18 Tips to Beat Game Master Burnout - Running RPGs

Have you lost motivation to run games? Is your joy behind the screen waning and you're simply going through the motions, unable to GM more than the bare minimum? Then welcome to Dungeon Master Burnout. Here's my tips and suggestions for curing Burnout and getting your DM Groove back.

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#DnD #TTRPG

00:00 Hello Internet
01:26 Determine the Cause
02:23 Group Discussion
04:57 Is Life Getting in the Way
05:12 Fewer Sessions
06:39 Over-Prepping
08:27 Try Shorter Sessions
10:29 Tired of the Same Old Thing
10:45 Puzzles
10:50 Countdown Timer
12:04 Random Geomorph Dungeon
12:15 Puppet NPC
13:03 Edible Badguys
13:23 Don't Overuse Gags
13:36 Try New Theme or Plot Element
14:06 Change the Terrain
14:43 Side-Quests
15:13 Change Campaigns
15:37 Theme Campaigns
16:22 Try Other RPG Systems
16:52 Switch Your Primary System
18:54 Become a Player
22:57 Outro

[knightofberenike]

Dang, this came at just the right time. Thanks homie.

[jasonnewell]

Have I ever mentioned how much I love how you put GM screens into stock pictures?

[ercerc]

Being a player is the biggest anti burnout tool I know. It is precisely the reason we run 2 different games that alternate so both our GM's (of which I am one) get to enjoy playing. The games are different genre's and systems as well - 2nd Edition Forgotten Realms D&D and SWADE Deadlands. One week I am running my players through the harsh arctic of the Savage Frontier and the other week I am a rookie sheriff in Tombstone.

[midnightgreen]

I swapped systems, changed to Dungeon Crawl Classics. Absolutely changed everything for me. It's like I rediscovered the game after 26 years. A change can absolutely make a huge difference!

[penzotoko]

Sometimes burnout happens because of the players and not the game. Maybe it's annoying to put a bunch of work in and have someone cancel every single week or have every single thing you create questioned beyond what's proper. And before someone says get better players, realize we aren't all so lucky to have a line of people ready and waiting to play. I'm lucky if I can keep a 4 man group where I live so I have to endure certain behaviors or not play at all. A lot goes into this for sure.
Edit: Seth did cover this somewhat...appreciated.

[danacoleman]

I've completely given up on trying to get people to play games. at least I have this awesome channel to watch.

[abortedlord]

My experience with burnout has never manifested as a lack of enthusiasm, but I have hit times where I'm just creatively tapped.

And that's when those supplements, adventures, and etc that I've never used come in handy. Every one of those books, no matter what they are, has ideas in it even if you don't love every bit of the content, sometimes all you need is just that one weird idea that you can pull out of there and run with.

[Outrider]

I'm definitely a victim of being a forever DM. I can't even remember the last time I was a player. Probably something like 20 years ago. Maybe it is time I joined a game as a player just to refresh that perspective.

[MichaelB-jwpo]

You mentioned this in your video, but the single best thing I did to combat burnout was switch from weekly sessions to bi-weekly. And then during the "off" weeks I wouldn't do any prep at all for the game. I found it really helped to keep everything RPG-related mentally compartmentalized into its own week.

[johnf.kennedy]

Seth, your description of GM burnout reminds me of the way Charles Dickens was portrayed a few years ago on Dr. Who. He NEEDED an adventure that broke all of the "rules" and his comfort zone in order to kick start his creativity again. I suspect some of your methods could help break a writer's dry spell.

[dangarthemighty]

I feel my personal burnout with GMing has been due to finding the time to prep even though my prep isn't really heavy I still feel sometimes I don't even have the time to prep what little I do. Like Seth said in the video life happens which can totally interrupt your prep for the game. I have a little girl and totally get that and would drop everything for her but it definitely has effected my games.

[JEcklar]

At our recent Halloween-themed game, the characters were combating a giant pumpkin beholder (thing Great Pumpkin with individual jack-o-lantern eyestalks). Instead of dice rolls, I let the ranged characters throw candy corn at the miniature we were using to determine whether or not they hit. We had a ton of fun with players' various corn-tossing abilities, and my dogs had fun scarfing errant candy corns off the floor. :)

[RIVERSRPGChannel]

Yes I’ve faced burnout before. Life gets in the way a lot of times. I’ve found that being a player has helped a lot too.
I DM once every 4 months now and game once or twice a month and it’s fun.
Nice video

[matthill]

One hint for playing in online game: Every player should have some agency on the story, but they don't all have to have it at the same time! When I played Shadowrun on Roll20, I played a face-type character, I did the negotiating for payment, and talked our group past guards, or snuck in and opened locks from the inside.

When it got to heavy combat, I had an old retro game I've played 100 times before pulled up in another tab on mute, the samurai and magicians could have their time to shine, I could listen to the action, keep track of what was going on, and when it was my turn I could play my character appropriately without missing a beat, and not just sitting there bored waiting for someone else to finish their turn!

[midnightgreen]

Seth's out here still giving the best advice on running games you can find. I've learned a ton from you man, Thank you!!

[paolotorres]

Your burnout story hits me hard becayse for 10 years I was primarily a D and D DM, always trying to finish a campaign. After I burntout in the middle of a sprawling campaign, I tried running Call of Cthulhu because of your channel. AND I COMPLETED MY FIRST CAMPAIGN! Thank you, Seth! Your videos helped keep me enthusiastic about TTRPG and inspired me as well.

[delongjohnsilver]

The lack of side bits really changed the tone of this video. Not in a bad way at all, I would say a helpful way. It gave it that “let’s get to the point and relate” tone that someone looking for advice really needs

[Cubic]

I ran a game in D&D 5e for just over a year that wrapped up about 7 months ago. At the end of that I revealed an invasion of the country the party had been working to protect the whole campaign by the rest of the world.

They loved those characters and plenty of the NPCs but they hated the monarchy (rightly so, the king is a megalomaniac control freak who uses divination to see what's happening everywhere in the country at almost all times including slightly into the future in an attempt to maintain absolute order). So when I told them the next campaign was the story of the people who founded that invasion force and united the assorted countries against the most powerful mortal in all the realms, they were into it.

A lot of the game was convincing various nobles of the 2nd largest country to help them collect allies and that's just wrapped up, so now we're making the push to invade with all of them... but I told my players I was getting tired of the world and was going to create a new one after this campaign was over and move on to a new system I'm currently designing that was created with the setting in mind. So I told them I wanted to wrap up the campaign in the next 5 sessions (I'd do it sooner if I could, I've been using this version of the world for 6 years now and It's due for another overhaul. This already lasted longer than the last version that only went 4 years.)

So I had 1 player quit until the next campaign starts because they were more interested in the things I was doing for their specific subplot than the actual overarching campaign. 2 of the others have just been telling me how disappointed they are, and the other 3 have been pretty neutral. But not a one of them seems excited.

I don't really know what to do. I know I spent the majority of this year setting up plots and sub plots that will never be resolved and got (most) of them invested in what will be the last story in the setting and am rushing the ending. Am I the 1 in the wrong for not caring about giving a satisfying ending to a world I no longer care about? Should I redouble my focus on finishing that campaign in a way that will make them happy, assuming they survive, and put off the new system and setting I've now been working on for 3 months? Should I just end the game now so I can put my full focus on my new endeavors? I can see why they'd be disappointed, but is it my obligation as the GM to finish something I've started, almost 6 years ago now including all the campaigns in this version of the setting, that I no longer even want to think about I'm so tired of it, to make them happy?

This is a really good group, the majority of us have been playing TTRPGs together, D&D, CoC, Multiple homebrew systems, now Windrose, for 7 years now. I don't like disappointing them, but I can't bring myself to care about this setting I made in my late teens anymore. I'll be 26 in 2 days and I'll have been running games in this setting for almost 10 years now despite it's overhauls and rewrites and everything the players have done to it being factored in, and I'm just so... bored of it.

I think I just needed to rant this all out where some unaffiliated people could see it, hope none of my group reads it. I think they'd feel bad if they knew how much I was agonizing over this, and the last thing I want to do is make my friends worry about me over something we'll probably laugh about this time next year. I think I've done a good job hiding it from them at least. They just know I'm bored and wanna do something else and not how much I've honestly started to hate my current setting because of this.

Thanks for reading anyone who actually took the time too.

[TammmyO]

Seth, thank you so much.
Before this video I honestly didn't have words to describe how I was feeling at my game table. I felt like I was an awful dm for not being able to run my game like I used to.
This video and others like it have really helped me understand where my feelings are coming from. And though it's going to take work to resolve my burnout, I'm SO grateful for the reassurance that I'm not alone in feeling this way

Thank you.

[trunglerfevr]

16:52 is so important. I got super burned out on D&D and Pathfinder and that's when I started checking out Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green and just other games in general and my love for the hobby came back.

I think the power gaming people that I encountered so much in D&D definitely had contributed to that. People got focused more on having big numbers than actually caring about the story. Discussing that aspect with the players was a whole other thing, too.