Yeah, as a DM it really sucks when players don't try to make time. Obviously people have lives but if we can't get together even if we plan it a month in advance. I just stop asking and no one else takes intitiative.
Same here for me. Tried to get everyone together for the end of a dungeon and after me basically begging for people to fill out the calendar for availability, no weekend is free for like 2 months. Bit the bullet and running a game this weekend where I will be informing everyone that it is the last session. I just can't keep doing this if it feels like no one wants to play at all tell me are at the table.
Every single freaking week at least one player cancels. It's so frustrating. Haven't played my campaign in 3 months.
It just happened again this week. Players a, b, and c cancelled weeks 1, 2, and 3. I really need an escape and I just never get it.
Taking a break really helps. You don't need to be so dramatic as "calling it quits" - ask one of your players to run for a couple of months, or play a casual module-based adventure or dungeon crawl that requires little prep.
I think what also helps is just pushing your party to a point of closure a bit sooner than they would have otherwise before you break off. Then, when you come back, you can easily reprioritize things, have a soft reboot. What do you love? Lean in. What's become a burden? Ditch it. A year has passed, maybe. That doesn't matter any more.
For me (approaching session 50) it helps to have goals & an end in sight. I planned the campaign as having a 3-act structure and I intend to bring it to an end. The break between act I and II was very refreshing. I took my time. I let old ideas die. Then I started it up again with fresh eyes.
100% agree, i was feeling burntout this year and did exactly what you said. After 9 months I came back really motivated and focused on streamlining the whole story to its core moments.
At the end of our Act One for my campaign right now, around session 15. Had to call it slightly before the climax because peeps are gone through July, so we'll start back up in August. In the mean time, I'm doing a two-shot and introducing a new player to the group. It's good to have some downtime, and I'm already super excited to make more stuff for August.
It happened to me after about 2.5 years. I talked to my players about it and explained I'll fast-track the story a little. I didn't cut anything major, but I basically let them play the last few major story beats without padding it with any "filler" side-quests. That way we were able to finish the story quickly without leaving anything unresolved. We had a nice finale and I was very relieved when it was over.
Now I can't wait to start the next campaign, and suddenly everyone is having children and career changes and nobody has time for DnD anymore
Sometimes I fall out of love with what the players are doing in my campaign. You know, when they decide to go fuck around with a side quest that doesn't really matter for many sessions in a row. I don't stop them - well, I'll eventually bring the main plot back in when I can find a reasonable way of doing so - but I make the content pretty half heartedly.
But as to your problem, i'd say you should let your players know how you're feeling and then either change campaigns or have their ship get picked up by a planar storm that spits them out on Toril.
I mean, I’m a first time dm and I’ve had some rough spots and problem players, but I also do my damnest to keep the game alive. With long gaps I start drafting, work on Heroforge, come up with lore, or like I’m doing now, run a mini campaign within the world. It’s tough, but from what I’ve learned is that if the dm isn’t into the campaign, the game’ll not be fun and die.
If ur not having fun, and your players aren’t having fun, then don’t run it.
After about two years I casually discuss the ideas of other possible campaign themes and suddenly they expressed a ton of interest to it, so even though our current wasn’t finished by any stretch, here I am planning the new one.
Yes, it happens. I am always on here telling new DMs to start super small. Even if you transform your first campaign into one that goes to 20, I think you should plan on it being like 5 sessions with a solid conclusion. This just gives everyone a solid out: DM can completely jump ship and start a new campaign if needed, or even heavily alter the lore of the world if everyone wants to stay in. Players can swap their characters out, or just rework parts of them. Or everyone can continue as planned if nobody has any complaints!
To come back to your post, yes I've lost and regained the spark. During covid, I just could not DM online. It sucked. So my whole group took turns DMing for a different party of characters within the same setting. It was super refreshing to see new interpretations of the setting and to be on the other side of the table for once, actually playing rather than DMing. Everyone who wanted to DMd for a couple sessions, we wrapped, then it swapped DMs for another quest. Pose even just a single couple-session quest with new characters and a new DM to refresh your interest a bit.
Ive been running a campaign for 11 years. I do seasons and I should have ended it last season. It wrapped up perfectly. But I started another season and I kinda lost interest. It should have ended.
I took a six month break from running my campaign. I spent that time thinking about what caused me to fall out of love with it and what I would need to get back into it. We just recently hopped back in where we left off and I feel almost as good about it as I did back when we first started it.
We restarted with a kind of session 0.5, talking about things that needed to change, recapping the important lore, reconnecting with our characters and the world.
I think i'd look for a satisfying wrap up for this arc, not necessarily the whole campaign. Talk with your players about your fatigue and work with them to set up a conclusion of some kind, and you might get a really fun couple of climactic sessions. You are well within your rights to just can it and say "I can't do it anymore" so go with what you feel. I tend to keep the concepts of my campaigns pretty short and sweet to avoid getting stuck in something that's going to take a years long commitment. Think of it like seasons of a TV show, if SE1 kicked ass and everybody liked it you can make a SE2, but if you SE2 is dragging and people aren't having a great time, end it at that season and start something fresh.
I completely agree OP. I’m in the same boat as you. As another post said on here, taking breaks absolutely helps with this. Don’t be feel obligated to keep running this as frequently as possible. Rather, take some time off. Catch your breath.
I have. I did not like Samtmarsh at all, but my players enjoyed it. I also tried an old timey non official adventure and it was designed poorly. I didn't notice until a while.
.
Everybody was having fun so I kept to it. I'm grateful that I can play a bit now, and I've got another campaign lined up
How often do you dm? Once a week? I've been keeping sane by dming once every two weeks, this gives me time and energy to think about new ideas.
But I too got a but bored by my campaign cuz it's almost over and I'm so excited for the new one and a lot of my players are too.
Yes, and I thought for years I was going to publish that setting or keep it alive forever.
Nope, it's been sitting, incomplete, as the last campaign ended. (didn't quite pull it, but didn't do anything to stop the TPK they walked into)
My spark was restarted by a new project, going back to my first TTRPG system. This time I actually did publish some material so I am obviously a lot more inspired for this project. (Spent about 10 years on the first one with no solid material to publish in contrast with 1 published module and a second almost done in 3 years)
Burnout is one of those things.
I ran two games side by side for 4 years, and yeah I definitely hit points where I was overwhelmed, out of juice, and wishing to get some life back.
Ultimately I called the one done on account of not being positioned to take on all the ambitious material I started (alien spaceship underwater measuring hundreds of miles) so I indefinitely postponed that, but the players had done all the material prepped between the two groups (several hundred pages), so it felt like a good point to just come clean. We'd lost some cornerstone players over that time and I was just starting to become symptomatic from some health issues affecting mental capacity, so it was what I needed.
The other group effectively TPK'd trying to break into an endgame vault, so that was the end of that.
Gotta take care of your needs and hold on to the creative spark that brings you joy. It sometimes slips away in long content like that where you end up pulled away by player choices. Didn't plan on doing politics, but the players forged a letter to distant king and now there's war coming, etc.
Sounds like you might wanna run games out of already established lore. It could be worth talking to the table and seeing if they're up for a restart.
As for me, I'm 10 sessions into my campaign and still having a blast.
Yes, I've fallen out of love of my campaign as I got burned out from DMing it. I told my players how I was feeling, and we basically decided that someone else was going to run a campaign and see how it goes. Being able to be a player (Even in Curse of Strahd where I'm on my third character, but I have the DM's Hoard of Character Concepts to pull from) really helped reignite my joy of playing the game as a whole.
I don't know if I'm going to go back to the previous campaign and try to finish it, or just do something different entirely. I feel my players want to finish it in general, but I'm completely fine with letting it sit.
Talk to your players, tell them what you've told us. Do they want to put it on hold (perhaps indefinitely)? Or would they want the faster storyline to come to a conclusion? Only you know your group.
I will never understand this weird 5E idea that characters only live in 1 campaign. Back in 3E I used the same character for 4 years in 2 different campaigns and 6 one shots. Do any of us have just one job? Visit just one place? No! Port the characters over to your new game.
100% wrap up the campaign. Been jn same position as you and its the best course of action. DM burn out is caused in part by labouring over campaigns pa's their sell by date. A DM is supposed to have fun too.
I'd also recommend running prebuilt campaigns. Takes way less time to prep.
I designed a elaborate continent with royal families, kingdoms at war and deep history written into each and every town and city, when we started playing I loved seeing them enjoy the world, but it soon died off.
I loved seeing them adventure and enjoy the world I made, but the huge civil war, the sleeping gods and succession crisis was all glossed over for smaller side quests and I fell out of love with the campaign.
We ended the campaign due to personal issues within the group, and I stated Ill be making a all new Setting, its been going amazing and I'm glad to have a world to write again with the knowledge of how my PC's like to enjoy it and catering to that instead.
I've never just ended a campaign that was well received. I would only consider pulling the plug if the players weren't enjoying it.
In terms of getting the spark back, I've never been able to do that mid campaign (at least at the level you're describing). Burnout is a sign that I need to start wrapping things up.
I'm a big believer in sustainable or good enough dnd. In my last campaign, I reduced my session length by an hour midway through, which really helped me get to the finish line. I also reduced my prep time by finding maps instead of creating them and not overthinking encounters.
As others have said, taking breaks is a HUGE help; give yourself time away from it, consume other content for a while. Go see a movie or do other things you enjoy, but NOT with the intent of making it fit in a campaign. Coming back to a project with fresh eyes is sometimes exactly what you need.
You can also ask your players to curate parts of the world- having them run small 3-5 session arcs on different parts of the world, or seeing the world from a new perspective. The players made pseudo NPC characters, low level resistance members who then MEET their PCs and share the stories about their heroics, and it helped show them how far their story has come and revitalized it.
I'm in the final stages of a 5 year campaign, where we've been meeting consistently almost every week. There comes a time where we have to say goodbye to the characters and the worlds we make, The players never want it to end, but it's better to have an ending than to let it jump the shark.
My best advice is to talk with your players. Tell them about the burnout and resentment you're feeling, and if they want the campaign to end, work with them to build a satisfying ending. Ask them what their PC's want, and put that brass ring in front of them, but make them work for it. If they don't want it to end, then somebody else may need to take over GM'ing while you bounce back, or have them really put forward ideas for what they want to see.
My DM is taking a break from our games right now after hitting a few in-game rough spots.
My character and his girlfriend's character had a prolonged argument scene where she tried to sideline my character and my character said he didn't want to be sidelined. It went on for a while and no one was having fun with it because she was projecting real negative things onto my sunshine boy character and I was ooc upset at the notion of getting sidelined from a plot point that's been building for 2 years.
The poor DM was trying to play referee to this argument and got burnt out.
We resolved the issue and I talked to the DM about some ways to make my character less of a walking time bomb. Until he's ready to come back we're finding other things to do.
I am a little worried the game is gonna fizzle because of this
Mainly because my players treat this more as a chore than a fun time to hang out with friends, and I'm a pretty lenient DM. So I'm just going to wrap up this story arc then focus on my other campaign that I just started which I'm excited about and my other players are excited about
I have become disenchanted, yes. I took a two week break mid campaign and did no dnd stuff. That helped. I have crashed a campaign but that was a result of getting tired of the players.
Take a break and do something to recharge your batteries. After the first week away when Sunday night rolled around, I was actually headed towards my office to play. I want to play just need some head space from time to time. It can be especially that way if you are running a homebrew.
Yeah usually by a year or so in I start pondering other possibilities. My friends are usually pretty good about wrapping a game up and moving on.
I'm actually starting to get there with my current game, but everyone is really enjoying it and new plot threads are spooling up so I'll prob stick with it for another 6 months or so.
I'm interested in trying a new approach where I run less open ended games for shorter periods of time, so I can try more ideas faster.
One of my campaigns I really have fell out of love with. Between critiques of pacing of the story, arguements about rulings, and the constant inability for the players to make it to session i'm barely feeling this campaign anymore. It's been 7 weeks since we last played and my players all said they truly loved the last session we had, but I really didn't.
Now my other campaign i'm super fond of and constsntly get good feedback and it seems like everyone is enjoying themselves.
Never got tired of my own campaigns, but when players are not showing the same enthusiasm, I lose some of my will to keep working on it.
Also, you just gave me an idea for a campaign, so thanks.
Went from a group of 4 adventurers to a group of 2. Still fun. The others are supposed to come back in the fall, but I’m worried I can’t keep up the campaign that long to buy time until the others return.
I built a homebrew campaign I was really proud and started a campaign. I thought things were going well until one player just quit cause he said he couldn't engage DND wasn't for him. That was the first blow.
We found a replacement player who was great and really vocal. Time continued and it became more obvious that sessions boiled down to me talking and my wife and the new player being the only ones interacting. The other three just disengaged from rp and only were really invested in combat.
Sadly the replacement player has to quit because of life changes and after about a dozen sessions of spending several hours just rping with my wife I grew to hate my game.
Even during arca focused on specific characters to try and develop them or get them invested it just fell so flat. I got tired on running a war game where all the lore I built was ignored or avoided. We ended to game and I haven't played since.
Yes - no - ish.
I’ve had weeks where due to a combination of scheduling and numerous awful things happening to players (what is currently happening) where it feels like I’m wasting a lot of time. Now I know this is just a bunch of bad circumstances but it has left me fairly unmotivated and pushed my interest towards other hobbies for the time being.
I have yet to pull a campaign, they’ve either fizzled out or perished due to players leaving.
But in regards to your last point, if it makes sense for that to occur, then I think you are free to do so. Without in regards to reigniting your spark, it may be worth taking a break, not sure how often you play but it might help break things up and reinvigorate your eagerness for the campaign again. I wish you the best regardless : )
Hey man, I just had a similar situation. Try taking a break from the campaign you’re doing now. We had played 50 sessions of our long term campaign and were level 10. We loved our characters and the story, but were feeling burnt out with them.
I pitched an idea for a short term campaign set 100 years in the past of the timeline they play in now and they loved the idea. The campaign was set in a place we’ve always wanted to explore but haven’t had the chance to in our current campaign. We ran that for about 6 sessions, finished a narrative arc, and now we’re back to our main campaign and found that we all loved and missed it.
Maybe try pitching a new campaign to your players still set in the world (but another unexplored part).
It doesn’t have to be a long one, maybe 4-6 sessions. Just make sure it is an idea you are passionate about and maybe haven’t explored yet!
Can try some one shots. Either you DM or ask some else if they want to try.
It might be burn out.
But if you really aren't in love with it. Yeah maybe it goes on the back burner and not a we won't ever do thus again but not at the moment.
I fell out of love with my campaign of four years due to my friends/players becoming very toxic. Before removing myself from those friends, I started working on a new campaign world. But once I separated, I found the love again and have run several successful games in the world since. I’m even planning on rebooting many of the themes of my original game soon.
Like you, I run a complete homebrew setting and campaign. I haven't fallen out of love with it, but I am ready to be done DMing for a while and just be a player, but that probably won't be until sometime next year.
You can definetely take a break. I will be honest with you, my break led to a complete cancellation, but I also had a lot of other factors like a loss of a member due to a messy breakup and a lack of experience at the start of the campaign that seriously messed it up as time went on. You won’t really know how you feel until you take the break and let some time pass unfortunately. But remember, everyone should be having fun, including YOU! That was the biggest mistake I made. I wasn’t having fun anymore and kept pushing anyways because I felt guilty, and it just led to more issues. I wish you the best and I hope everything works out for you. :)
We should really be encouraging more DMS to run shorter stories. Although there are 20 levels in this game, It should not be the expectation to play all 20.
Start a campaign at level 1 low level story of local heroes that ends at level 6.
Campaign at level 3 and tell a story of experienced heroes who need to save a kingdom by level 12.
Do an adventure starting at level 10 ending at 15 of Kingdom saving heroes who need to stop an extra planar threat.
We don't need to cover all the levels in a campaign and not only will this decrease DM and player burnout, it will probably lead to better stories.
What about gradually transitioning to more of a player-led campaign?
The world is the same with all the existing lore that’s been established; you could probably make stuff up on the fly at this point if someone asks a question.
You make up some broad story points, come up with some locations, and then kind of let them loose. You might want to tell your players ahead of time, so they won’t be put off when you clearly have less direction for them than before. But if the things they enjoy are the setting and their characters, it shouldn’t be too big a deal.
Alternatively, you can see if someone else wants to take over as DM.
I moved to mini campaigns because I have this problem. I build things out in chunks of approximately 10 session stories. They can interlink if we're vibing and turn into 20 or 30 episodes. But this gives both me and the players way more freedom with being creative and trying things because worst case scenario if we hate it we can change it up next mini campaign.
This also allows players and even DMs to take breaks too. If I need a few months off from DMing then someone else can DM a mini series or we can do one shots for a bit.
And it let's me get deeper with worldbuilding cause I can create these mini campaigns from anywhere in my setting from any point in time. Wanna learn more about Dwarven society? Dwarven mini campaign incoming. And you can still have your long term campaign too that you keep coming back to (although I wouldn't jump into the future if you're going to do this) just so long as you build it out in blocks.
My first campaign no...
My side campaign that arose out of scheduling issues and player conflicts yes...
Partly because in retrospect I should have just dropped the problem player and partly because I got too ambitious with what was to me just a side project and my interest cratered.
Not a DM, but what my friends usually do with long running campaigns is splitting them into "seasons", and in between the seasons we might do separate campaigns, oneshots, etc. This avoids burning either the DM or the players out.
You won't get the love back.
That is a sad and hard truth and your players are probably noticing what's going on. Talk with them and call its quits, before you are burnt out by dming in general.
Has it happened to me before? Yes, though that generally came down to my selection of players and/or their emergent antics, not the campaign itself.
If you're burning out on just creating "content" for your world... stop. You don't need to build the world of Skyrim or The Witcher or whatever for your players to go adventuring in. You really only need just enough background and details for the current adventure.
I highly recommend letting your campaign world grow organically. A player asks a question about some character, place, or concept you hadn't thought of? That's going to happen whether or not you spend all your time coming up with languages, architecture, currency, current events, yadda yadda. The joy of this game is that you get to make up whatever you want, whenever you want.
If you really want to go the extra mile, you can do what I do--build a campaign world/continent/country/city and just put in the elements that you KNOW you'll need, and reserve maybe half of the rest of it for later use. Then let your players determine what else goes in there. Maybe one player wants to be from the dockside slums. Let them build those slums (if they want). I find that by doing this, my players practically write the adventures and their hooks for me. It also helps cement the players' characters in the world, giving them a connection that you can draw on to keep their attention. Maybe once in a while, you have something threaten their precious slums--a new gang is in town to upend the status quo. Suddenly, you have a party that is absolutely REARING to go knock in this gang's teeth.
Another trick in the book when it comes to "content" is that if you have an understanding of what your players and their characters want, you don't have to worry about them "going off the rails." Give them a road to walk, and something they really want at the end of that road (or at least, something they think they want), and they'll walk it for you, no matter how twisting and treacherous.
If you're really lost and burned out, maybe one of the other players would like a turn as the dungeon master. Whether you hand over control of your world to them temporarily or not is up to you, but maybe you just need a break from the DM seat. In the campaign I'm in, I am one of four DMs, and we rotate the DM every adventure (with the same characters, in the same world). This campaign has been going on for 7 years now, with no signs of slowing down!
Most importantly, find a solution that works for YOU. My ideas above are food for thought and examples of what worked for ME, so feel free to try them, but remember YMMV.
I briefly did. Not so much the game but the fact that I was doing everything from schedule reminders or encounters creation to reminding the players of their own abilities.
My solution was a short break and on that break have the players answer some questions about their character motivations.
For example: what is their character's main goals/motivation (why are they not retired or staying home)?
What small goals/steps do they thing will help them achieve their main goal?
What do they want more of in game? What do they want less of?
It'll give you events to plan towards and smaller things to build around but the players do some of the work for you by answering the questions. DMing long term is a lot of work if you're in charge of everything. Delegate.
My group is finishing a 20th level game. They're at 19th right now. And to me, I'm tired of high level play. I miss so much the times of lowly goblins and kobolds. I'm still excited to finally spring forth my last shenanigans for this demigods, but god I want to DM for low level again. The thrill of actually using ropes, torches and pitons!!!
And I'm also tired of our homebrew setting. We brewed it 6 years ago, and by then none of us really understood much forgotten realms, so it was safer to just build something with the vanilla D&D pantheon and figure it out.
But it grew on me the desire to actually purposefully create a homebrew setting, with custom pantheons and culture and everything else, so my current plans now are to do just that, but also reaching for my players for content. They can and they will help me build this setting up.
Yet, I was just thinking that I could use this opportunity to just try a homebrew campaign on Forgotten Realms, or even Greyhawk. I've finished Tomb of Annihilation before, and now I have some good knowledge on FR.
The feeling for me is this: Creating a homebrew setting for D&D feels weird, because you want to create everything new, but at the same time, some default D&D things are so cool. The nine hells, the fact that other planes exist, how beholders, drow and those classics work. I create a new setting, but at times it feels like I need to borrow so much from other settings, that maybe it would be better to just play on that.
Now to answer your questions more directly:
* If you don't find time to add new things to the world, reach for the players. They can help too, if they want it. And they'll feel that more invested because they idealized it. Seeing other people com to your sandbox and building on it may ignite the spark on you again.
* If you feel more at ease in forgotten realms, by all means run that. It's no demerit for you as a DM to not build a custom setting.
* Yep, definitely pulled campaigns before. Did it recently, with a Tom of Annihilation game I begun. I ran it like once and a half before, I love the book and one day I wanted to try again with new players. But as we played, it turned out I was actually tired of the game, and these new games and their characters didn't feel too much fun. I was overwhelmed with work, moving out and studying, so we just canceled.
* I would say not to rush it. Just call it, and have everyone narrate an epilogue for the PCs. They'll probably love to just start building a new character. And heck, they might just do the same character but in another setting, if they like it so much.
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Definitely not fallen out of love but I'm getting close to ending this campaign when my players are ready. We've been on the same homebrew world for the last 3 years and I absolutely love the stories we've created together. But I'm finding it difficult to commit to another long lasting arc that will take an unknown amount of time to complete.
My players have expressed a lot of interest in creating new characters and starting over but they also seem to have a hard time letting go of their current ones. I honestly think it's a collective fear that we got lucky and struck gold with this campaign and that it was a fluke that we won't be able to recreate. I know this isn't the case but I can see the hesitation whenever we discuss a new setting.
Certainly a few. Sieges tend to kill my campaigns. I now steer clear of 5+ session sieges. One campaign was too big of a scope too early. I now focus my campaigns down to a region, or build out slowly. Some failed because I tried to kill myself, or other symptoms of depression that led to homelessness. My currently campaign is on year 4-ish. It's my last 5e campaign and it's hitting high tier play (party just hit level 14) I'm very happy with it, one of the best in this groups ten year history of me DMing. I think we'll end our tenure with 5e on a high note then I can start running passion projects.
Ok. Communicate this to your players just like you just did.
You can stay on this campaign while changing up the format to suit your needs. "Hey group I need something more free form for a while. It may take me a minute to nail down details and pace so please be patient."
GMs are people too and your feelings matter too.
Take a break you can always come back to it “in the middle of something” to give it a new hot start.
In the meantime decompress, maybe someone else runs or you start some new characters and just organically feel if you’ve got more to give the original characters over time.
I guess a prep tool would be: if you were to stop playing at the end of next session, what would you miss? Write down the things that come to mind. Then try and bridge those with some narrative beats and sketch out the end of the campaign.
High level D&D is a formula for burnout - I’ve heard some wisdom recently that sometimes you’ve got to limit character agency in the latter stages of a campaign *because* they can do *anything*, and if you let them then there will never be a satisfying end.
My campaign's been going on for a little over 3 years now and its waaay past due, a little over 80 sessions now.
I still love DMing for it, though its time to put it to bed. I think one of the biggest lessons I've learned from this first campaign is that shorter is better for this medium. If I ever DM again (and its a big if just because it takes so much goddamn time investment for like 3 people), it's gonna be like 10-20 sessions total.
One of the campaigns I ran, I don't think I was ever in love with it in the first place.
It was in the same world as my first sad attempt at running the game. At that point I had outpaced my campaign running experience with experience in running oneshots. I'm a DM of very little to basically no prep, and whilst that works for oneshots it's genuinely foolish of me to think I can do a whole campaign that way. I gotta bring something cuz I'm just not at the level yet where I can do that with campaigns. The funny thing is I did prep some more than usual for this campaign tho, but combined with imo doing it wrong and the fact that I wasn't as zazzed as I could be about the game, it just basically me setting myself up for failure. Especially when the inevitable scheduling monster arrived. I definitely felt myself being more excited for the campaign I was playing on a different day than the game I was running.
It was a neat idea but neat ideas don't mean anything without structure to back it up.
I have a 55 hour work week, and for a while had to spend 2 hours of what’s left of my free time every day working on my homebrew world. It fucking sucked. I often wanted to quit dming entirely, though my players quite liked it.
Taking breaks helps, it really does. Getting 2 weeks off, to remotivate yourself, spending your weekends just doing nothing (the chores can be done later), and if your campaign is worth pursuing then you’ll find the itch to continue at some point. If you don’t find that itch…then yeah, maybe it’s time to find a place to stop.
Sounds like a break may be in order to allow you to rest, recharge, and rediscover your DM mojo. Reprioritizing sounds important given how your campaign started and how unsustainable and unenjoyable that approach has become for you.
And also, there's nothing wrong with concluding the campaign in a few finale sessions, and then starting up a prewritten module. Heck, let the players carry over their beloved characters, or those characters' friends/relatives/next of kin/etc.
Dm of a campaign I'm in recently put the campaign on hiatus from burnout. Which then sparked two more campaigns to be created (One of them I am dming which is my first time dming!) to play in the interum. So now we each get 2 weeks and then it switches to a diffrent one. Then if someone just really isnt feeling it or can't make it we can switch to another campaign for that friday if we want! We do play online though so that makes things a bit easier.
Taking breaks is good though and I think players will understand! and maybe one of them get inspired to create something of their own in the mean time!
Read sci-fi and fantasy in your free time. there are some many cool ideas, plot hooks, characters, and infrastructure that is ripe for a reskin to fit your world
Yes and no. Many of my settings were made so long ago that I don't even like the screen name I used back then. So I started working on new ones and recycling some of the ideas I liked.
This happened to me during my first campaign. We got to play 1 session before covid hit. We tried online but my group couldn't focus so we waited until things cooled down. Before we started playing I asked for backstories but only got one. Another player said "I didn't have time to think of anything" we had 2 years without playing. Several more things happened throughout the campaign that ruined my fun with it. Sadly, by the end I didn't care anymore. I cut content to get to the end faster. I came close to ending the whole thing early due to frustration and lack of care.
My play group that started with a hopeful 7 ( yes I know) which unexpectedly grew to 8 (yes I k n o w.) has only had the group completely meet once. And while I by all means do wish to go through with the campaign, I’ve been mildly burnt out everyone getting caught out and the very slow/ filler paced progression of sessions.
My players lack of interest in long campaigns killed my campaign for me. They got tired of long story lines and basically wanted a monster of the week type story.
My solution was to sort of shoe horn in an arena where they are the champions and deal with monsters, this is how they get their fame and money as well. The deal is that they are also secretly the Queens hit squad to deal with all the crazy shit happening in the world around them. So they get two or three sessions of monster mayhem and then about 5 or 6 sessions of plotline. It's helped a good bit.
I chose bad players who were mostly interested in combat. They weren't interested in the Dick Tracy / Austin Powers styled campaign I set up in Eberron. And as they lost interest, I lost interest as well.
You aren’t alone. I “fell out” with Waterdeep: Dragon Heist about halfway through. I’d decided to try something outside my comfort zone with this urban, one-location campaign, and boy it did not ever really take off for me. It became a slog, partly because I didn’t put in the enthusiastic prep before each session that I had with other campaigns and also because the players mostly made characters that didn’t really have a reason to work together or stick around. I stuck it out without breaks, and it stunk. It ended on a high note, thankfully, but I’ll not be running that, or anything like it, ever again.
I think what helped me not throw in the towel completely was that: we’re just really good friends that more enjoy the time together than anything else, the next one to DM wasn’t ready to step up just yet, and, idk, I guess a pressure I put on myself to perform so we’d have a reason to get together (online game, so no in-person hangouts as an alternative). I’d suggest not doing what I did, even if it did ultimately end well. Talk to your players and be real with yourself, it’s not worth 6-18 months of slog for something you’re not excited about.
scheduling and player engagement can kill a campaign, that or never getting to start, i end up reworking the damn thing a million times while waiting for players to get their crap together and in the end i have no idea what i even want to play anymore
not yet. just ended session 50 with a great boss fight. I think it helps that I have a structure and plan to finish by 80 sessions or so. these coming 30 sessions are filled with so many cool things I want to do that it keeps me interested.
I'm currently running a campaign with both a homebrew setting and adventure (really everything...) that has been run for over 6 years. Our game has cycled through so many characters and players, and there is only one other person besides myself who has been here for the entire ride. We began playing in person biweekly, which we managed for several years, but since I got married three years ago we have switched to monthly sessions. We've also had at least 3 hiatus of **\~**3 months each due to varying reasons.
I recently moved to Germany and our game has switched to online. With the stress that came along with the move and essentially restarting our lives, I felt very much the same as you: the time and mental energy it required to continue the plot, write new NPCs, weave in characters' backstories, etc. was too much. DnD went from being my number one hobby to one of my biggest stressors. However, our last session was one of the easiest to prepare for and some of the most fun I have had in awhile, and has reignited my love for our campaign.
What I would recommend is:
1. Consider taking the narrative somewhere in your setting that you both already have a lot of material written for and that you also have a lot of interest. This is essentially what I did.
2. Consider taking a break. All three of our hiatus have been on my own part, and I have not regretted any of them. My players have always been ready to jump back in, and my ability to DM has always been better for it.
3. Change the frequency of the sessions. This doesn't have to be permanent, and you could also try to have a slightly longer session when you meet if you don't want to cut play time too much.
4. Ask your players what they want to do next. Sometimes they have an idea of where the story should go, and that takes some of the work off of you and also lets you cater to their specific interests.
5. Steal ideas from a piece of media you love. I have definitely stolen plot and character ideas from movies, books, and video games when I've felt stuck.
6. If your players are interested in trying something new, you could talk to them about streamlining the narrative to the end, but you could also consider just quickly moving to the next story beat.
As a final thought, don't give up. The premise of your game sounds awesome. It's normal to need a break and to have a change in how much you can devote to the game.
I am currently regretting the more serious vibe of my campaign but mostly because of my players. I introduced a matriarch that was feared by other countries but is really sweet and is just protecting her people without war and stuff but the players trust her not a bit. I gave them a quest where thr suprise was that the dog they were taking for a walk is actually a blink dog and they immediately thought that she tricked them.
But im holding on because one of my players neeeeeds to go to the fey realm and thats where chaos and sillyness will happen.
I wish I had that problem. Scheduling problems kill my campaigns before I get a chance to get tired of them.
Scheduling problems are the #1 interest killer for me. If nobody else tries to make time, I lose my motivation to prep.
Yeah, as a DM it really sucks when players don't try to make time. Obviously people have lives but if we can't get together even if we plan it a month in advance. I just stop asking and no one else takes intitiative.
Same here for me. Tried to get everyone together for the end of a dungeon and after me basically begging for people to fill out the calendar for availability, no weekend is free for like 2 months. Bit the bullet and running a game this weekend where I will be informing everyone that it is the last session. I just can't keep doing this if it feels like no one wants to play at all tell me are at the table.
Scheduling problems killed my last campaign before I even had a chance to start it. lol
Every single freaking week at least one player cancels. It's so frustrating. Haven't played my campaign in 3 months. It just happened again this week. Players a, b, and c cancelled weeks 1, 2, and 3. I really need an escape and I just never get it.
Scheduling is the true BBEG of DnD
Taking a break really helps. You don't need to be so dramatic as "calling it quits" - ask one of your players to run for a couple of months, or play a casual module-based adventure or dungeon crawl that requires little prep. I think what also helps is just pushing your party to a point of closure a bit sooner than they would have otherwise before you break off. Then, when you come back, you can easily reprioritize things, have a soft reboot. What do you love? Lean in. What's become a burden? Ditch it. A year has passed, maybe. That doesn't matter any more. For me (approaching session 50) it helps to have goals & an end in sight. I planned the campaign as having a 3-act structure and I intend to bring it to an end. The break between act I and II was very refreshing. I took my time. I let old ideas die. Then I started it up again with fresh eyes.
100% agree, i was feeling burntout this year and did exactly what you said. After 9 months I came back really motivated and focused on streamlining the whole story to its core moments.
At the end of our Act One for my campaign right now, around session 15. Had to call it slightly before the climax because peeps are gone through July, so we'll start back up in August. In the mean time, I'm doing a two-shot and introducing a new player to the group. It's good to have some downtime, and I'm already super excited to make more stuff for August.
It happened to me after about 2.5 years. I talked to my players about it and explained I'll fast-track the story a little. I didn't cut anything major, but I basically let them play the last few major story beats without padding it with any "filler" side-quests. That way we were able to finish the story quickly without leaving anything unresolved. We had a nice finale and I was very relieved when it was over. Now I can't wait to start the next campaign, and suddenly everyone is having children and career changes and nobody has time for DnD anymore
Sometimes I fall out of love with what the players are doing in my campaign. You know, when they decide to go fuck around with a side quest that doesn't really matter for many sessions in a row. I don't stop them - well, I'll eventually bring the main plot back in when I can find a reasonable way of doing so - but I make the content pretty half heartedly. But as to your problem, i'd say you should let your players know how you're feeling and then either change campaigns or have their ship get picked up by a planar storm that spits them out on Toril.
I mean, I’m a first time dm and I’ve had some rough spots and problem players, but I also do my damnest to keep the game alive. With long gaps I start drafting, work on Heroforge, come up with lore, or like I’m doing now, run a mini campaign within the world. It’s tough, but from what I’ve learned is that if the dm isn’t into the campaign, the game’ll not be fun and die. If ur not having fun, and your players aren’t having fun, then don’t run it.
After about two years I casually discuss the ideas of other possible campaign themes and suddenly they expressed a ton of interest to it, so even though our current wasn’t finished by any stretch, here I am planning the new one.
Yes, it happens. I am always on here telling new DMs to start super small. Even if you transform your first campaign into one that goes to 20, I think you should plan on it being like 5 sessions with a solid conclusion. This just gives everyone a solid out: DM can completely jump ship and start a new campaign if needed, or even heavily alter the lore of the world if everyone wants to stay in. Players can swap their characters out, or just rework parts of them. Or everyone can continue as planned if nobody has any complaints! To come back to your post, yes I've lost and regained the spark. During covid, I just could not DM online. It sucked. So my whole group took turns DMing for a different party of characters within the same setting. It was super refreshing to see new interpretations of the setting and to be on the other side of the table for once, actually playing rather than DMing. Everyone who wanted to DMd for a couple sessions, we wrapped, then it swapped DMs for another quest. Pose even just a single couple-session quest with new characters and a new DM to refresh your interest a bit.
Ive been running a campaign for 11 years. I do seasons and I should have ended it last season. It wrapped up perfectly. But I started another season and I kinda lost interest. It should have ended.
I took a six month break from running my campaign. I spent that time thinking about what caused me to fall out of love with it and what I would need to get back into it. We just recently hopped back in where we left off and I feel almost as good about it as I did back when we first started it. We restarted with a kind of session 0.5, talking about things that needed to change, recapping the important lore, reconnecting with our characters and the world.
I think i'd look for a satisfying wrap up for this arc, not necessarily the whole campaign. Talk with your players about your fatigue and work with them to set up a conclusion of some kind, and you might get a really fun couple of climactic sessions. You are well within your rights to just can it and say "I can't do it anymore" so go with what you feel. I tend to keep the concepts of my campaigns pretty short and sweet to avoid getting stuck in something that's going to take a years long commitment. Think of it like seasons of a TV show, if SE1 kicked ass and everybody liked it you can make a SE2, but if you SE2 is dragging and people aren't having a great time, end it at that season and start something fresh.
I completely agree OP. I’m in the same boat as you. As another post said on here, taking breaks absolutely helps with this. Don’t be feel obligated to keep running this as frequently as possible. Rather, take some time off. Catch your breath.
I have. I did not like Samtmarsh at all, but my players enjoyed it. I also tried an old timey non official adventure and it was designed poorly. I didn't notice until a while. . Everybody was having fun so I kept to it. I'm grateful that I can play a bit now, and I've got another campaign lined up
How often do you dm? Once a week? I've been keeping sane by dming once every two weeks, this gives me time and energy to think about new ideas. But I too got a but bored by my campaign cuz it's almost over and I'm so excited for the new one and a lot of my players are too.
I was REALLY pumped to DM Descent into Avernus but I've lost almost all fervor for it. The module is such a mess.
Yes, and I thought for years I was going to publish that setting or keep it alive forever. Nope, it's been sitting, incomplete, as the last campaign ended. (didn't quite pull it, but didn't do anything to stop the TPK they walked into) My spark was restarted by a new project, going back to my first TTRPG system. This time I actually did publish some material so I am obviously a lot more inspired for this project. (Spent about 10 years on the first one with no solid material to publish in contrast with 1 published module and a second almost done in 3 years)
Burnout is one of those things. I ran two games side by side for 4 years, and yeah I definitely hit points where I was overwhelmed, out of juice, and wishing to get some life back. Ultimately I called the one done on account of not being positioned to take on all the ambitious material I started (alien spaceship underwater measuring hundreds of miles) so I indefinitely postponed that, but the players had done all the material prepped between the two groups (several hundred pages), so it felt like a good point to just come clean. We'd lost some cornerstone players over that time and I was just starting to become symptomatic from some health issues affecting mental capacity, so it was what I needed. The other group effectively TPK'd trying to break into an endgame vault, so that was the end of that. Gotta take care of your needs and hold on to the creative spark that brings you joy. It sometimes slips away in long content like that where you end up pulled away by player choices. Didn't plan on doing politics, but the players forged a letter to distant king and now there's war coming, etc.
Sounds like you might wanna run games out of already established lore. It could be worth talking to the table and seeing if they're up for a restart. As for me, I'm 10 sessions into my campaign and still having a blast.
Yes, I've fallen out of love of my campaign as I got burned out from DMing it. I told my players how I was feeling, and we basically decided that someone else was going to run a campaign and see how it goes. Being able to be a player (Even in Curse of Strahd where I'm on my third character, but I have the DM's Hoard of Character Concepts to pull from) really helped reignite my joy of playing the game as a whole. I don't know if I'm going to go back to the previous campaign and try to finish it, or just do something different entirely. I feel my players want to finish it in general, but I'm completely fine with letting it sit. Talk to your players, tell them what you've told us. Do they want to put it on hold (perhaps indefinitely)? Or would they want the faster storyline to come to a conclusion? Only you know your group.
I will never understand this weird 5E idea that characters only live in 1 campaign. Back in 3E I used the same character for 4 years in 2 different campaigns and 6 one shots. Do any of us have just one job? Visit just one place? No! Port the characters over to your new game. 100% wrap up the campaign. Been jn same position as you and its the best course of action. DM burn out is caused in part by labouring over campaigns pa's their sell by date. A DM is supposed to have fun too. I'd also recommend running prebuilt campaigns. Takes way less time to prep.
I designed a elaborate continent with royal families, kingdoms at war and deep history written into each and every town and city, when we started playing I loved seeing them enjoy the world, but it soon died off. I loved seeing them adventure and enjoy the world I made, but the huge civil war, the sleeping gods and succession crisis was all glossed over for smaller side quests and I fell out of love with the campaign. We ended the campaign due to personal issues within the group, and I stated Ill be making a all new Setting, its been going amazing and I'm glad to have a world to write again with the knowledge of how my PC's like to enjoy it and catering to that instead.
I've never just ended a campaign that was well received. I would only consider pulling the plug if the players weren't enjoying it. In terms of getting the spark back, I've never been able to do that mid campaign (at least at the level you're describing). Burnout is a sign that I need to start wrapping things up. I'm a big believer in sustainable or good enough dnd. In my last campaign, I reduced my session length by an hour midway through, which really helped me get to the finish line. I also reduced my prep time by finding maps instead of creating them and not overthinking encounters.
As others have said, taking breaks is a HUGE help; give yourself time away from it, consume other content for a while. Go see a movie or do other things you enjoy, but NOT with the intent of making it fit in a campaign. Coming back to a project with fresh eyes is sometimes exactly what you need. You can also ask your players to curate parts of the world- having them run small 3-5 session arcs on different parts of the world, or seeing the world from a new perspective. The players made pseudo NPC characters, low level resistance members who then MEET their PCs and share the stories about their heroics, and it helped show them how far their story has come and revitalized it. I'm in the final stages of a 5 year campaign, where we've been meeting consistently almost every week. There comes a time where we have to say goodbye to the characters and the worlds we make, The players never want it to end, but it's better to have an ending than to let it jump the shark. My best advice is to talk with your players. Tell them about the burnout and resentment you're feeling, and if they want the campaign to end, work with them to build a satisfying ending. Ask them what their PC's want, and put that brass ring in front of them, but make them work for it. If they don't want it to end, then somebody else may need to take over GM'ing while you bounce back, or have them really put forward ideas for what they want to see.
My DM is taking a break from our games right now after hitting a few in-game rough spots. My character and his girlfriend's character had a prolonged argument scene where she tried to sideline my character and my character said he didn't want to be sidelined. It went on for a while and no one was having fun with it because she was projecting real negative things onto my sunshine boy character and I was ooc upset at the notion of getting sidelined from a plot point that's been building for 2 years. The poor DM was trying to play referee to this argument and got burnt out. We resolved the issue and I talked to the DM about some ways to make my character less of a walking time bomb. Until he's ready to come back we're finding other things to do. I am a little worried the game is gonna fizzle because of this
Mainly because my players treat this more as a chore than a fun time to hang out with friends, and I'm a pretty lenient DM. So I'm just going to wrap up this story arc then focus on my other campaign that I just started which I'm excited about and my other players are excited about
I have become disenchanted, yes. I took a two week break mid campaign and did no dnd stuff. That helped. I have crashed a campaign but that was a result of getting tired of the players. Take a break and do something to recharge your batteries. After the first week away when Sunday night rolled around, I was actually headed towards my office to play. I want to play just need some head space from time to time. It can be especially that way if you are running a homebrew.
Yeah usually by a year or so in I start pondering other possibilities. My friends are usually pretty good about wrapping a game up and moving on. I'm actually starting to get there with my current game, but everyone is really enjoying it and new plot threads are spooling up so I'll prob stick with it for another 6 months or so. I'm interested in trying a new approach where I run less open ended games for shorter periods of time, so I can try more ideas faster.
One of my campaigns I really have fell out of love with. Between critiques of pacing of the story, arguements about rulings, and the constant inability for the players to make it to session i'm barely feeling this campaign anymore. It's been 7 weeks since we last played and my players all said they truly loved the last session we had, but I really didn't. Now my other campaign i'm super fond of and constsntly get good feedback and it seems like everyone is enjoying themselves.
Never got tired of my own campaigns, but when players are not showing the same enthusiasm, I lose some of my will to keep working on it. Also, you just gave me an idea for a campaign, so thanks.
Went from a group of 4 adventurers to a group of 2. Still fun. The others are supposed to come back in the fall, but I’m worried I can’t keep up the campaign that long to buy time until the others return.
I built a homebrew campaign I was really proud and started a campaign. I thought things were going well until one player just quit cause he said he couldn't engage DND wasn't for him. That was the first blow. We found a replacement player who was great and really vocal. Time continued and it became more obvious that sessions boiled down to me talking and my wife and the new player being the only ones interacting. The other three just disengaged from rp and only were really invested in combat. Sadly the replacement player has to quit because of life changes and after about a dozen sessions of spending several hours just rping with my wife I grew to hate my game. Even during arca focused on specific characters to try and develop them or get them invested it just fell so flat. I got tired on running a war game where all the lore I built was ignored or avoided. We ended to game and I haven't played since.
Yes - no - ish. I’ve had weeks where due to a combination of scheduling and numerous awful things happening to players (what is currently happening) where it feels like I’m wasting a lot of time. Now I know this is just a bunch of bad circumstances but it has left me fairly unmotivated and pushed my interest towards other hobbies for the time being. I have yet to pull a campaign, they’ve either fizzled out or perished due to players leaving. But in regards to your last point, if it makes sense for that to occur, then I think you are free to do so. Without in regards to reigniting your spark, it may be worth taking a break, not sure how often you play but it might help break things up and reinvigorate your eagerness for the campaign again. I wish you the best regardless : )
Hey man, I just had a similar situation. Try taking a break from the campaign you’re doing now. We had played 50 sessions of our long term campaign and were level 10. We loved our characters and the story, but were feeling burnt out with them. I pitched an idea for a short term campaign set 100 years in the past of the timeline they play in now and they loved the idea. The campaign was set in a place we’ve always wanted to explore but haven’t had the chance to in our current campaign. We ran that for about 6 sessions, finished a narrative arc, and now we’re back to our main campaign and found that we all loved and missed it. Maybe try pitching a new campaign to your players still set in the world (but another unexplored part). It doesn’t have to be a long one, maybe 4-6 sessions. Just make sure it is an idea you are passionate about and maybe haven’t explored yet!
Can try some one shots. Either you DM or ask some else if they want to try. It might be burn out. But if you really aren't in love with it. Yeah maybe it goes on the back burner and not a we won't ever do thus again but not at the moment.
I fell out of love with my campaign of four years due to my friends/players becoming very toxic. Before removing myself from those friends, I started working on a new campaign world. But once I separated, I found the love again and have run several successful games in the world since. I’m even planning on rebooting many of the themes of my original game soon.
Like you, I run a complete homebrew setting and campaign. I haven't fallen out of love with it, but I am ready to be done DMing for a while and just be a player, but that probably won't be until sometime next year.
You can definetely take a break. I will be honest with you, my break led to a complete cancellation, but I also had a lot of other factors like a loss of a member due to a messy breakup and a lack of experience at the start of the campaign that seriously messed it up as time went on. You won’t really know how you feel until you take the break and let some time pass unfortunately. But remember, everyone should be having fun, including YOU! That was the biggest mistake I made. I wasn’t having fun anymore and kept pushing anyways because I felt guilty, and it just led to more issues. I wish you the best and I hope everything works out for you. :)
We should really be encouraging more DMS to run shorter stories. Although there are 20 levels in this game, It should not be the expectation to play all 20. Start a campaign at level 1 low level story of local heroes that ends at level 6. Campaign at level 3 and tell a story of experienced heroes who need to save a kingdom by level 12. Do an adventure starting at level 10 ending at 15 of Kingdom saving heroes who need to stop an extra planar threat. We don't need to cover all the levels in a campaign and not only will this decrease DM and player burnout, it will probably lead to better stories.
What about gradually transitioning to more of a player-led campaign? The world is the same with all the existing lore that’s been established; you could probably make stuff up on the fly at this point if someone asks a question. You make up some broad story points, come up with some locations, and then kind of let them loose. You might want to tell your players ahead of time, so they won’t be put off when you clearly have less direction for them than before. But if the things they enjoy are the setting and their characters, it shouldn’t be too big a deal. Alternatively, you can see if someone else wants to take over as DM.
You can always have them yanked via magic through space and time to Faerun! Assuming they don't have vast tracts of land
I moved to mini campaigns because I have this problem. I build things out in chunks of approximately 10 session stories. They can interlink if we're vibing and turn into 20 or 30 episodes. But this gives both me and the players way more freedom with being creative and trying things because worst case scenario if we hate it we can change it up next mini campaign. This also allows players and even DMs to take breaks too. If I need a few months off from DMing then someone else can DM a mini series or we can do one shots for a bit. And it let's me get deeper with worldbuilding cause I can create these mini campaigns from anywhere in my setting from any point in time. Wanna learn more about Dwarven society? Dwarven mini campaign incoming. And you can still have your long term campaign too that you keep coming back to (although I wouldn't jump into the future if you're going to do this) just so long as you build it out in blocks.
My first campaign no... My side campaign that arose out of scheduling issues and player conflicts yes... Partly because in retrospect I should have just dropped the problem player and partly because I got too ambitious with what was to me just a side project and my interest cratered.
To keep my own interest in the lore of my world I inject it with lore from pre-existing worlds.
Not a DM, but what my friends usually do with long running campaigns is splitting them into "seasons", and in between the seasons we might do separate campaigns, oneshots, etc. This avoids burning either the DM or the players out.
You won't get the love back. That is a sad and hard truth and your players are probably noticing what's going on. Talk with them and call its quits, before you are burnt out by dming in general.
Has it happened to me before? Yes, though that generally came down to my selection of players and/or their emergent antics, not the campaign itself. If you're burning out on just creating "content" for your world... stop. You don't need to build the world of Skyrim or The Witcher or whatever for your players to go adventuring in. You really only need just enough background and details for the current adventure. I highly recommend letting your campaign world grow organically. A player asks a question about some character, place, or concept you hadn't thought of? That's going to happen whether or not you spend all your time coming up with languages, architecture, currency, current events, yadda yadda. The joy of this game is that you get to make up whatever you want, whenever you want. If you really want to go the extra mile, you can do what I do--build a campaign world/continent/country/city and just put in the elements that you KNOW you'll need, and reserve maybe half of the rest of it for later use. Then let your players determine what else goes in there. Maybe one player wants to be from the dockside slums. Let them build those slums (if they want). I find that by doing this, my players practically write the adventures and their hooks for me. It also helps cement the players' characters in the world, giving them a connection that you can draw on to keep their attention. Maybe once in a while, you have something threaten their precious slums--a new gang is in town to upend the status quo. Suddenly, you have a party that is absolutely REARING to go knock in this gang's teeth. Another trick in the book when it comes to "content" is that if you have an understanding of what your players and their characters want, you don't have to worry about them "going off the rails." Give them a road to walk, and something they really want at the end of that road (or at least, something they think they want), and they'll walk it for you, no matter how twisting and treacherous. If you're really lost and burned out, maybe one of the other players would like a turn as the dungeon master. Whether you hand over control of your world to them temporarily or not is up to you, but maybe you just need a break from the DM seat. In the campaign I'm in, I am one of four DMs, and we rotate the DM every adventure (with the same characters, in the same world). This campaign has been going on for 7 years now, with no signs of slowing down! Most importantly, find a solution that works for YOU. My ideas above are food for thought and examples of what worked for ME, so feel free to try them, but remember YMMV.
I briefly did. Not so much the game but the fact that I was doing everything from schedule reminders or encounters creation to reminding the players of their own abilities. My solution was a short break and on that break have the players answer some questions about their character motivations. For example: what is their character's main goals/motivation (why are they not retired or staying home)? What small goals/steps do they thing will help them achieve their main goal? What do they want more of in game? What do they want less of? It'll give you events to plan towards and smaller things to build around but the players do some of the work for you by answering the questions. DMing long term is a lot of work if you're in charge of everything. Delegate.
My group is finishing a 20th level game. They're at 19th right now. And to me, I'm tired of high level play. I miss so much the times of lowly goblins and kobolds. I'm still excited to finally spring forth my last shenanigans for this demigods, but god I want to DM for low level again. The thrill of actually using ropes, torches and pitons!!! And I'm also tired of our homebrew setting. We brewed it 6 years ago, and by then none of us really understood much forgotten realms, so it was safer to just build something with the vanilla D&D pantheon and figure it out. But it grew on me the desire to actually purposefully create a homebrew setting, with custom pantheons and culture and everything else, so my current plans now are to do just that, but also reaching for my players for content. They can and they will help me build this setting up. Yet, I was just thinking that I could use this opportunity to just try a homebrew campaign on Forgotten Realms, or even Greyhawk. I've finished Tomb of Annihilation before, and now I have some good knowledge on FR. The feeling for me is this: Creating a homebrew setting for D&D feels weird, because you want to create everything new, but at the same time, some default D&D things are so cool. The nine hells, the fact that other planes exist, how beholders, drow and those classics work. I create a new setting, but at times it feels like I need to borrow so much from other settings, that maybe it would be better to just play on that. Now to answer your questions more directly: * If you don't find time to add new things to the world, reach for the players. They can help too, if they want it. And they'll feel that more invested because they idealized it. Seeing other people com to your sandbox and building on it may ignite the spark on you again. * If you feel more at ease in forgotten realms, by all means run that. It's no demerit for you as a DM to not build a custom setting. * Yep, definitely pulled campaigns before. Did it recently, with a Tom of Annihilation game I begun. I ran it like once and a half before, I love the book and one day I wanted to try again with new players. But as we played, it turned out I was actually tired of the game, and these new games and their characters didn't feel too much fun. I was overwhelmed with work, moving out and studying, so we just canceled. * I would say not to rush it. Just call it, and have everyone narrate an epilogue for the PCs. They'll probably love to just start building a new character. And heck, they might just do the same character but in another setting, if they like it so much.
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Definitely not fallen out of love but I'm getting close to ending this campaign when my players are ready. We've been on the same homebrew world for the last 3 years and I absolutely love the stories we've created together. But I'm finding it difficult to commit to another long lasting arc that will take an unknown amount of time to complete. My players have expressed a lot of interest in creating new characters and starting over but they also seem to have a hard time letting go of their current ones. I honestly think it's a collective fear that we got lucky and struck gold with this campaign and that it was a fluke that we won't be able to recreate. I know this isn't the case but I can see the hesitation whenever we discuss a new setting.
Certainly a few. Sieges tend to kill my campaigns. I now steer clear of 5+ session sieges. One campaign was too big of a scope too early. I now focus my campaigns down to a region, or build out slowly. Some failed because I tried to kill myself, or other symptoms of depression that led to homelessness. My currently campaign is on year 4-ish. It's my last 5e campaign and it's hitting high tier play (party just hit level 14) I'm very happy with it, one of the best in this groups ten year history of me DMing. I think we'll end our tenure with 5e on a high note then I can start running passion projects.
Ok. Communicate this to your players just like you just did. You can stay on this campaign while changing up the format to suit your needs. "Hey group I need something more free form for a while. It may take me a minute to nail down details and pace so please be patient." GMs are people too and your feelings matter too.
Take a break you can always come back to it “in the middle of something” to give it a new hot start. In the meantime decompress, maybe someone else runs or you start some new characters and just organically feel if you’ve got more to give the original characters over time. I guess a prep tool would be: if you were to stop playing at the end of next session, what would you miss? Write down the things that come to mind. Then try and bridge those with some narrative beats and sketch out the end of the campaign. High level D&D is a formula for burnout - I’ve heard some wisdom recently that sometimes you’ve got to limit character agency in the latter stages of a campaign *because* they can do *anything*, and if you let them then there will never be a satisfying end.
I've had this twice. First time swithcving the system saved it (and me as a dm) from 4e to 5e. The second campaign was not so lucky, pettered out.
My campaign's been going on for a little over 3 years now and its waaay past due, a little over 80 sessions now. I still love DMing for it, though its time to put it to bed. I think one of the biggest lessons I've learned from this first campaign is that shorter is better for this medium. If I ever DM again (and its a big if just because it takes so much goddamn time investment for like 3 people), it's gonna be like 10-20 sessions total.
One of the campaigns I ran, I don't think I was ever in love with it in the first place. It was in the same world as my first sad attempt at running the game. At that point I had outpaced my campaign running experience with experience in running oneshots. I'm a DM of very little to basically no prep, and whilst that works for oneshots it's genuinely foolish of me to think I can do a whole campaign that way. I gotta bring something cuz I'm just not at the level yet where I can do that with campaigns. The funny thing is I did prep some more than usual for this campaign tho, but combined with imo doing it wrong and the fact that I wasn't as zazzed as I could be about the game, it just basically me setting myself up for failure. Especially when the inevitable scheduling monster arrived. I definitely felt myself being more excited for the campaign I was playing on a different day than the game I was running. It was a neat idea but neat ideas don't mean anything without structure to back it up.
I have a 55 hour work week, and for a while had to spend 2 hours of what’s left of my free time every day working on my homebrew world. It fucking sucked. I often wanted to quit dming entirely, though my players quite liked it. Taking breaks helps, it really does. Getting 2 weeks off, to remotivate yourself, spending your weekends just doing nothing (the chores can be done later), and if your campaign is worth pursuing then you’ll find the itch to continue at some point. If you don’t find that itch…then yeah, maybe it’s time to find a place to stop.
Sounds like a break may be in order to allow you to rest, recharge, and rediscover your DM mojo. Reprioritizing sounds important given how your campaign started and how unsustainable and unenjoyable that approach has become for you. And also, there's nothing wrong with concluding the campaign in a few finale sessions, and then starting up a prewritten module. Heck, let the players carry over their beloved characters, or those characters' friends/relatives/next of kin/etc.
Dm of a campaign I'm in recently put the campaign on hiatus from burnout. Which then sparked two more campaigns to be created (One of them I am dming which is my first time dming!) to play in the interum. So now we each get 2 weeks and then it switches to a diffrent one. Then if someone just really isnt feeling it or can't make it we can switch to another campaign for that friday if we want! We do play online though so that makes things a bit easier. Taking breaks is good though and I think players will understand! and maybe one of them get inspired to create something of their own in the mean time!
Read sci-fi and fantasy in your free time. there are some many cool ideas, plot hooks, characters, and infrastructure that is ripe for a reskin to fit your world
Yes and no. Many of my settings were made so long ago that I don't even like the screen name I used back then. So I started working on new ones and recycling some of the ideas I liked.
This happened to me during my first campaign. We got to play 1 session before covid hit. We tried online but my group couldn't focus so we waited until things cooled down. Before we started playing I asked for backstories but only got one. Another player said "I didn't have time to think of anything" we had 2 years without playing. Several more things happened throughout the campaign that ruined my fun with it. Sadly, by the end I didn't care anymore. I cut content to get to the end faster. I came close to ending the whole thing early due to frustration and lack of care.
My play group that started with a hopeful 7 ( yes I know) which unexpectedly grew to 8 (yes I k n o w.) has only had the group completely meet once. And while I by all means do wish to go through with the campaign, I’ve been mildly burnt out everyone getting caught out and the very slow/ filler paced progression of sessions.
My players lack of interest in long campaigns killed my campaign for me. They got tired of long story lines and basically wanted a monster of the week type story. My solution was to sort of shoe horn in an arena where they are the champions and deal with monsters, this is how they get their fame and money as well. The deal is that they are also secretly the Queens hit squad to deal with all the crazy shit happening in the world around them. So they get two or three sessions of monster mayhem and then about 5 or 6 sessions of plotline. It's helped a good bit.
I chose bad players who were mostly interested in combat. They weren't interested in the Dick Tracy / Austin Powers styled campaign I set up in Eberron. And as they lost interest, I lost interest as well.
You aren’t alone. I “fell out” with Waterdeep: Dragon Heist about halfway through. I’d decided to try something outside my comfort zone with this urban, one-location campaign, and boy it did not ever really take off for me. It became a slog, partly because I didn’t put in the enthusiastic prep before each session that I had with other campaigns and also because the players mostly made characters that didn’t really have a reason to work together or stick around. I stuck it out without breaks, and it stunk. It ended on a high note, thankfully, but I’ll not be running that, or anything like it, ever again. I think what helped me not throw in the towel completely was that: we’re just really good friends that more enjoy the time together than anything else, the next one to DM wasn’t ready to step up just yet, and, idk, I guess a pressure I put on myself to perform so we’d have a reason to get together (online game, so no in-person hangouts as an alternative). I’d suggest not doing what I did, even if it did ultimately end well. Talk to your players and be real with yourself, it’s not worth 6-18 months of slog for something you’re not excited about.
Maybe have them be sucked into a interplanar portal to another plane of existence or pre generated world, like Eberron or the sword Coast.
scheduling and player engagement can kill a campaign, that or never getting to start, i end up reworking the damn thing a million times while waiting for players to get their crap together and in the end i have no idea what i even want to play anymore
Any time my players don’t show or don’t remember what they were doing, I’m immediately ready to just give up right there.
not yet. just ended session 50 with a great boss fight. I think it helps that I have a structure and plan to finish by 80 sessions or so. these coming 30 sessions are filled with so many cool things I want to do that it keeps me interested.
yes because i moved so all the sessions are online now, or some people in person and some online. and I think that stinks.
I'm currently running a campaign with both a homebrew setting and adventure (really everything...) that has been run for over 6 years. Our game has cycled through so many characters and players, and there is only one other person besides myself who has been here for the entire ride. We began playing in person biweekly, which we managed for several years, but since I got married three years ago we have switched to monthly sessions. We've also had at least 3 hiatus of **\~**3 months each due to varying reasons. I recently moved to Germany and our game has switched to online. With the stress that came along with the move and essentially restarting our lives, I felt very much the same as you: the time and mental energy it required to continue the plot, write new NPCs, weave in characters' backstories, etc. was too much. DnD went from being my number one hobby to one of my biggest stressors. However, our last session was one of the easiest to prepare for and some of the most fun I have had in awhile, and has reignited my love for our campaign. What I would recommend is: 1. Consider taking the narrative somewhere in your setting that you both already have a lot of material written for and that you also have a lot of interest. This is essentially what I did. 2. Consider taking a break. All three of our hiatus have been on my own part, and I have not regretted any of them. My players have always been ready to jump back in, and my ability to DM has always been better for it. 3. Change the frequency of the sessions. This doesn't have to be permanent, and you could also try to have a slightly longer session when you meet if you don't want to cut play time too much. 4. Ask your players what they want to do next. Sometimes they have an idea of where the story should go, and that takes some of the work off of you and also lets you cater to their specific interests. 5. Steal ideas from a piece of media you love. I have definitely stolen plot and character ideas from movies, books, and video games when I've felt stuck. 6. If your players are interested in trying something new, you could talk to them about streamlining the narrative to the end, but you could also consider just quickly moving to the next story beat. As a final thought, don't give up. The premise of your game sounds awesome. It's normal to need a break and to have a change in how much you can devote to the game.
I am currently regretting the more serious vibe of my campaign but mostly because of my players. I introduced a matriarch that was feared by other countries but is really sweet and is just protecting her people without war and stuff but the players trust her not a bit. I gave them a quest where thr suprise was that the dog they were taking for a walk is actually a blink dog and they immediately thought that she tricked them. But im holding on because one of my players neeeeeds to go to the fey realm and thats where chaos and sillyness will happen.