Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cergorach" data-source="post: 9860719" data-attributes="member: 725">For me, the short of it, I enjoy DMing when I want to, I do not enjoy DMing when I feel I have to.And when I talk about DMing, it's not just the actual session, that is imho the easiest part, but all the prep work is imho the hardest part. Not everything is a pleasure, but satisfaction is also enjoyable for me, maybe even more then direct pleasure from DMing.I also think it's how you define 'work' for most it's the thing they have to to survive (work=job=money=survival). But as someone who made one of their hobbies their work (computers=IT), suddenly most often your work is no longer your hobby, but a way to earn something. Heck, a LOT of that part of the hobby I tried to automate away due to me already spending 40 hours a week on that on the job. But sometimes I can enjoy what I do for work in my free time. I can enjoy working in the garden when I want to, I do not when I have to. Work isn't my issue, but the motivation behind it is.Something similar for DMing, and especially the prep work. I have spend more time on prep work then I've spend DMing the sessions. But there are times when my attention is drawn to other things then RPG prep work. That's why I spend do much prepping before even starting the sessions, so I have an enormous buffer to work with for the periods I'm not motivated to do prep work as a DM. Too much spending time on prep work when I feel like I have too, instead of that I want too, will lead to burnout.And it might be that I do not enjoy the prep work for a particular adventure I'm running now, but I do feel enjoy prep work for another adventure/campaign/system/game. Funny enough, earlier this year, our RPG group had a 'break through' where we identified some issues with how we played RPGs the last 35+ years... We played a campaign until we burned out on it, often even switching DMs when a DM burned out (within the same campaign/party), this lead to messy campaigns, still burnout, and quite a bit of frustration. We also noticed that many DMs started great but petered out quickly, not to mention lack of time due to other commitments. We're now moving to a different configuration where we have a main campaign where we take breaks when someone pitches a oneshot for a few sessions as a break to the main campaign (and park that party), giving the DMs more breaks and a more limited scope. We also decided to give every DM their own playground/party instead of overlapping playgroups which leads to more frustration. It allows me to better prep, give me some breaks, but also variation to work on.</blockquote>

Verification