hearing that all the campaigns that were running that involved that player would be shelved until he comes back, texted "Okay, but Aaron will come up with something." in response to being informed. I felt taken for granted until the player that texted that showed up in person, and the first thing he said was a statement of appreciation for my ability to not be stopped, or even slowed down, by having every campaign I had going or had planned to start made non-options. So I went from feeling bad for being taken for granted, to feeling awesome because a player actually spent breath paying me compliment (and when does that ever happen, right? I'm seriously shocked, albeit the pleasant kind of shock, every time my players say "Thanks for running" as we say our goodbyes after a session, and they've been doing it for years at this point).My wife has a group of friends that she occasionally plays with (and I haven't invited myself to join, because it's nice to have that time to play single-player video games or watch stuff she's not interested in on Netflix) that she is preparing to DM for. She wants to learn and get comfortable DMing with that group so that her eventually taking the DM seat with our main group has less of a chance of the other players finding reason to not enjoy the experience.Most of my players, though, fall into the categories of not being interested in taking the DM seat in the first place, or of having DMed before and found it to not be enjoyable. Or are a decent DM that enjoys DMing, but is also prone to unexpected and indefinite breaks from gaming.</blockquote>

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