D&D 5E Understanding DM Fatigue

[ccs]

I don't have any burnout experiences that're unique to 5e.

The most common source of burnout for me is that I can generally only DM (at peak proficiency) for around 18-24 months at a stretch.
Then I need to be on the player side for a campaign as the batteries recharge.
Or maybe it's that I also like be a player & if that side of the hobby is missing too long things become unbalanced. I've noticed that if I'm running one game & playing in a second (whatever the editions/systems) I can keep DMing much longer.

The 2nd main source would be running too many games at once. That'll cause burnout.
One game I can maintain for 18-24 months at a stretch (longer if I'm also playing in another game).
2 games I can do if ones merely overlapping but will end soon.
3 is too much - this past fall I found myself running 5e on Thur, running 5e every other Fri as the DM had to drop, and a short PF2 campaign every Sunday.
The Thur 5e game isn't ending anytime soon. The PF2 game we were specifically trying the rules, so it was important to really focus on that one. Wich means the Fri. 5e game was not given the proper attention. Fortunately the PF2 test campaign had a specific end planned & gave way to another player DMing on Sun.
As is, I'd still like to wrap the Fri. game by June & have someone else DM it.

3rd source would be system/game type burnout.
Sometimes I've just had enough of a particular system. (this won't really ever happen with 1e/PF1/5e)
For ex; Vampire/the WW Storyteller System. Greatly enjoyed this system/game - right up until the day I didn't. Wrapped the current campaign, got rid of all but 3 - 4 WW books, walked away & played mostly miniature wargames for the next 6.5 years. During this time I played D&D mostly only at Conventions. Eventually the pendulum swung back to the RPG end.

 

[generic]

I don't doubt that a lot of DM burnout we see may be good old-fashioned depression that happens to manifest in gaming, because it places significant demands on the GM.

Which is exacerbated when the DM starts to internalize feelings of worthlessness, thinking that the players don't like their game, or when players don't engage with the game.

 

[Prakriti]

Replacing players in the middle of a campaign is a big downer for me, as are frequent absences. It's like putting on a play for an audience that keeps getting up and leaving mid-show or arriving late. Some of them see the first half of the play, some of them see the second half, and some of them get bits and pieces here and there as they walk in and out of the theater. In what sense are any of them experiencing the story you're telling at that point?

 

[Iry]

Which is exacerbated when the DM starts to internalize feelings of worthlessness, thinking that the players don't like their game, or when players don't engage with the game.

This is a real thing, especially when players express discontent with other players or criticize the game immediately after it is over. There is a time and place for criticism (of the game, or of other players) and much like sex... it should not be done right after the act.

 

[generic]

This is a real thing, especially when players express discontent with other players or criticize the game immediately after it is over. There is a time and place for criticism (of the game, or of other players) and much like sex... it should not be done right after the act.

It also frustrates me when I try to accommodate the desires of players, who then do nothing to engage with exactly what they said that they were interested in.

For example, a player told me that he wanted his character to have more chances to role-play, yet, when came the time that there was a session with lots of roleplaying, the player had no input, and began to do the dreaded looks at phone gesture. I tried to engage him over and over and over again, but he was not interested.

Ah, sometimes it feels like it's hard to DM in a way that accommodates everyone when players just refuse to engage.

 

[MNblockhead]

Haven't had a real burn out with 5e yet. I've been good at realizing when things were not working for me and have been able to talk to players to pivot and avoid burn out. The one thing I do that starts to lead to burn out is wrapping in to many mini games and adding complexity to my campaigns to the point where I start to have a significant amount of work for record keeping, rather than focusing on story and the next game.

I'm pretty open with character options and I trust my players enough that I don't feel like I have to be the expert in every character class, feat, and spell. But when you start throwing in downtime activity, what seems like a fun mini game that you can play by post with players between sessions becomes increasingly more work as a campaign progresses.

What helps get me through this is:

(1) I trust my players to take care of much of the record keeping, such as loot inventories, faction points, etc.

If I had to referee and audit treasure accumulation and spending, it would make the game much less fun for me.

Similarly, my players are experience and mature. They know their characters and their characters' abilities and I trust them to play by the rules. I don't have to look over their characters or explain their abilities to them.

(2) As the players advance in level, I abstract a lot of downtime rules more and more. As you are more important, powerful, and wealthy, you focus on grander goals and more momentous problems. Eventually, you figure that the characters have systems in place and people to take care of running their strongholds, protecting their loot, and managing commitments and relationships. At lower levels I may use something like Matt Colville's Strongholds and Followers, but higher levels use more abstracted roles like that in the DMs guide, and eventually, we don't track that stuff at all other then a major story based event (a siege, mutiny, discovery of some evil infiltration, etc.).

This abstracting as players level even applies to leveling itself in some cases. In my first 5e campaign, I eventually moved to milestone leveling. I would have a one to three session adventure that starts "the party has been called together once again to face a new evil in the land..." and they would level up to the appropriate level.

(3) Not all DM works needs to be done by the DM

It is common advice, but advice I've been slow to learn. Let the players take on some of the responsibilities that would typically be considered the DM's job. Examples:

1. Tracking initiative. For on-line games I use software, but for at-table games I'll often assign someone to track initiative.

2. Time tracking. Not only is this one less thing for the DM to worry about and forget about, but if you want the players to really have a sense of time and urgency, make them track time, move the counter, track the count-down, etc.

3. Manage NPC allies. Usually I have the players run the NPCs. I'll give some guidelines on how the NPC will behave during exploration, combat, etc. That way I only have to provide the roleplay conversation or jump in when the story calls for the NPC to do something specific.

This all allows me to focus my time on the story and preparing the adventure.

 

[Stalker0]

I've DMed over 15 years and I've had the occasional burnout from time to time. IT generally comes from one of two places:

1) Real Life: Sometimes you have a lot of stuff on your plate, and you just don't want to deal with having to create a game every week. When creating the game becomes more work than fun I stop for a bit.

2) A campaign goes off the rails. Sometimes in a campaign everything clicks, and sometimes it just feels off. Maybe the premise you were going for doesn't really come out, the players aren't as engaged as you wanted, or the characters have gone so far off were you wanted the campaign to go you have lost interest. In these cases I tend to take a break to reset and come up with a new concept that I would want to run.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'd like to collect some stories from DMs that have suffered 'DM fatigue' in 5E games about why they think they fatigued. For these purposes, DM fatigue would be losing interest, as a DM, in continuing a D&D campaign before a planned conclusion is reached.

Some situations where I have experienced fatigue as a DM in prior editions (as I have not experienced it in 5E):

* Players went off on a tangent and began to ignore the planned storyline and instead began to treasure hunt. The 'good' PCs decided that it was not their responsibility to protect others and went so far as to use a village as bait to trap a dragon.

* Players had interpersonal problems that required constant managing. I dreaded seeing the bickering exes every week.

* I failed to adapt the game and my expectations to the advancing power of the PCs. I'd place a murder mystery in front of them and not account for their magic that could solve it with a spell or two. I'd put a McGuffin into play that solved a problem for a village, but the PCs would just solve it with magic or diplomacy. I didn't have a true understanding, at the time, that I needed to start assuming the players would have perfect knowledge and alternate means of 'small' problem solving, so I became frustrated by my inability to challenge them. (In retrospect, I was failing to give them the right challenges was the problem - not that I couldn't challenge them).

With a focus on your 5E experiences - why have you experienced DM fatigue?

I'm going through something similar to that now. I had planned to run a rather gritty survival focused rebuilding a ravenloft that doesn't want to get rebuilt but due to a combination of one player (call her Alice) who keeps going MIA for a couple weeks due to an ailing elderly mother, a second player (call him Bob) who refuses to get onboard with any of the houserules I want to use because "dndbeyond doesn't support that", and a third player (call them Casey) who really wanted to play an aasimar & was allowed under some refluffinng that would have fit the campaign.

Alice keeps dropping in & out so is a broken latch playing catchup when there & unfortunately a lot of the early groundwork for the plot tied to her. Bob flatly refuses to track any of the survival elements ddb won't track & actively ignores the plot I keep pushing "because I'm a wizard who wants to learn more agic & sharn is the place best for that... here's why it's best for the four unnamed newer to d&d players at the table". Casey goes out of his way to ignore the refluff I allowed him to play his aasimar under & keeps tacking back towards the denied backstory rooted in an incompatible planar structure he wanted. I finally got them into ravenloft about 5-6 levels later than planned & unfortunately almost the entire plotweb I had in mind is going to be a poor fit for their current power level. Now I'm probably going to just flog the corpse of an idea for a couple months till exploring eberron is out & I'm ready to start a new campaign.

 

[Prakriti]

Here's something specific to 5E: Tool proficiency. The PHB/DMG pretty much leaves it up to DMs to decide what can be done with tools. I had a player a few years ago whose character was proficient in tinkering tools, and they wanted to invent and craft all sorts of new gadgetry: exploding arrow-tips, crossbow-propelled grappling hooks, etc. Between games, I spent large parts of the week designing and balancing these crafted items based on the player's designs, deciding how much the materials cost, how much downtime it took to craft each one, how much damage they did, etc. It was very fatiguing.

These days, I have a pretty strong aversion to designing homebrew content for this very reason. It gets to the point where I feel like an unpaid game designer, slaving away for my players' whims.

 

[Shiroiken]

I've been DMing for almost 3 decades, and I've suffered from burnout quite a few times. Oddly, I've been running 5E since just before the DMG came out, and while I'm on my 3rd campaign, I still don't have any fatigue. In fact, I have several more campaign ideas in mind, so I don't know if I'll take a break when the current one ends (which is just 12 sessions in). I think 5E is just simpler to run than a lot of the prior editions, plus I have a great group to play with now, preventing a lot of the usual BS from tearing the game apart.