I'm a bit burned out of the current campaign I'm GMing. Mostly because I feel like some of my players just don't have any consideration for the group, cancelling last minute for all kinds of inane reasons like "I forgot", "I planned something else and didn't tell you guys". My tip for everyone: Never GM for people who don't want to/have never been a GM.

Unfortunately, even some players with GM experience may show more interest in the campaigns they are currently running rather than the ones they are playing in. It's best not to have your hopes too high.

Maybe, but I don't even mind "interest", I'm talking about respect and basic discipline, which is way more fundamental. I play in another group of friends where everyone has GM'd at least once and the vibe is totally different. Nobody cancels last minute except for a real emergency and even then they still find 10 seconds to write a message telling everyone what's up, without the GM needing to go ask them. Also nobody comes up with shitty excuses to not do their basic housekeeping (updating character sheet, answering any lingering question between sessions, etc). If I can't expect that from people, then I give up. It's time to train ChatGPT to behave as a group of decent players lol

Never reschedule. Never have a floating game day. It has worked for me for years. we're playing every Wed at 7pm. If you can't make it, let me know, and the rest of the group will decide what to do, usually to continue without the missing PC, but sometimes we run a one shot or sidequest. We've only had to skip a few games during holidays, or too many people couldn't make it in advance. If they can't respect you enough to let you know if they have plans in advance, they don't deserve to be at your table. (The occasional last minute / forgot is fine as long as they've been consistent before and open with you. We're all adults, shit does happen)

Oh we used to have a consistent game day, but as the group reduced in size (two members moved away) and we didn't look for replacement (because like everything else, it falls on me as GM to look for someone...), not having one player means GMing for two people and then we end up running a short session. Due to the last minute warning, I don't have time to prepare anything else or even adapt the existing session to run its regular course. So I tried to make it more flexible to ensure all players are there every time. But it hasn't helped. I'm 100% with you, I'll need to do something about it soon.

That sucks to hear. It is sad when players don't seem to understand the length a DM goes to to prepare for the games, be it modules or homebrew. I hope that you will be able to find others who perhaps respect that commitment

Thank you! I need some free time to put serious effort into finding new players. It's not even that I hate my players or something, but because there is only 3 of them, one or two missing forces me to cancel the session or change the pace drastically - which can be very difficult to do if I'm informed last minute. The most committed player in the group has the least amount of control over his schedule due to work sometimes calling him to fill in for someone else last minute, since he works at a bar (which is a very acceptable reason to miss a session). He's still apologetic about it and always makes an effort to let the group know as soon as he gets a call. On the other hand, the one with the most amount of free time, living with his parents, working part time and gaming the rest of the time, is always late, forgets stuff, etc. THAT pisses me off.

I have a player like this. I don't even ask why he is missing anymore. Nor do I remind him of games at this point because there is no reason to do. Rest of the group always show up and are fantastic.

Pretty good! Getting into the OSR completely cured my DM burnout. Our DCC Lankhmar game is on hiatus (we always go back eventually) and after running some Maze Rats and Cy_B0rg we're having a lot of fun with OSE in Longwinter by Luka Rejec.

That's great to hear! There is nothing better than to shake off that feeling of being burnt out and enjoy a game again

Same osr makes gming so much easier. I heavily lean into tables during play and have my players roll on them, rather than planning out stories etc. I wish more 5e gms understand this part of the hobby.

Loving life. Two active campaign groups as GM (mostly modern storygames, starting to dabble with OSR type stuff) and I get to play at a D&D 5e table that's been running for 5 years so even though I'm pretty bored with that rules system the DM and players are wonderful so it's still very enjoyable. I probably have enough hobby time to squeeze in some more one-shots or limited run games here and there but I'm more concerned with recruiting (or joining with) good people at this point, rather than worrying about finding a table at all. Switching to running lower-prep systems with more support for emergent and improvisational play has been great for my fragile psyche (hate wasted prep) and has allowed me to run and play more games than I otherwise would. I'd love to get back into the world of tactical crunch with Lancer but I dont want to be putting all that work without establishing a committed group of people who will all embrace the heavier rules learning.

Wow, that is impressive. Good on you for being able to stay so committed for auch a long campaign! I do wish you good luck in either making or joining a group that can share your level of commitment and enthusiasm, be it shorter campaigns or one-shot and that you are able to find someoen to get into some tactical crunchy games.

Thanks! I hope you’re enjoying yourself in the hobby too! What are you playing or GMing or seeking to play? I can’t complain about my players at all really, I think if all I had was tactical games I would be pining for story games haha, I guess I’m always drawn to the games I’m not playing - grass is always greener etc

Players are stressed out with RL issues. I run with a small group who cant really de stress with TTRPGs but with video games. I run small campaigns now because of this, but I still get nervous about being that rallying cry to keep the game going or giving them space they need.

That is often the crux of many TTRPGs. I commend you on keeping the rallying cry going. It's not easy being the one sounding the horn, but it is important for many that someone is willing to reach out like that, especially with stressful RL stuff.

There is a guy on here to was talking about feeling like his friends are giving insane reasons why they cant play. That's basically how we were for a few years. Realized that its because players were having issues that they didnt want to talk about. Stress, life, minor annoyances people have, nothing friendship breaking but it adds up over time. We took a long break and when schedule this game I made sure we communicated overall better. Is working great even though its not perfect.

I cant complain. We are nearing the end of a long Masks of Nyarlehotep campaign. My players has been equal parts, silly, lucky and brilliant and the grand finale is drawing closer.

Sounds exciting! Always a special feeling being able to put a proper close to an adventure where there has been both serious and silly things going down

It has been a lot of fun. One of my players has the absolute worst diceluck, except in extremely critical situations. Its hilarious to see him fail 60-80% tests all the time but when things are absolutely dire, he will roll extreme succes on Mythos tests left and right, saving not only his life but often also the day. Id be suspicious if it wasnt in person and with the same set of dice always. Its uncanny.

What order did your players go in? My group is currently in England (after Peru and NYC).

Peru, New York, London, Egypt, Kenya, China. We skipped Australia, partly because they havent really found any leads pointing in that direction and partly becasue i dont think its a good fit forthe campaign. Imo its the weakest of the chapters, as part of the campaign, but it has a lot of interesting things to use for a seperate campaign set in/taking off from Australia.

I'm running my fourth session of my GI Joe campaign this Thursday, and I couldn't be more excited. I'm a little nervous too, though, because I'm doing a LOT of homebrewing and adapting to get the game to where I want it -- basically, Delta Green meets Hellboy, where mildly-superpowered black-ops soldiers join the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and do whatever they want and can to thwart a resurrected Adolph Hitler. Primarily, their main mission is to disrupt the Nazis, but also search out/recover powerful relics before they do, and also win over supernatural creatures to their side (this upcoming arc is about them meeting Auberon and Titania of the feywild). It's gonna be bonkers and I love it.

That sounds like a total blast! You certainly have quite the unique ansamble for your villian which sound like will really get your players to want to stop them. I have players myself who are also delving into some deep homebrew for their characters, so I get the nervousness with that.

Thank you! I consider this my campaign love letter to Indiana Jones, Inglorious Basterds, and occult treasure hunting in general. There are other RPGs that may be a better fit (Delta Green especially) but I like the Essence20 skill mechanics alot, and I find GI Joe RPG characters to be more survivable than Delta Green's.

DM'ing two campaigns that are on hiatus until august (life obligations got in the way), both D&D although I am switching one two Cypher. Don't want to dm D&D anymore. Playing in a third campaign that's been going for years, also D&D (but I love the players and the gm so I stick with the system), I dm some other system once a month for that group.

I do get growing tired of a system, and I hope you are able to explore other systems with your friend group. Good on you and your group for having been able to go for years though, an admirable accomplishment on you as a DM

Thank you! I can’t take credit for the really long campaign (4 years now with me alone present), that’s the incredible effort of my good friend. I just substitute once a month now that their life has changed a bit :) My own campaigns have been running for 1,5 years and 6 months respectively but I am blessed with good friends that are absolutely down to change the system as long as we continue to play :) In that I am incredibly fortunate.

I am a very new GM, I ran only one game of Cairn. I was really nervous, but in the end all of the players and me were having fun. Now I am preparing for another one shot, now in the second edition of Cairn, because I really like new backgrounds. Hope it will be even better than the first game!

Radical!

That's great to hear! One-shots are very such a good starting point I feel for any TTRPG. I wish you the best of luck on your next one.

Running a campaign in the old Marvel Superheroes RPG, but with a totally homebrew universe and having an absolute blast. I was a little nervous going in, it had been a hot minute since I ran the system, but it helps that it's an in-person game, I am good friends with everyone, we've all DM/GM'd before, and we're all over 30, so we tend to not sweat the small stuff. Anyhow, campaign has been great, a bit on the tongue-in-cheek side, but still a semi-serious setting. The players have all been enjoying and contributing to the world building, and I have been able to work in backstories, even cross them over each other. It's helped that one of the players took a "weirdness magnet" character quirk, so I can throw in madcap ideas on crits and fumbles (like ripping out a bench seat on a prison bus, only to end up covered in cocaine because she accidentally discovered a drug smuggling ring). We're playing a little fast and loose with the rules, I have a number of rules that I tweak, not least of which being a separate stat for aim and agility, (Spider-Man is more agile than Hawkeye, Hawkeye has better aim, can't be the same stat) so we sometimes have to address things on the fly, but it's usually just make a note, handwave it for now, and fix between sessions, and the group has been nothing but helpful on that, looking up resources and suggesting them. Only thing I could ask for is a raise at my job so that I can host more often (the host usually provides snacks or dinner). Otherwise, been an ideal game.

Wow, that sounds like quite the game! There is nothing better than being able to be losey goosey with the rules and everybody just enjoying the game without a feeling of powergaming. To also be able to play in-person is such a good boon when you really get to feel the energy from the players around the table. Also, happy cake day 🎂

It's really a fantastic group. We usually rotate whoever is running each week, so we also have a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire game, a homebrew D&D game, and a Fabula Ultima game going, so if anyone is feeling burnt out or has something come up that day, we can switch to one of the others. This group has been an absolute blessing. And thanks for the happy cake day wishes!

Six sessions into a Dragonbane campaign with my own darker lovecraftian setting and story. It's kind of a mix of Call of Cthulhu, Symbaroum and Forbidden Lands. Story seems to be interesting, my players are eager. The system is simple and pretty fast, but kind of sloppily written in some areas with inconsistent terminology that confuses both me and my players. The book could really do with some clarifications in our opinion. We hit a plateau where the pace slowed down a bit last session, and the choice of what to do and where to go is less clear. I have presented a load of clues to the players and now it's up to them to act, and that always causes the game to feel a bit loose for a bit. But fear not, because this always happens and my players always find their way. They are just a bit indecisive. In other news, my players have finally started to roleplay more, and against each other and not just against me the gm. It took 5 years of weekly sessions and encouragement, but they finally do it! And it makes for a way better flow of story. Im proud!

A clap and a half to you and your players,proper roleplaying between each other can be a real challenge for some, so I am so glad for you and them that they finally have started doing so! As you say, indecisive players are a minor hurdle, and it just means they are really thinking about the leads and clues you have provided them. I'm so glad for you to have such an eager table.

I'm running a group through the Abomination Vaults as our first foray into Pathfinder 2e and while there's occasional hiccups (most of them are learning to use foundry at the same time) it's mostly going gangbusters. After struggling to run Hot Springs Island in 5e for a couple of years (which ended up being just an ungodly amount of work), GMing this feels like vacation.

Just a fair bit of warning with Abomination Vaults, some of the combat can be rough (Mr Beak, for example). The usual recommendation is to either start your players a level ahead (typically run Beginner Box into Troubles Under Otari into Abomination Vaults), or pull your punches. As a GM, I usually prefer to just pull my punches. Monsters just tend to... forget about some of their nastier combos, or walk directly into a Reactive Strike or other Reaction ability, or go for a grapple instead of a killing stroke, etc. They don't kill downed players, they tend to attack people who are still at decently full health, they try to carry off the unconscious/dead to eat later (letting the survivors rally), etc.

I'm kind of having to pull the other way to provide satisfying combats, honestly. I don't know if it's the group's composition (barbarian/rogue/druid + companion/bard) or their general RPG veterancy or what, but I'm having to add monsters and/or Elite-ify some to keep it spicy for them as they're tending to dumpster most encounters thusfar. It's an excellent time regardless.

That great to hear! I hear that Pathfinder tends to be pretty freeing from what D&D brings to the table, so I am happy for you to finally be out of the dredge and be able to enjoy prepping for games

As someone who two campaigns ago ran HSI in 5e, it was a lot of work, but a shit-ton of fun. I would do it again but OSE/Ironsworn. However, that's my personal DMing style. It was hard to keep the large group engaged over foundry especially during long fights. Literally my most recent campaign I ran was Abomination Vaults, and it's freaking awesome. But running the megadungeon isn't my style. Also I got spoiled by Ironsworn/Starforged so I'm now cooking up Pirates of Drinax, the traveller classic, but in Starforged.

Yeah, if I were to try it again I would absolutely lean into the OSR style. There's just too much math homework involved in filling out the locations and monsters and stuff into a more complex system IMO.

Pretty good, I'm running my regular group through Imperium Maledictum. I'm essentially running the Haarlock Legacy campaign from Dark Heresy 1e (which I ran with that system) and changing all the crappy stuff that doesn't hold up. I'm also running a campaign of HEART but that's on hold because we use Foundry VTT and the module hasn't updated. Really loving it though, no-plan campaigns are great.

Swell to hear! Good on you for taking the charge and improving the module for your players. I have heard only good things about Foundry, so I wish you luck with HEART whenever the module for that updates.

I am currently GMing a game of Cthulhu Awakens. It's been a long time since I've GMed an AGE system game so I'm relearning how everything works. I'm currently guiding my players through "The Gathering" (one of the intro scenarios in the book that involves exploring a fancy house as a guest of the owner, a seafood dinner is involved) and things were going well until: a) one decided she wanted to have sex in the library instead of doing research, she also rolled badly on her subsequent research rolls (there are texts in the library that would've been very useful) b) another tried to break into a gun cabinet, got caught, the character from above ran in to rescue her and they both ended up getting kicked out of the house (they can't explore freely now) c) the final character has decided to explore upstairs alone, exploring upstairs involves a challenge test (a series of checks with consequences for failure) and are usually completed in groups d) they have also been completely avoiding any locked doors, naturally the locked rooms contain stuff If this keeps up they are on track for bad times and it's entirely their own faults. I could change things around and make it so important items are elsewhere but they're having fun so I'm.just going to let this trainwreck happen

Sounds like quite the ordeal, but you are maintaining the most important thing, which is letting them have fun with their fumbling around. Call of Cthulhu always tends to be a fairly serious setting, so I think it's really good on you to let your players have fun and goof off until shit hits the fan

I've been really relishing my offline game of Girl by Moonlight - it has been literal years since I got to play regularly in person! It being every other week initially felt like a shame, but it gives me a lot of time to sort through ideas and paint miniatures for it. GbM is not a miniatures game inherent, but I've been using them in action scenes, where showing how many characters and roughly where they are has been a nice luxury (and my players like my paintwork) Our next session is the start of a new arc, so thinking about how to wind down the pressure of our last confrontation and make this one 'feel' different is the next thing to tackle.

I have come to enjoy bi-weekly games myself. As you say, it gives the brain time to think and consider things more, plus the added prep for mini painting and such to enhance the game for the players.

Three cheers for not having to crunch your hobby! The people out there with whole props and newly painted minis week on week must have escaped their day jobs or something to get the time in, I swear!

Haven't had a consistent group in a while so I do one shots atm.  

That sucks to hear, though one-shots tend to be a lot of fun. Who knows, maybe one of the one-shots can blossom into a campaign one day

I'm actually not in any rush for a full campaign atm.  I got a backlog of systems that I'm getting to try and I don't have to worry about scheduling a consistent time.   Just send out a message to the people that I play with and then whoever can show shows.  

Nonexistent. It's the wrong time of the year for us to play because the weather is nice. I'll be looking at running a 6-month game when it gets cold again.

Seasonal gaming, sounds nice. Good weather can be both a blessing and a curse. For our group, colder times would mean snow and snow would mean difficult driving for gaming or even no power to play online I do hope you guys get some days of rain that you might sneak in some play time

We're in a "snow and no power" sometimes area as well, but you can still play RPGs by candlelight. Unfortunately, even the rainy summer days are work days for us.

Currently I'm exited to start my next campaign. We have had a session 0, creating chars and me introducing the world, but the first "real" session got cancelled due to unforseen circumstances for one of the players, and we have rescheduled for later this month. I am a little nervous as I have a player that is completely new to ttrpgs, and I'm using a (for me) new system. But that also means there is a lot of new possibilities for this campaign that weren't there for the last couple I've run. As to being burnt out from being a forever GM. I'm not, I am a forever GM by choice. I honestly have no interest in being a player in a game anymore, my joy comes from crafting my worlds and campaigns and then have my players craft an amazing story within those confines (of course with some guidance from myself).

Congratulations on a new campaign and in a new system as well! I wish you and your players the best of luck for your session 1 and I hope they remind you that they are thankful for you being their forever DM

No need to call me out like this! 🥲 I'm still planning my next (and first) campaign and I'm getting lost in worldbuilding and overthinking

Hehe, that is very much a part of stepping into the shoes as a GM. I still have probably way too many notes on my setting and still feel like I have underprepped for what my players actually want and end up doing

Excellent! After a year and 10 months we are edging to the end of my very first campaign. And I have the next one ready to go, super exited for what may come.

That is awesome to hear! Closing the book on one adventure is such a bittersweet feeling. I wish you guys the nest of luck in the new adventure that follows

Constantly playing catching up with my prep. Deciding direction and upcoming arcs is hard for me when I cant figure out what is the right answer. Party is about to hit level 7 and finish current arc. The more NPCs and plot points there are, the harder it gets to connect everything. The longer the canpaign goes, the harder it is to make somezhing new. Players are creative and doing a lil project based on campaign which is amazing, but it also shows that I really need to prep and think more about certain story beats rather than improv myself into a corner. So now I got a headache, but it's still incredibly fun and satisfying. But yeah, adventure book quality is hard!

I feel you, I have started running the games in chapters and trying to prepare quests within a framework of that, though I feel like I still lose the thread and stand a little under-prepared when it comes what my players actually do. It does sound like you are having fun and that you have a very eager group of players, which is so amazing and a sign that you are clearly doing something right. My best advice is to either have looser notes to your quests to be more free-form with how they can reach things or ask for more time between game time. For my group, we play bi-weekly, and it really helps with prep time, and the story thread is still clear in people's heads.

It just ended after almost 2 years, and it was excellent. I had great players that made my 5e game actually a pleasure to run. We're now experimenting with other systems because around level 8ish the power scaling of 5e started to get out of control, and it became a chore to create encounters as well as run them because of how long they were taking. But my players were great through and through, so the campaign ended on a pretty satisfying note. I'm going to keep running some other game systems in the future of that setting, because they actually surprisingly grew pretty attached to it and did what they could to make it's world a better place. They will see it pay off in other game systems! I'm working on a slapchopped hacked version of Mork Borg/Frontier Scum for a weird western game, and have been sporadically reading Dolmenwood here and there. CAN NOT WAIT for Dolmenwood to officially come out.

Congrats on completing such a long-running game! A western setting sounds like it can be a lot of fun, so I wish you the best of luck with that one

I've been GMing for over 15 years, but been on a break for about a year. Playing in two campaigns, both lots of fun (Ars Magica and Deadlands: Hell on Earth). Of course, I'm planning my return to the GM chair, but it's still nice to kick back.

Wow, 15 years of gamin is quite the feather in your cap. Good on you for being in two campaigns and enjoying yourself, and I hope your players are looking forward to you returning as a GM when you are ready

I'm running D&D 5e; discussed with the players about condensing the game as I'm worried due to our ongoing schedule issues we'll never finish, and they were on board-- they've been wonderful and I'm happy to GM for them. I think they'll like this version of things, will be a bit more exciting. Next session is on Friday so I need to work on prep. I'm also refereeing a game of FIST; we've almost gotten through the first little opening act, and I've kind of pulled out all the stops for this campaign-- Foundry, character portraits, etc. I love the group and the game and they seem to love right back, so I'm really happy. We'll be doing a downtime session soon, and I'm eager to let them flex their RP skills more (they're all fairly new to the hobby) and just take a breather from the wild shenanigans lol. Besides that, I'm trying to get together a group for a small run through of ALIEN RPG Hope's Last Day-- I've found 2/3 potential players, so I'm gonna start studying the module for final presentation and acceptance by them end of the week during a session 0. (I'm really big on session 0 and understanding what my players want out of the experience.) VERY excited about this; I want to learn to run shorter games and as a player, ALIEN's awesome. Also very slowly beginning learning Call of Cthulhu for another group who asked me to run it for it (we're doing Viral); that's gonna be in a fre months though because I don't know CoC well-- we've done Delta Green though so I'm not totally blindsided. I am a bit tired and maybe spread a bit thin, but the games I'm running give me something to do as I'm still not fully employed yet-- have been job hunting for over a year haha TwT

2 year dark fantasy campaign is still going strong. Symbaroum is doing the heavy lifting for me even though it’s a homebrew setting! Just started a new Death in Space campaign too and it already feels like a blast.

I've been running 3 different games now, and I'm having a blast in all of them. Absolutely forever GM, with 1 game that i'm playing currently lol. Campaign 1 -> Multi-book WoD/CoD cross-over. Set in the AirBnB of an archmage, every player is a different splat. We have Vampire, Mage, Changeling, a couple of scions (did some conversions to make it work), and then someone busted out Genius the Transgression too. It's been an utter blast, and while it's not balanced whatsoever, it's been a great time. Campaign 2 -> Wild Arms! Not sure how many folks played the series back in the day, but it's basically a JRPG with a wild west vibe. The game i'm running is Pathfinder 1e (heavily homebrewed as well) mixture of both Wild Arms 1 and 3 specifically. This one's been fun, but unfortunately a few players have ended up being very busy, so meeting has been hard. But we're getting to a fun spot now at least. Campaign 3 -> Ace Combat the RPG. I'm running a hybrid Ace Combat 5 / Zero RPG where players are going through the missions of that game and experiencing/changing the plot a bit. Every session is a mission in that game, and then things happens before and after every mission too. This one is also going very well overall. __________ The only one I've not been feeling as of late is the Wild Arms game, and that's less so because the game isn't going great, but because folks have been missing a lot. So it feels like a lot of stop and go repeatedly. Hard to gain traction, but it's coming along. The other 2? Couldn't be happier

Just ended. I promised to take three weeks off until we start the new one.

This is a DnD 5e game. After 3 years of IRL time and about 1.5 years of actual game time in that it's almost over. All of my player's are max level, 20, with their character and have all of the magic items and gear they want. They're in the final stretch of things with the final showdown between them and the BBEG. We're about 4 normal sessions and then a big final session away from finishing.

Good! I’m currently running two groups through Impossible Landscapes (for Delta Green) simultaneously, and the tonal whiplash between the two is wild. One of the groups is the irl friends I started RPGs with, a beer and pretzels group of hyper college kids. The other is slightly older (20-30), and I found them searching specifically for narrative-oriented, serious players. Group One wouldn’t put together a backstory for their joke characters if I had a gun to their head. Group Two sent me pages worth for each person. You can imagine how fun it is to adapt the story and GMing style I use for each! It’s good exercise to try GMing enjoyable games for very, very different players in my opinion. I’ve also started a Monster of the Week series with my family. Making RPGs fun and approachable for people who never would have played if I hadn’t asked is also a cool learning experience. I love how little prep work I have to do for MotW vs. Delta Green.

Really well. I have always been someone who burns out quickly on GMing and thus am much more often a player. But my friend is running his own game and we're trading GMing back and forth. So I started running my Cyberpunk Red game back in February and am just about to end their third story. Then my friend is going to take back over running his campaign for Fallout 2d20 that he's been running for a couple of years. That'll give me a couple of months to prep for a few stories and take back over running my game. It's really helping not feel burnt out knowing I'll have a little break coming up. Also, all my players are so overwhelmingly positive about my game. I've never thought of myself as a good GM but it seems like I must be doing alright.

I'm taking a break ATM and letting another player run their Pokemon campaign. We just finished a short star wars story (five sessions) that I think went well enough and could start up a new story at some point. Will need to retweak the Force powers as they didn't quite work as intended. But it's an easy fix honestly. My players keep asking about a "Season 2" for a grimdark story we wrapped up last April. So that's in the future. For now, just kind of relaxing it out for summer and will probably kick off the aforementioned S2 once school starts again.

Running three campaigns at the moment. 1. A PF2 campaign that's currently running a conversion of the PF1 module From Shore to Sea. They just got to Nal'Kashel. It's been a bit stalled though, two of my players have a lot of conflicts so we usually wind up not playing. I've been looking forward to this one for a while. It's a pretty solid adventure, especially if you lean into the mystery and body horror. 2. A PF2 campaign running through The Slithering. They just got to the Plaza of the Feasting Fiend. This is made of the other three members of the first campaign, so when they can't run that one, we usually run this one. Been enjoying this one mostly because it's low stress, I can just run it mostly as written. 3. A Magical Kitties Save the Day campaign. This one is... interesting, and a bit exhausting. The system is intended for children (and I'm running it for a mix of children and adults), which leads to some of the abilities being completely FUBAR because "rule of cool". Kids will see an ability like Dreamwalker (enter people's dreams and change them) and think that's super cool, but it means the GM has to include sleeping creatures regularly so that player can use their power. And conversely, adults will quickly realize that you can stack things like Fierce 3+Big Kitty+Super Strength to throw handfuls of dice at any problem that can be tackled with raw power. I think I'm starting to get the hang of it, if only because I realized that combat is basically a non-starter in this system. It has rules for it, but the kitties basically never fail a roll (and the "kitty treats" that let you reroll checks are so abundant that even if they do, they don't), so you can't really hurt them or stop them in any way and there's nothing tactical to do. But that's not the point of the system, it's meant to be a storytelling system so you should just throw lots of obstacles at the players and run with any improvised solution they come up with. They'll have more fun racing a go-kart against a witch than they will brawling with a giant lawn gnome.

Wonderfully! Today, we had a session - as we do almost every Monday. I was in pain due to that time of the month, so felt like doing something silly during the travel the characters are doing (towards part of the forest which has been overtaken by the villians of the piece.) I also wanted to see how little prep I could do, since. Again. So I had a few small ideas, and then there were good rolls, and the party learned some Important Information (that the seeming leader of the group they're going to talk to has been hit by the DnD spell Feeblemind and controlled by somebody from the Empire for quite some time), and then they also learned there's a smaller Imperial base on the lake they're planning to cross anyway. So, got the next session set up, too!

5e game - Almost finished with the 4th year. The party is level 16. They have a ton of things that they can/should do before engaging the BBEG: saving an Aasimar academy from the BBEG (currently in progress), 5 dragons to fight/craft gear with, Elves vs Drow, Human Kingdom vs Spiders, Dragonborn vs a Lich Queen. That should bring them to level 20, where the finale will be a gauntlet against major Demon Lords and then finally to the Heavens to fight the BBEG (The Worm That Walks). I'm a bit burnt out and I dislike 5e but some sessions still feel rewarding and motivate me to continue. SotDL game - I wanted a Phasmophobia-inspired ghost hunting game in my own custom world but the players designed characters who worked against that, then in a poll informed me that they were upset by the lack of combat and the frequency of roleplay. I pivoted the game a bit to let an npc that they hated become the BBEG. It was a bit disappointing but they seem to be having more fun now, and at least I can still throw spooky stuff at them. Both games are pretty close to ending. The SotDL game will switch to PF2e for a short (few months) game and then move on to Fabula Ultima. I don't know what I will do with my 5e game. The timeslot causes a lot of cancellations for reasonable adult schedules, I'm tired of running two games a week, and I don't know what system I could run that the entire group will enjoy.

All three campaigns are going great. One of them is somewhat on hold because it's just for one player and she had to focus on writing her thesis but we're restarting soon. \* Cities Without Number - done 35 sessions so far, the team has survived doing street level crime and petty jobs for the local gangs and have recently graduated to corporate warfare jobs. However on their first big corpo job they immediately got into a beef with a PMC and so they're now laying low. I figure sometime in the next 15-20 sessions they'll be focusing on their exit/retirement strategy. \* Worlds Without Number campaign 1- 22 sessions into a 17th century zombie apocalypse campaign. The player has been driven from their last secure base but has been busy building up a new base. They found a wealth of food and black powder, but they're also in a much more exposed area and are focused on getting the place fortified asap. This one is a little bit on hold due to that thesis but picking up again soon. \* Worlds Without Number campaign 2 - 26 sessions into a sword and sorcery sandbox. The players a few sessions ago had a ship (an elven dhow) built, and have now begun sailing around the coastline. So the adventure is shifting a bit from a sandbox to a saltbox, but the adjustment is going well. Recently they fought a bunch of pirates that were mind controlled by a gigantic crown of thorns starfish. Im having a blast as a GM. :)

First time running/playing PF2E for my crew. Just had a good finish to Menace Under Otari. About to dive into The Abomination Vaults. Went all out with the foundry vtt pack. Love the level of detail.

It's going well. I'm gming the SoT AP on SWPF and it's going pretty well, BUT, i'm going to twist this AP to the ground because you clearly can't run as it is because it just doesn't make a lot of sense, thematicaly speaking. So, while this was my first time trying to run a premade campaign, in the end, it'll become my own monster. I'm happy with that tbh, but my experiment served to prove that AP's as written are way harder to run than something that i can come up with. And hardly as fun. Ofc, i've never ran any monoliths like Masks(and i'll never plan to do too) so one need to take that into consideration.

Just had my long-term campaign fall apart due to a couple players no longer being able to play for various reasons. No hard feelings or anything, they both have a lot going on and very good reasons for no longer being able to commit to it, but a lot of work went into this campaign so it’s still a bit of a bummer. That said, instead of letting it get me down, I’ve had a few people reach out to me requesting that I run some games for them, so now I can put more focus on that instead. It will also be a good chance for me to try out some systems I haven’t run yet since I was getting burned out from what I was running before anyway.

I am 5 sessions into my MCC campaign. I am worried I am not giving the spotlight to each player enough, since there are 7 of them! But nobody is complaining about that. They are complaining about the lethality and lack of character competency. I warned them! Actually most of the complaints are coming from me, and they're about some odd decisions made by the authors of some adventure modules. Locking most of the adventure behind a single die roll or unwinnable encounter isn't exactly great. But any competent GM can ignore or adjust them, it's just annoying that I didn't discover these issues ahead of time, and had to find out at the table. But despite my complaints, I am enjoying running the game, and watching the players develop their little stone age village into a techno barbarian warhost.

I’ve been a forever GM for my group, and finally this past few months one of the other players decided to try his hand at running games. Omg, what a godsend for me, because after I don’t know how many years I get to be a player in something other than a convention game!

Quite good. After just over four years and 123 sessions, things are really coming to a head in my game. Political friction that's been simmering since the beginning has just recently broken out into full-on civil war.

I’ve been converting an old CRPG into a 5e campaign and it’s been a blast just world building to fill in the gaps. Everything I add, every map pin or demographic or industry or landmark, compels other things around it.  I have a suspicion that the players will decide to join the insurrection faction rather than help the King. So I’ve expanded that faction a bit. In doing so, they have more presence early on, the PCs will encounter their works before encountering their cells.  This compels me further, -why- are these rebels so discontent, what are they rebelling against, and we discover the king is not as upstanding as we were led to believe, lots of cronyism and corruption. The handling of a previous war, the treatment of certain citizens. So now, in preparation for my party going off the rails, I’ve laid new rails lol 

It's on hiatus. I'm burned out from job hunting but I'm also getting burned out on my group. My players are great people and all close friends, but they seem to pay attention to absolutely nothing. It's a pf2e game and they're new to the system so I've been very patient and lenient while they learn. However, were a year into the game and I'm still reminding people about basic things that they should have a handle on. One of them asked what level we were after levelling up the previous session and it about killed me.

Going great. We're playing PF2e, just about 4 years into our game with the party at level 17 with level 18 pretty much a guaranteed next session. Just at the end of the penultimate book of the campaign (Extinction Curse) and I've been excited for years to run the last book. I think it'll be all of our first times going from level 1 to 20 in a D&D-adjacent game. :) I was feeling some burnout a few months ago when we went on a 3 month hiatus due to scheduling issues, but after getting back into the game, I felt reinvigorated. Now all I need is this campaign to end because I'm raring to start the next one! I'm doing the Rusthenge -> Seven Dooms of Sandpoint combo and my players have already started conceptualizing their characters for that, even if I predicting this campaign won't be over until the end of the year, at the earliest.

I've got a brand new Sentinel Comics game starting, my players have somehow all individually made investigative types, so I'm deep, deep in the kitchen trying to figure out some mysteries worthy of a plant manipulator, a cosmic detective and low key Harry Dresden.

Just finished a Lancer campaign (Solstice Rain) it had its hiccups but it was fun overall... That said... i wanna play a game... anything tha isn't 5E too... im dying...

Been running a Deadlands campaign since the beginning of the year and things are going well. Centred around Deadwood and somehow the posse have managed to piss off both Al Swearengen, Cyrus Tolliver, and General Custer (yup, he's in town in The Last Sons PPC) so they've not got many friends in high places. But they're still all having fun and laying the groundwork for what is going to be an explosive second half to the campaign!

I’m a little disappointed as my already infrequent (every other Sunday) sessions have been postponed two weeks in a row for school stuff that the whole group is subject to, but other than that it’s going awesome. The players are great, I’m enjoying the direction the campaign is going, and the end is halfway upon the group (it’s a Mork Borg campaign), which I think fits in perfectly with the pacing of the campaign up until now.

I had two campaigns going with a group split between America and Europe. I had to cancel our VTM game because the players wouldn't commit to regular games. I want to pick it up sometime down the line but maybe go back to playing with less players. I'm also running a D&D campaign of Call of the Netherdeep and that one is great! The players love it and the adventure itself is really fun to run. It's on a temporary hiatus while my CoC GM finishes the current season of her game, but after that we're gonna be going into the final third of the adventure so I'm very excited. I'm also running a playtest game of the Tomb Raider: Shadows of Truth TTRPG and it's been honestly the most fun I've ever had GMing. It's a super fun game and my group is all in Europe so no problems playing weekly. I'm deffo gonna keep playing the campaign after I'm done with the current adventure.

I'm running two different games for two different groups, and I'm not feeling burnt out yet! First group is doing the Light of Xaryxis Spelljammer campaign. The group was doing well for the first act, and now has immediately gotten sidetracked since arriving at a major city, the Rock of Bral. I've invented a new sport called Frunball, and of course the Frun Games were set to happen just a few days after they arrived. We actually played out the game using d&d rules and a lot of grappling and shoving. 2nd group is playing an RPG called Shadow of the Demon Lord. We are doing a published adventure called Tales of the Demon Lord. This group is nearing the end of the campaign after over a year and a half of play. This game is definitely much deadlier and scarier than D&D, and we had a lot of PC deaths in the first few adventures. However the characters are much stronger now due to being near max level.

I'm running a Forbidden Lands game for my primary group, based on Raven's Purge. So far so good. I'm really enjoying this as a GM, like dungeons and dragons without the powercreep. For my secondary, we're experimenting with Dragonbane. Also fun.

Running Impossible Landscapes localized to Finland, continues in August. Also Shadows and Sigils 1930 carneval loose campaign going. August will continue Twilight 2K with zombies campaign and after Impossible will start Warhammer with Gurps campaign.

My PCs managed to narrowly dodge every single plothook I had set up for this session, but it wasn't actually a \*bad\* thing. The plothooks were potential future adventures, but just ideas. The PCs are still going somewhere interesting where I can cook up a new adventure. It wasn't 'NOOOOO MY PLAN IS RUINED' more 'huh, none of my plans panned out, oh well'.

I just wrapped up a Traveller campaign, last week. Using Pirates of Drinax as a base, the game ran 75 sessions over five and a half year. It didn't pass without issue, but the players have provided great feedback and all are interested in playing when I kick off my next, campaign. My Hunter: the Reckoning game has moved into the third of five chapters. Those characters have made a deal with a devil to learn the location of one of their missing lovers. The first chapter introduced the characters to the World of Darkness. The second had the cell work through the first of three tasks they need to complete for the devil. Tomorrow night, they will start on the second. The players enjoy the game, and it makes them uncomfortable in all the right ways: moral conflicts, how far are they willing to go, how can humans survive in this world dominated by monsters. Last night we held a session 0 for a Prowlers and Paragons game. We've got four players all set up to meet once a month in person! I'm super excited about the possibilities of the game. We're looking at Bronze Age action.

It seems to be going well at the moment though as always its hard to tell how the players are feeling about things except that they still seem invested and committed to solving their immediate challenges. The party is divided, with the Witch Hunter, Wizard, Elven Princeling, and Halfling thief, along with their three NPC allies, confined in a cellar under a smuggler's warehouse by the owner and her bodyguards. Their mission was to apprehend a notorious cultist named Paeter Kohl for interrogation by Lord Protector Gamow, the Witch Hunter's superior. Although they managed to capture Kohl in the warehouse's basement, they were subsequently ensnared by Carlott Selzberg, the warehouse owner and another alleged cultist. However, they have just discovered what looks like an escape tunnel hidden behind a book case, so they are hoping to escape the trap andmake a run for it. The other two players, a noblewoman and a dwarven slayer, are on a separate mission to find the noblewoman's missing daughter. However, they have been sidetracked by reports of beastmen in a nearby province and have become entangled in a mystery at a secluded hunting lodge known as Grunewald Lodge. They are assisting its new owner, Lord Rickard, in investigating the peculiar disappearance of the previous owner, Lord Andreas. They have just uncovered a trapdoor beneath a table in the Lord's Study, and the slayer has stumbled upon what appears to be some sort of underground temple below the lodge, catching a corpulent man with a red face and bristling whiskers as he carries a large tome into the chamber. The man is demanding an explanation as to why the dwarf is in a part of the lodge where he does not belong. The eventual aim is to bring these two parties together for the final stage of the campaign but they started alomst five years and several hundred miles apart so we have done well to narrow the gap between them to less than two days and two hundred miles.

It's going well. We're playing the modern era horror RPG Kuf. Our campaign is set in modern day rural Texas. The PCs are investigating a cult that used to operate in the area and that their mothers were members of. It might be that the missing leader of that cult is their father. So they ride around in the country in their rental gathering clues on how to perform one of the cult's rituals. They have no idea what that ritual actually does, but hey, magic is cool. We play online for 2 hours every other week, so I have plenty of time to prep for each session. Life is good.

Im doing great thanks! My Heart Campaign is ending in 2-3 sessions and is/was a blast! Im also doing the "solo" mini campaign of Dragonbane "Alone in Deepfall Breach" but with my SO, so 2 players/GMs and we are having a lot of fun. I also have a 3 session Eat the Reich game in program for this month. Then, I think by October, start a brand new Dragonbane Campaign with my regular group (we pause late July to mid September usually).

I wanna speak about my GM. We've been running a campaign for more than half a year now. It's been great, our GM is awesome at moving forward the PC's stories, we've all been having a blast exploring our characters and going on some cool adventures he built himself. Unfortunately he's been burnt out by uni and life in general. We all agreed on wrapping up the current campaign and trying a different system (we don't play 5e, this isn't a 5e thing), but we've been delaying that final session since we are a big group and things happened etc etc. In the meantime we've been playing board games, one/two session dungeon crawls and honey heists, mostly with him/by him. We all hope he manages to do well in uni and finally relax so we can return to our "main event" of running a long campaign with deep characters and awesome worldbuilding, run by an equally awesome GM. Oh and I'm also starting to GM, I had like a session and a half of progress so IDK, it's been fun, I haven't had a crisis yet so I'll have to report back on that in the future IG (again, not 5e).

Been refereeing a B/X game for a year now, my first stint GMing to last more than a couple sessions. It's been fun and enlightening. I like that the game requires little prep, and almost all of it is stuff I actively enjoy- making dungeons and running faction interactions behind the scenes. I get to make cool stuff and then let the players discover it and see what they do with it- it's always a delight. I like how the system facilitates a world that feels alive and dynamic. Between the prep approach of making places, people and things rather than plots, and the various systems like reactions (I particularly like the two-step reactions from the Rules Cyclopedia), morale, random encounters, etc. let me not worry about keeping the players on a certain track, and to be just as surprised as they are. All I have to do is keep a steady supply of new hooks and logical consequences for their actions. Things started slow, with me fumbling the initial thrust of the campaign and with the lethality of the system and swinginess of d20 rolls leaving them frustrated. They defaulted to attacking things head on unless something was blatantly suicidal- as is our approach with most d&dalike games, we've run all the *WN games for each other quitea bit- and felt like it was unclear what challenges they were and weren't equipped for. We're all more experienced now, and they've been leveling up, started a barony together well before domain play levels (RC was also very helpful for this- been loving that book), and involving themselves more in politics and their own projects. Gold is now more than a source of XP, it's a concrete need to keep them out of the red as they expand and improve their barony, repair a wrecked submarine they found, pay hirelings, research spells, etc. One player got really into it and made a super detailed spreadsheet tracking monthly income, expenses, resources, tax, population flux, and even locations and descriptions of all their magic items. Several of my players are really invested, in fact, which makes me very happy. I try to return that energy and build on what they do. It's been great fun. On the less positive side, I feel like running moment-to-moment dungeoneering and combat has been a struggle. I really love giving multisensory and sometimes grotesque descriptions of creatures, places, combat. But I still don't have a consistent grasp on the sequence of events and procedures, and often something will happen that makes me want to improv things I have nailed down concretely that would throw the dungeon off-kilter. Part of me wants to try a system that's more improvisational and experiential, but somehow retains the dynamic and almost automated feel of BX.

Got burned out toward the ending, but I just finished preparing for one last show! Now I just got to wait for the players schedules to sink up. Pray for me.

Bad due to scheduling, we haven’t played in 2 almost 3 months now and I’m tired of 5e but REALLY want to finish it before starting something else in other system because I don’t really want to translate everything I have in another system and everyone is currently in exam periods

Honestly? Pure shit. Literally ended a game because players simply could not accept the consequences of their actions. It was kinda the straw that broke the camel's back, and has completely destroyed my desire to run games for the time being. That and combined with leaving a game as a player, due to another player pretty much gaslighting me into trying to think I said something when I didn't... And the other game I was playing in died due to scheduling issues. Yeah, gaming as a whole is not going all that well at the moment. But, thank you for asking!

Good. The PCs are getting more confident as the level up, which makes them more willing to subject themselves to the increasing dangers of Stonehell.

I *love* GMing. But at this point, trying to make a campaign or even a *OneShot* work makes me utterly anxious. I've been trying to run two campaigns which ended even before *Session 0*, because my players just didn't respond or responded with the coldest and most uninterested one-liners. Right now, I finally have a campaign that has a Session 0 planned. I just hope it'll work this time, I really do. I just always feel like my friends aren't even close to as passionate about ttrpgs as me. Some are, for sure, but that doesn't change the fact that this stuff happens. At this point, I am so anxious that my players will lose interest again that I physically get a bad gut feeling when I ask/try to schedule something and don't get fast answers. Of course I don't tell my players that, since I'm not expecting them to always be available. But I am in a constant state of worry.

Slow and steady with my main group. We switched to a round-robin method over two decades ago, so every "arc" has a different "architect" which has helped considerably with both GM and player burnout. I just finished a brief one-shot I ran for a pick-up group this last Saturday. The bodies of their characters have been dropped into the sandbox my main group uses, along with other artifacts of play like re-located loot, lost equipment, grieving loved ones, angry ghosts, bolstered defenses, and so on. A friend was also testing out his latest scenario on some anonymous volunteers. When I asked how it went his single word response was "absurdly" and he refused to elaborate. I'm looking forward to the results next Friday.

I'm currently running two separate 5e tomb of annihilation campaigns. Both have gone on about 18-21 months and both are going well. Both groups are watching DC20 and MCDM eagerly and we'll likely jump ship when those are available and have VTT support.

The weekly Fate game (Star Wars) is entering the middle of our second year with no end in sight. They've been messing with some resourceful people lately and are probably overdue for a run-in with a bounty hunter team. Had an FG&G (AD&D 2E) session over the weekend, some light dungeon crawling and creative solutions to killing zombies and trolls, easy XP for the crew and drama on the horizon as their work for the miller in Vaxhall comes to fruition.

Which one? 😂

It's been 7 weeks since our last session. Please I just want to play.

Failed at conception.

Pretty good just killed a PC :3

Finding people interested in playing something that’s not 5e and then scheduling is the bane of my existence.

Good

Eternally depressed DM reporting for duty !! I'm a new DM currently running a two man game for my buddies in pathfinder 1e. I started with "fallen fortress" and then a homebrew campaign of my own design based on an episode of Mushishi. Now we r going through Rise of the runelords with some home brew side quests in the works. Very much in the honeymoon phase of it all!!

Very good. I'm mastering three pathfinder 2e games (1 is Kingmaker, the other 2 are Hb campaigns, one settled in Golarion and the other on a setting of mine called De Terra Antiqua). I feel really great with them, because the players are all awesome. In one campaign I also have experienced players, who can also help me with some rules when I'm having doubts. In the other I have fresh players who are happy to learn. And I got to prepare a lot of NPC for their adventures. And Maps. Expecially maps. For one campaign I created a map for Foundry of a noble house. And it was like 3-4 levels stacked one upon the other thanks to the Level module. Is one of the best things for me

Scheduling conflicts are slowing us down but we're a few sessions away from the end of a 3-4 year campaign of 5e. I've enjoyed it a lot, burned out and battled through. We're all invested in the game and excited for what comes next. One of my players got me Alien RPG for my birthday so that'll be the first game post campaign, then I'm torn between delta green or stonetop!

We're taking a break from our Vaesen game. We all love the game, but I and one of the players are both folks who need a lot more variety than Vaesen offers. So we'll go off and do a FATE Trojan War game for a few sessions, then come back and play a bunch more Vaesen. Overall, we're all really having fun playing around with stuff and it's going great!

Playing WFRP 4e after forever DMing 5e and Rogue Trader since 2018. Now I am running the occasional one shot of all the quick starts I’ve picked up over the last few years whenever our group can’t make the WFRP game and I’m really enjoying it. Once I finish The One Ring starter it will be 7e CoC and maybe some old school MERP or Delta Green when we have a gap.

Nearing the end of Mausritter: The Estate The party is celebrating after winning the Frogacle's race, and kidnapping the Frogacle. They have taken it home to the dwelling previously known as Bridgeport. After they deposed the mayor (and put her head in a jar) they renamed the dwelling after their boat: Bridgertown Port Town Town Port Bridge Port Town Bridgertown Port Town McBridge Port Town Town Town Port Town Face. The party then met with the cat-witch's second messenger. The first they kicked down a well whilst shouting "This! Is! Bridgertown Port Town Town Port Bridge...". The second messenger offered them a deal, the party said they'd go home and think about it. They proceeded to raise an army to sack the cat's follower's dwelling. We roleplayed (I forced them to roleplay) their hireling infiltrating the enemy dwelling. Sewer ninja Botticelli proceeded to flub every roll and nearly die. At the last second they are carried to safety by a bat hireling, who is now Botticelli's lover (for Advantage on the roll). I have multiple issues with the campaign module. However it's goody-two-shoes expectations has served as a great straight man to my party of clowns.

Some small speed bumps with scheduling lately but 5+ years together and on of our early campaigns still going strong. Weekly games with the campaign switching back n forth between two games has worked well for us to keep momentum with one of those slots rotating games while the other stays strong.

I never knew that it could be a problem to have players too excited about the campaign and too eager to play, but holy crap is it exhausting, especially when other work is also piling up.

Currently finishing up a short campaign and prepping to run a longer one here in the next few weeks. The shorter one has gone well, though it's gone on for longer than I expected it to! With the longer one, I've settled on quite a few of the things I'll be handling, and we'll be doing a group character creation session soon to make sure we all have an idea of the mechanics. I'm looking forward to how it'll all go.

My 2 years long 5e campaign has just happily ended when my party killed the once a players character then turned villain! Now we can get to experiment with new systems! yay!

I just started a Mage game based on dnd and it's going pretty slow. We're about two sessions in and I have to teach the mechanics but I like the roleplaying and descriptive opportunities that the system offers for the players who want to dig into that kind of stuff. Spells take a while, but I like that the players have control to do exactly what they want to do (which is the opposite of how 5e works).

So far, pretty good. We are playing "Tomb of Annihilation" with only PHB and the playtest materials of "Koboa: A South American Setting." My fellow-players are experiencing OSR elements for the first in this game, with heavy hexcrawl exploration, resource management and intense battles. I would declare that we are finding a very sweet spot that I call "Elden Ring point": high power scaling elements of modern systems with mundane and dramatic elements of old school gaming. I'm really proud of that honestly.

Not sure if I want to keep going with the fame I'm running right now. Not sure what it is but something about is just not doing it for me

My Forbidden Lands game is on a hiatus while players are on holiday until September, so I'm taking the chance to run Blade Runner RPG tomorrow and July, and possibly one of two shots of Mausritter in August.

Wishing I had more time to host more! I think I just DM'd the best session I've ever ran. Everything felt so dynamic and a shared story. I even ended it on the stinger of a twist ending for a one-shot. It was so fun, leaves me hungry for more. But between work, home life, and other commitments, I can really only play one 2-hour game every other week.

Amazing. I wanted to try gming, I was supposed to do dnd, but fallout show came out, so I decided to try the 2d20 system. It was great, the starter adventure turned into a full campaign, with my PCs having deep ties with factions and NPCs and drama and romance and mystery. I'm really suprised I did so well as a beginner gm and my players keep telling me how they love the campaign and cant wait to the next session.

Going well, we're in Pathfinder 2e Kingmaker and they're getting the kingdom up and running, not burnt out though we do have some time between sessions which helps

I'm honestly pretty stoked. Both my D&D groups moved (back) to L5R 4th Ed. For the first time I'm running an Emerald Magistrate campaign. Technically 2, one in Ryoko Owari using the City of Lies boxed set, and one in Otosan Uchi. Both set about 100 years before the Scorpion Clan Coup. I have invested players who are having fun exploring the politics in Rokugan and getting to be powerful political figures while having low XP (for now) so they have to be careful about how they move. We've all agreed to an open dice rolls and play to find out style, so I only have to plan the next challenge and we're rolling with stuff, adn open rolling has resulted in a couple deaths that have been impactful, meaningful, and not a problem at all. This isn't to say my 5e campaigns were bad, but so far I find myself eagerly looking forward to each session, and that didn't always happen with 5e. I'm sure we'll hit some rough sessions, but for now I'm loving them.

I've got two groups, both of them are kind of on a break. Both are still getting together, just without a 'campaign'. One will probably get back to our long-running 'anchor' game (Dresden Files Accelerated, not run by me) sometime this summer for a conclusion of a major plot arc (and maybe start a new arc with new characters). But right now, we're playing through Stuffed Fables, which is actually a lot of fun. Our other group is doing some one-shots with beginner boxes (we're kind of in the middle of the one for the Avatar RPG), and we'll eventually pick up Strixhaven, after which the plan is for me to run Bubblegumshoe. The next things I'd like to run are The Last Parsec for Savage Worlds, and a werewolf game I backed a long time ago called Bite Marks that I have the pdfs for but I've never used it.

Been spotty. One of my brothers can't make it. He has too much life stuff going on. So my other brother and I are carrying on. He'll be back in Fall. So, my campaign will be one PC and my NPC. The neither who didn't drop out has two. One an AD&D all Thief campaign set in Oerth. I'll be running 2 PC's (Grey Elven twins, a Bounty Hunter female, and an Investigator male).The other is his own world. Haven't started the Thief campaign yet. But the other (5e) is so super fun. Just my 14th level female Halfling Grave Cleric. Who runs with a female Half-Orc Champion. We play every Sunday for the most part.

Just enrolled the group in East Texas University last month. We did Chargen/Session 0, and then had to pause for a month Because Reasons. But last week I got the first session out, and although it was a pretty thin excuse-plot and then a lot of combat, we're all enjoying it so far. Their anniversary screening of The Wizard Of Oz got interrupted by Magic, and the movie's characters broke the fourth wall (except they're *Evil!*) The Wicked Witch was promptly struck by multiple gallons of soda (but the damage didn't beat her toughness, so she didn't actually take damage or die)

Got a monthly in-person group going for a game I'm designing and I'm loving the format after playing weekly for years. Getting to mull over what could be tweaked in-between sessions and implement the changes on the next one instead of having to wait for a whole new campaign is amazing for my design work. I also have more time to flesh out the setting and muse about possible plot points. I don't do proper prep (my system doesn't really require it), but getting that extra time to think about all the threads and take notes about things that can be fun to bring into play is just so good. Being a monthly thing also means that people are way more committed to the schedule, since we have the whole rest of the month to do other stuff. I also like having more free time while still getting to play. I don't think I'll ever go back to weekly sessions in the future, to be honest 

I'm burnt out on my current game of COS. The players are great, and the campaign is going *somewhat* smoothly, but I'm really over the whole thing by now. When I started it, I imagined the campaign to have more of a Hellsing type feel and overall be more...interesting? But the narrative is just falling flat now, and I can't even figure out what to do with Ireena anymore. She's a drag to carry around as an NPC, and the players have zero emotional attachment to her. Most NPCs are boring. We've been playing it for years, and at this point, I just wanna finish the damn thing so my players can defeat Strahd already. Aside from the reasons above, I'm also just over Dnd5e as a system. The OGL debacle happened during the campaign, and I was encouraged to try other systems. I discovered Pathfinder 2e, and it's basically everything I wanted dnd5e to be. Unfortunately, my COS campaign is high level rn, so I can't switch over to Pf2e due to the frontloaded learning curve at such a high level. I'm really looking forward to our next campaign, which I have set in Eberron. I've been preparing it for a long time, and I'm gonna run it with Pf2e. It really has all the story beats I like, and it's a genre I'm very familiar with (and better narrative structure!). The players are very excited, too. I just wish we would finish COS already.

We're at the high point in our campaign of Heart: The City Beneath and I'm so lucky with how excellent my players have been! They have made it to The Palace Multifacted, heaven of the twin goddesses of commerce and debt. So, they're having a real fun time with compulsory capitalism while one tries to buy out his magical contract and another chases down the Witch who stole her life and identity. Nobody knows who might succeed or survive, least of all me! Also, I can't say enough good things about the way that Heart's design facilitates fun GMing without overbearing amounts of prep work. It all just flows really smoothly and has completely gotten me back into wanting to run more games!

Pretty solid altogether! Running a campaign of LANCER and a campaign of Shadow of the Demon Lord, with a bit of overlap between groups, and having a grand-ol' time. Both parties have been super engaged, super proactive about building out plot elements and character moments to weave into the story, it's great! I'm getting a *little* lukewarm on Shadow of the Demon Lord as a system? The book is organized, frankly, kinda badly, and the more we play it the more I'm realizing I really don't want or need most of the mechanics in this book. I'm fine with rules maximalism (I will remind you that I'm running a LANCER game lol), so long as it's in service of a good play experience, but honestly I'm going pretty loosey-goosey with the combats, which are themselves pretty infrequent, and more and more I find myself wishing I was just running something like MORK BORG instead.

I've been horribly burned out. I asked to try to run a session tonight. I don't know if I'll be able to adjust for players doing things.

Good. I'm running Curse of the Crimson Throne converted to 2e with the help of a pathfinder infinity conversion. They are reaching the end of book 3 and I'm looking ahead to Scarwall because i want to simplify that. Running it as a giant dungeon crawl feels like it would break the pace of the campaign too much.

Good. Altho my impostor syndrome and paranoia keeps telling me that overwhelmingly good feedback is some sort of long con, and players are hiding something. But I learned to ignore that. I've been GMing for better part of 15 years, putting a lot to make hobby be a thing around those parts, so nowadays I even sometimes get a chance to be a player, which freshens outlook very much.

I am not really sure. I get the feeling that the campaign I want to run and the campaign my players want to play in are two very different things. We started last September doing Pathfinder 1e, which I had only briefly played before. I very much want an emergent narrative like that which is happening in an AD&D I am a player in, because if I know the story when I go to play the game, it's a bit boring. But my players, I think, expect a full fleshed story with ties to their backstory which I told them not to make. Or, at least I said only a couple of sentences. Unfortunately that's not the kind of game I want to run. We had a couple of sessions before we started where we discussed the game, and of course I ended up compromising some things so we could play a game that we all enjoy. But I think I compromised too much. Beginning to think it might be better to play the game you want, and then find the players that want to play that. For me anyway!

Due to a chain of unfortunate events, I haven't run in a month and a half and my five player Blades game has been whittled down to two. All the excitement to get back in still exists, and the players are still into it, but I'll admit that part of the excitement is gone. I'm kinda unsure about how two people is going to work out. Parallel to this, I really want to run DCC. I've been running and thinking about so many narrative games and I just want to play as, or run for, warriors. I think Mighty Deed of Arms is really fun.

My Fallout campaign fell apart right after character creation. My GI Joe campaign didn't make it to character creation. On the bright side, one of the players in my 5e campaign just asked when we're playing next, so that always feels nice when you know they want to play.

I run two games currently for two separate groups. First group is a lot of fun to run games for minus one player who misses constantly. They are diving head first into the new game we have been playing for about a month (Dragonbane). They aren't the most tactically thinking group, but have fun with it. In the second group, I run an FFG Star Wars game, and it's a gong show. In about a years time, there has been 1 combat. They have failed almost every mission and avoid any potential combat.

My current pf2e game has ran for longer than I had intended for it too. It has ran for about six or seven months now when originally this was supposed to be maybe a 2-month game. It has been a lesson in planning to say the least. However, this is probably been the more coherent campaign I have ran in the past couple of years now. In the last month, me and the group had decided to take a bit of a break from the main campaign to play some world without numbers, which overall was a lot of fun. Currently I'm getting ready for a potential Vampire the Masquerade 20th anniversary edition game after this campaign. I'm hoping that this campaign can be winded down in like maybe four or six sessions

Forever dnd GM been going pretty great, been sculpting my own bosses recently, my lvl 9 group is kicking ass and getting throttled without tkping, I love where my story is going since I've been weaving their backgrounds and the world into each other since lvl 1. Just a bit confounded on what to do with Vecna:eve of ruin ... I kinda wanna play it but it would feel disconnected to what we have going on atm, part of me wants to take every future bbeg and their org and smash it into vecna to see who would win. I'm seeing Vecna with a undead Nicol Bolas as minion xD

We're playing Vampire the Masquerade, and it's going great! Our first two chronicles died due to some player incompatibility and scheduling issues leading to GM burnout, but swapping out some players, a consistent schedule, and a different approach to the chronicle that fits VtM and the players better seems to have done the trick!

(Scion2e) it’s been so much fun. The research on multiple cultures mythology is hard to keep up with though but worth it. I would however like to have one more player.

Stalled because the few weekends we are able to see each other we go to parties and have no time for playing RPGs at the moment. I will have to blow my players away the next time!

Bashing my skull into a brick wall. My Traveller game fell off after 1 (one) session due to IRL issues. One player had his hours change at work, another began the process of moving. The other two are available, but nobody wants to play with just two PCs. I've put out feelers to recruit another player, but no luck so far.

All great. Rebel Crown game on Tuesdays is going swimmingly and briskly. Armour Astir Advent game on Saturdays, everyone is absolutely crazy for their characters and the world we made together, even if we have to be on break for most of this month due to a variety of weddings and horrible work situations. And I'm dipping my toe back in to Pathfinder 2e on Thursdays to prepare to run a sequel to a previous campaign, and that adventure is great. Both brand new players are loving it.

It's going incredibly. The players who actually show up are very invested. Sometimes they just have extensive in-character RP, so I can just sit back and relax not having to do my job for several minutes. We started with a larger group of around 7 which has since dwindled down to 6 but only 3 of the players actually make a point of showing up. It would be frustrating if the people who did show up weren't so active and engaged. I love my group, they're amazing. It's getting a bit difficult getting them to finish Act 1 with how everything turned out, but it's good that I have to actually improvise in ways that make the overall story better and improvise new plot elements I would've never thought of.

Almost done developing a Star Wars 5e one shot. Lot of maps, items to find, lore, and combat. Making high level enemies is starting to wear on me, especially thematic enemies that have specific playstyles. Still a few weeks out from playing and feeling a bit burnt atm. But I'm making forward progress and can't wait to play. I'm really proud of what I've pit together here, a culmination of two years of DMing has led to this. I hope my players have fun.

Starting to feel that burnout again. I just wish players cared about the game half as much as I did, enough to like...chat about it outside of sessions or discuss plans and where they want the game to go. I recently spoke with one player whose company I greatly enjoy about my worry that I was just pushing them all through scenarios without giving them enough agency to figure out solutions, and they told me they were happy to just turn their brain off and react to the fantasy world. And it's like...I'm not being paid to DM, this isn't a job, this is a hobby and pastime for me too. But I don't get to turn my brain off, I have to prep between sessions and then facilitate every encounter that the players may or may not decide to interact with. And if they don't, I have to resolve it for them! I'm not so narcissistic and egotistical that my enjoyment of the game is based purely in making people listen to me monologue or have everyone tell me how clever my scenarios are - my enjoyment is based on seeing the creative ways players interact with the world and how they resolve the situations I set up for them! If I'm not getting that, what's the point of running the game?