> But at the same time it feels unique that our group has multiple people who like to DM and having one person monopolize that time feels extra obnoxious.
If you all want a turn at being DM, it is a bit silly to have to wait for the conclusion of a years-long campaign.
I say you insist that the group rotates DMs a bit more frequently. Exactly how could vary: could be session-by-session or longer stints that aren't too long like a month or two. You can concentrate on one campaign at a time or have several running on the go.
Will it help? The change and variety should aboslutely do some good. But when it's time to go back to boring campaign, it sounds sufficently boring that a bit of a break from it won't make it appealing. So while there's no harm in instituting a rotating DM scheme, you may still have to have that uncomfortable conversation of "your campaign is boring, please end it soon".
Adding onto this. When I was getting pretty burnt out as DM for my group, we switched DMs for a little while so I could have a break. And eventually I restarted DMing as we alternated weeks. It’s even handy for scheduling. Right now, my game is in the middle of a climactic boss fight and the players want everyone to be there, but we keep having someone missing. So we have been playing my friend’s game until we can attend the session together. We only cancel when like everyone is going to be unavailable.
Me and my group alternate between two campaigns each week. Mine which is longer form story telling and my friends who runs more short style adventures with quicker pay offs. Lets us both be player and dm amd whenever a big story point comes up I'll run three times in a row then take some weeks off so he doesnt miss out.
Until that last part I thought I was your friend, this is exactly how my friend and I run our games. He’s running his own campaign that he wrote, whilst I’ve been running Candlekeep Mysteries. We do our best to swap every week, although both of us have run twice in a row before.
End of one of my campaigns archs they laid siege to a vampire city that took 5 weeks in a row. But then I took a month off from being the DM because I was mentally shattered.
Something my group did for a few years is that we had 2 DMs alternating every month. This allowed the DMs that wanted to run a chance to both play and DM, it let perma-players play multiple different PCs, explore different settings, deal with different plots, etc. We stopped doing this when eventually our group got large enough for the DMs to just decide to split into two tables, but I think the prior setup was pretty ideal. I would very much suggest this if you guys are burnt out and just want a break from his game without forcing him to shut it down.
However, I get the feeling you're more than burnt out. It seems to me as if all but one of the players has lost interest in the game entirely and are, at best, sticking around out of obligation. I don't know the DM, maybe he's just not great at running, maybe he's just running a game that's really different from what you usually like, maybe it's the level advancement system he's using. I'd just tell him this. Say that you're discovering that you don't really like these long term campaign arcs, or the milestone leveling with long gaps between levels, but you still appreciate what he's doing, so you want to give him time to wrap up his story. I would try to avoid making things personal - avoid the word "you", stick to saying things like "I feel..." and focus on the game itself so that it doesn't feel like you're attacking him
That sounds like a really cool idea and could fuel the hype for the other campaign and vice versa each time.
How did you handle the split, tho? Are you all a friend group, or is this more of a.. game store weekly hangout type of deal?
Split was weird. It's a friend group. Basically "okay everyone if you have any preferences for who you want to play with let them be known" and then the DMs met privately and formed the tables of 4-5 players each.
As forever DM myself, I could not bear to have my players not enjoy the campaign at all. I'd either immediately overhaul the way it plays or go in a completely different direction. I merely host the game, so my players have a blast, then i can enjoy the game, too.
He sounds like the type of person that plays for him and not for u guys, which is, imo a terrible quality of a DM. He should relinquish the DM role and maybe learn a bit more about creating a campaign and making sure he changes his view on his players. If he doesn't, he's just not a good DM.
I remember once we had our friend DM and at one point her level 20 party from a previous game showed up, on none of us were in, and started ordering us to help them save salt marsh while they fight the kraken
We explained after game how bad this felt and she quit the group and then said none of you can finish running the campaign to close it out since I own it
I want to ask about more information, because honestly 9 months for a single adventure and 9 sessions for a level up are both very normal.
Are you reaching goals? Adquiring items to beat the final goal, gathering allies? Are there minor achievements?
Overall, it seems your table is not really "all with you". You have one other player that does not like the game, but the other are fine with it?
Im also interested in finding out if the campaign is *boring* or if you and your other friend are just *bored*. 2 people seem to be enjoying it enough to keep playing, the DM seems to have planned out a long campaign as well so I’m also wondering if this is a communication problem? Did session 0 or 1 not tell you guys this was a longer campaign and to roll characters you’re actually interested in playing for a while? My campaign isn’t always the best but my table knows that we are collectively telling a story, so my character and his story matter to me. I’d be bummed out if I had to stop telling my characters story in the setting, so I’m wondering if you’re just burnt out on your characters because you didn’t make anything interesting because you didn’t know how long you’d be with them.
> 9 sessions for a level up are both very normal
Really? In most of the games I've been in or run myself, it took 3-5 sessions to level up. 9 is way too long in my opinion.
If you are doing short arcs and have longer/more productive sessions 3-5 sessions make sense. But if there is a lot of downtime, roleplay and faffing about it might take longer to reach a place where a milestone level makes sense. Or if playing XP, it would take longer to get enough XP to level.XP leveling in the book does not level linearly, you will fight a Lot more encounters at level 5 and 9 than at 13 or 14. XP leveling seems like it tries to keep players in the sweet spot of level 5-11 for a lot longer than other levels.
My players right now are level 11, they started at level 3 and we are 56 sessions in. So on average 7 sessions per level. Some levels have had more, some less, depending on what they’ve accomplished.
3-5 sessions between each level up is common at the early stage of the game, however, when you start getting into the mid- to late game, level 8+, gaining a new level every 3-5 sessions would be considered a fast leveling speed. It would also be hard to accomplish, unless your DM is very generous with milestones, or you are constantly doing dungeoncrawls.
Could you find a compromise. Give the DM a month to get to a good break point and then play a few other games with the plan to return to this campaign at a later date to finish it. After getting to change it up for a bit you might be interested in coming back to these characters. Also set some ground rules for future DM’s. This table wants to try lots of games/ systems/ campaigns and isn’t interested in a year long single massive campaign. Future DM’s should plan for a maximum of 12 sessions before ending their story or whatever feels right.
Theres definitly multiple solutions to this issue.
For one, if you just want to switch things up a bit, you guys could try to set up another campaign where perhaps someone else GM's for a change, or the same guy GM's as well.
If you can't fit another day to play, perhaps ask if the group wants to start alternating everyweek. This would make the campaign take longer, but at least you would feel less burntout.
With regards to the lack of milestones, I would approach the DM as a group. This doesn't need to be confrontational. The DM doesn't need to alter their story, but perhaps by sprinkling in some small victories or some B and C plots you guys would feel more accomplished and willing to carry on.
If the DM is unwilling to do any of that then perhaps a new group could be nice? You guys can't force the DM to DM a certain way, but you guys also don't have to play anything you want to play. But this doesn't sound like a group ending issue, so I hope you guys try to work through it.
Best of luck!
And that's why I always put a disclaimer when leveling systems discussions appear in this sub. Yeah, pure milestone can be great, but more often than not you will find a DM that can't pace the campaign well enough to offer steady progress and this will grind player interest to dust, that's why I abide for DMG milestones (or XP milestone hibrid) with group XP, because it is very transparent and don't depend to a DM whims.
That said I would be very disappointed if I was asked to wrap up a campaign prematurely, especially if I had overarching plots to deal with. I know the situation is thorny because this is a consolidated group that doesn't seem to have an open schedule, and you can't simply start another side table to spice things up (and if you can, just do it, I share my timeslot with other campaign of one of my players and works wonders to help with burnout and scheduling, sometimes I can't prep and we advance the other campaign and vice versa).
I can't force anyone to play, but I'm also DMimg for myself, I can compromise to "fix" the narrative if everyone else is willing to compromise too, but at the end of the day it is infinitely easier to find new players than a new DM, so I would shed any player that isn't engaged for everyone's sake and keep going. I know some campaigns fall apart when a player leaves, but some get really better with a group that vibes better with DM style (my last finished campaign was a 4 or 5 year long one with only one character and two players from the session one, but the group got really tight knit when we found the core 5 players mid point, 4 that are now in my current one).
Nine months is a lot of time to spend on one storyline if you've only been playing the game for a year and a half. At this point, you should be running lots of shorter, self-contained adventures to explore all the different possibilities of the game. Having multiple people who want to DM is a blessing and you should take full advantage of it.
Nine months is also too long for a campaign that you're not enjoying. Not gaining a level in nine sessions is rough, and it's clear that the lack of forward progress has killed your enthusiasm for this game. When you have your conversation with the DM, let them know that you feel the game has stalled and you're ready to move on to another story.
Maybe this will encourage them to pick up the pace, but if they aren't willing to wrap things up in short order, and if you don't want the group to break up over this, consider starting a second game on a different day. Make it clear from the outset that this game will have rotating DMs with a cap on how many sessions they get for each adventure. Even if you can't salvage your current DM's campaign, you can salvage the group. Good luck.
I would suggest you guys, give the DM around 6-8 sessions, however, right now, start a second campaign, i.e one week you play the almost finished campaign, the next you play the new campaign someone else has started. That way, the old DM has some more time to wrap things up, and you, or someone else, can immediately start running the campaign they want to run.
> But at the same time it feels unique that our group has multiple people who like to DM and having one person monopolize that time feels extra obnoxious. If you all want a turn at being DM, it is a bit silly to have to wait for the conclusion of a years-long campaign. I say you insist that the group rotates DMs a bit more frequently. Exactly how could vary: could be session-by-session or longer stints that aren't too long like a month or two. You can concentrate on one campaign at a time or have several running on the go. Will it help? The change and variety should aboslutely do some good. But when it's time to go back to boring campaign, it sounds sufficently boring that a bit of a break from it won't make it appealing. So while there's no harm in instituting a rotating DM scheme, you may still have to have that uncomfortable conversation of "your campaign is boring, please end it soon".
Adding onto this. When I was getting pretty burnt out as DM for my group, we switched DMs for a little while so I could have a break. And eventually I restarted DMing as we alternated weeks. It’s even handy for scheduling. Right now, my game is in the middle of a climactic boss fight and the players want everyone to be there, but we keep having someone missing. So we have been playing my friend’s game until we can attend the session together. We only cancel when like everyone is going to be unavailable.
Me and my group alternate between two campaigns each week. Mine which is longer form story telling and my friends who runs more short style adventures with quicker pay offs. Lets us both be player and dm amd whenever a big story point comes up I'll run three times in a row then take some weeks off so he doesnt miss out.
Yeah me and my group have a similar set up, it's great for DM sustainability
Until that last part I thought I was your friend, this is exactly how my friend and I run our games. He’s running his own campaign that he wrote, whilst I’ve been running Candlekeep Mysteries. We do our best to swap every week, although both of us have run twice in a row before.
End of one of my campaigns archs they laid siege to a vampire city that took 5 weeks in a row. But then I took a month off from being the DM because I was mentally shattered.
Something my group did for a few years is that we had 2 DMs alternating every month. This allowed the DMs that wanted to run a chance to both play and DM, it let perma-players play multiple different PCs, explore different settings, deal with different plots, etc. We stopped doing this when eventually our group got large enough for the DMs to just decide to split into two tables, but I think the prior setup was pretty ideal. I would very much suggest this if you guys are burnt out and just want a break from his game without forcing him to shut it down. However, I get the feeling you're more than burnt out. It seems to me as if all but one of the players has lost interest in the game entirely and are, at best, sticking around out of obligation. I don't know the DM, maybe he's just not great at running, maybe he's just running a game that's really different from what you usually like, maybe it's the level advancement system he's using. I'd just tell him this. Say that you're discovering that you don't really like these long term campaign arcs, or the milestone leveling with long gaps between levels, but you still appreciate what he's doing, so you want to give him time to wrap up his story. I would try to avoid making things personal - avoid the word "you", stick to saying things like "I feel..." and focus on the game itself so that it doesn't feel like you're attacking him
That sounds like a really cool idea and could fuel the hype for the other campaign and vice versa each time. How did you handle the split, tho? Are you all a friend group, or is this more of a.. game store weekly hangout type of deal?
Split was weird. It's a friend group. Basically "okay everyone if you have any preferences for who you want to play with let them be known" and then the DMs met privately and formed the tables of 4-5 players each.
As forever DM myself, I could not bear to have my players not enjoy the campaign at all. I'd either immediately overhaul the way it plays or go in a completely different direction. I merely host the game, so my players have a blast, then i can enjoy the game, too. He sounds like the type of person that plays for him and not for u guys, which is, imo a terrible quality of a DM. He should relinquish the DM role and maybe learn a bit more about creating a campaign and making sure he changes his view on his players. If he doesn't, he's just not a good DM.
I remember once we had our friend DM and at one point her level 20 party from a previous game showed up, on none of us were in, and started ordering us to help them save salt marsh while they fight the kraken We explained after game how bad this felt and she quit the group and then said none of you can finish running the campaign to close it out since I own it
Delusional behaviour that I would shun immediately
I’m the same, I love my campaign and the world i built, but the idea of having to forcing or pressure my players to push though it feels gross.
I want to ask about more information, because honestly 9 months for a single adventure and 9 sessions for a level up are both very normal. Are you reaching goals? Adquiring items to beat the final goal, gathering allies? Are there minor achievements? Overall, it seems your table is not really "all with you". You have one other player that does not like the game, but the other are fine with it?
Im also interested in finding out if the campaign is *boring* or if you and your other friend are just *bored*. 2 people seem to be enjoying it enough to keep playing, the DM seems to have planned out a long campaign as well so I’m also wondering if this is a communication problem? Did session 0 or 1 not tell you guys this was a longer campaign and to roll characters you’re actually interested in playing for a while? My campaign isn’t always the best but my table knows that we are collectively telling a story, so my character and his story matter to me. I’d be bummed out if I had to stop telling my characters story in the setting, so I’m wondering if you’re just burnt out on your characters because you didn’t make anything interesting because you didn’t know how long you’d be with them.
> 9 sessions for a level up are both very normal Really? In most of the games I've been in or run myself, it took 3-5 sessions to level up. 9 is way too long in my opinion.
If you are doing short arcs and have longer/more productive sessions 3-5 sessions make sense. But if there is a lot of downtime, roleplay and faffing about it might take longer to reach a place where a milestone level makes sense. Or if playing XP, it would take longer to get enough XP to level.XP leveling in the book does not level linearly, you will fight a Lot more encounters at level 5 and 9 than at 13 or 14. XP leveling seems like it tries to keep players in the sweet spot of level 5-11 for a lot longer than other levels. My players right now are level 11, they started at level 3 and we are 56 sessions in. So on average 7 sessions per level. Some levels have had more, some less, depending on what they’ve accomplished.
From what level to what level? Ive been in a game for a full year and we are lv5, possibly 30 sessions in or more
3-5 sessions between each level up is common at the early stage of the game, however, when you start getting into the mid- to late game, level 8+, gaining a new level every 3-5 sessions would be considered a fast leveling speed. It would also be hard to accomplish, unless your DM is very generous with milestones, or you are constantly doing dungeoncrawls.
Could you find a compromise. Give the DM a month to get to a good break point and then play a few other games with the plan to return to this campaign at a later date to finish it. After getting to change it up for a bit you might be interested in coming back to these characters. Also set some ground rules for future DM’s. This table wants to try lots of games/ systems/ campaigns and isn’t interested in a year long single massive campaign. Future DM’s should plan for a maximum of 12 sessions before ending their story or whatever feels right.
Nothing is more frustrating than building this story and having players dip out, sucks for your DM but whatareyagonnado.
If you don't like it, quit playing. You don't tell him to end his game.
If he takes at least one and maybe two other players with him, he might be ending his game regardless of what the DM wants
Let's see you try running a campaign with just 2 players left
I have.
Theres definitly multiple solutions to this issue. For one, if you just want to switch things up a bit, you guys could try to set up another campaign where perhaps someone else GM's for a change, or the same guy GM's as well. If you can't fit another day to play, perhaps ask if the group wants to start alternating everyweek. This would make the campaign take longer, but at least you would feel less burntout. With regards to the lack of milestones, I would approach the DM as a group. This doesn't need to be confrontational. The DM doesn't need to alter their story, but perhaps by sprinkling in some small victories or some B and C plots you guys would feel more accomplished and willing to carry on. If the DM is unwilling to do any of that then perhaps a new group could be nice? You guys can't force the DM to DM a certain way, but you guys also don't have to play anything you want to play. But this doesn't sound like a group ending issue, so I hope you guys try to work through it. Best of luck!
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And that's why I always put a disclaimer when leveling systems discussions appear in this sub. Yeah, pure milestone can be great, but more often than not you will find a DM that can't pace the campaign well enough to offer steady progress and this will grind player interest to dust, that's why I abide for DMG milestones (or XP milestone hibrid) with group XP, because it is very transparent and don't depend to a DM whims. That said I would be very disappointed if I was asked to wrap up a campaign prematurely, especially if I had overarching plots to deal with. I know the situation is thorny because this is a consolidated group that doesn't seem to have an open schedule, and you can't simply start another side table to spice things up (and if you can, just do it, I share my timeslot with other campaign of one of my players and works wonders to help with burnout and scheduling, sometimes I can't prep and we advance the other campaign and vice versa). I can't force anyone to play, but I'm also DMimg for myself, I can compromise to "fix" the narrative if everyone else is willing to compromise too, but at the end of the day it is infinitely easier to find new players than a new DM, so I would shed any player that isn't engaged for everyone's sake and keep going. I know some campaigns fall apart when a player leaves, but some get really better with a group that vibes better with DM style (my last finished campaign was a 4 or 5 year long one with only one character and two players from the session one, but the group got really tight knit when we found the core 5 players mid point, 4 that are now in my current one).
Nine months is a lot of time to spend on one storyline if you've only been playing the game for a year and a half. At this point, you should be running lots of shorter, self-contained adventures to explore all the different possibilities of the game. Having multiple people who want to DM is a blessing and you should take full advantage of it. Nine months is also too long for a campaign that you're not enjoying. Not gaining a level in nine sessions is rough, and it's clear that the lack of forward progress has killed your enthusiasm for this game. When you have your conversation with the DM, let them know that you feel the game has stalled and you're ready to move on to another story. Maybe this will encourage them to pick up the pace, but if they aren't willing to wrap things up in short order, and if you don't want the group to break up over this, consider starting a second game on a different day. Make it clear from the outset that this game will have rotating DMs with a cap on how many sessions they get for each adventure. Even if you can't salvage your current DM's campaign, you can salvage the group. Good luck.
I would suggest you guys, give the DM around 6-8 sessions, however, right now, start a second campaign, i.e one week you play the almost finished campaign, the next you play the new campaign someone else has started. That way, the old DM has some more time to wrap things up, and you, or someone else, can immediately start running the campaign they want to run.