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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 7884221" data-attributes="member: 6796661">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 DMIt 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.</blockquote>

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