Stop DMing

[joela]

What changes would have to occur in your campaign that would lead you to stop DMing it? I'm not talking about regular life (e.g., no more players, you have kids, location change, etc.) which can lay low a campaign faster than coup de grace. No, I'm talking about a direction insisted by your players' play style or rule changes.

For me, it would be the players insist the campaign move to the traditional hack/slash. I don't enjoy such games both as a player and, more importantly, as a DM.

 

[bento]

Probably if I was asked to GM where the players had evil characters that constantly did depraved things.

Not my cup of tea.

 

[Thunderfoot]

Although this is kind of a broad question, I'll take a stab at it.
Usually I have stepped down from running a campaign when any one or a combination of the following things happen:

1) Burnout - I can no longer look at my notes without feeling a sense of dread and loathing; my storylines look like they were stolen directly from "Xena: Warrior Wench" and combined with the latest episode of "The Family Dude" or a classic episode of "M*U*S*H*".

2) Players begin telling me how to run my world - While I insist that players participate in creating the world with me, I balk at having them tell me my world doesn't work like that; I did create the darn thing.

3) It isn't fun anymore - Why bother playing a game that isn't fun?

4) The rules no longer support what I created - see below.

All of the above happened to my last campaign world. I have a book here in my 'DM creation station' with custom artwork, playtest credits, etc. that was created by over 20 years worth of work; that WotC flushed down the toilet when 3.X came out. The world was built on the 1st/2nd edition rules of AD&D and didn't translate well to the newest edition. My priesthoods were suddenly underpowered, my guilds were monstrously overpowered and the world at large became unplayable. I tried on several occasions to resurrect it, but it just left me frustrated and tired. Was it fun? I still have players ask me about running that world again, so I have to guess that, yeah, it was fun. However, I just couldn't design around certain things I had built into the world without changing some very basic parts of it and the Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms/Dragonlance/Eberron - "Ohh, ummm, some big catastrophe or something...umm. happens and this changed," just seemed cheap, both to my conscience and to what I had created.

 

[FalcWP]

If my players ever get off my finely crafted rails and start exhibiting free will... that's it, I'll quit!

Honestly, as long as I have friends who can meet at a certain time and want to play, I'll probably be willing to DM something. I may get burnt out on a particular campaign, or a particular game might not be going right, but I'm willing to change things around, go a different direction, and take another crack at it. That may change in the future, but I've gone through a stretch where I couldn't seem to get a regular game going, as a player or a DM, to save my life. So there's not a whole lot that would make me not want to DM at this point.

 

[Flynn]

More than one four hour session spent sitting in a bar with no forward motion in regards to the campaign would kill the game for me. Heck, having lived through that just one session, I should probably say that doing it for one session would put me close to the edge.

I am all about forward motion. I'm okay if it's RP or combat, action sequences or puzzles, but at the end of the night, I want to look at how I spent my time and see forward motion. I want to know that my time spent in prepping for the sessino was not wasted. Lately, I've gone pretty heavy into combat scenarios because of that desire, but truth be told, so long as I see forward motion, the game is good in my book.

This goes both as a DM and as a player. Two consecutive sessions of accomplishing nothing, from either side of the screen, will make me want to stop participating in a game.

The second thing that will get me to stop DMing is if the players develop attitudes and personality conflicts that come out during the game and ruin my enjoyment of the game. If I get one session of that, I give a warning (unless it obviously is one player, whom I then "ask" to leave the game). Fortunately, that's all I've ever had to do. If a second session happened like that, I would stop the game and never return to it. I don't need that in my life, and don't feel that I need to put up with it.

The third and last thing would be Burn-Out. That's why I'm taking some time away from running games and trying to rejuvenate my imagination.

Hope That Helps,
Flynn

 

[KnightCloak]

As a DM that's just recently returning to gaming I can tell you what got me to stop:

Too much in-group tension.
No one was trying to kill anyone but we some folks had problems working as a team. Two people were removed from the game, that still didn't solve it. It lowered the fun factor but was livable.

Fantasy wasn't fantastic any more.
I started to feel like there wasn't any way to make slaying the princess and rescuing the dragon interesting. I took a stab at doing to modern with fantasy, d20 modern, for me, was too much work. I tried to get into Shadowrun but I'm not familiar enough with the system.

What got me back in the fold:

I started playing in someone else's game. Being on the other side of the screen gave me some time to relax and concentrate on just one character.

Ditching homebrew in favor of a campaign setting. As much as I like what I had done I started to realize that it was too much to try and build the world AND have stuff ready for play. I'm still tinkering with things but I think it will be with 4th Edition in mind. I may also just keep playing 3rd until it gets less interesting.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Apathy on the players' part or burnout on mine. Other than that, not much.

 

[Mercule]

Furries. I would walk out of any group that consisted entirely of anthropomorphic critters.

 

[thedungeondelver]

Furries. I would walk out of any group that consisted entirely of anthropomorphic critters.

Mercule from the three point line FTW.

 

[palleomortis]

Being the sad attempt at "DM" that I am, It doen't take much. Right now I have one group thats fun, but has too many people to get together, wich kind of kills itself. I also have a two person game that gets some constant gamming, and is a decent game, but is in dire need of excitement. For me, I simply need to be "On the other side of the screen", every once in a while, or I simply die as a so called "DM" that I pretend to be.