Burn Out

It's been building all summer, but these last few weeks have made me realize just how burnt out I've become as a GM.  I've been the only GM for two-three on-going games for the last four years and a sporadic co-GM for the last year, as well as any number of one off games.  At a low estimate I've run almost 40 games this year but I've only played in 7 and I haven't gotten the chance to play a game in any system that I've been running.

Once I would finish running a session and wouldn't be able to stop thinking about why I was excited to run the next game, but since the summer, that hasn't been happening.  It's been seeming like my players have been enjoying the games, at least, all the feedback I've gotten has been positive, but they haven't been the style of games I want to run right now. The breaking point was drunk D&D last month which the players enjoyed being silly and drunken, shouting and having silly names, killing monster after monster, but it just wasn't what I wanted to run and I made the mistake of trying to set up individual goals and plotlines that were quickly drowned in a torrent of inebriation.  I don't begrudge my players their enjoyment of the kill-happy, silly and very casual D&D but right now it's not the style of game I want to run.  Trying to plan for a new Planescape campaign has shown me that I don't even know quite what kind of game I want to run, just that the games I've been running right now aren't really there.

So I'm going to take a break. I'm going to run the final session of my OSR Module break in a few weeks and then I'm going to take a break from running any kind of game until mid-November so that I have a full month off.  I'm going to put my two D&D groups on hiatus until January and put my Fading Suns group on indefinite hiatus. It was a hard decision because I know my players have been enjoying the games, but I haven't and I'm hoping that a break will refresh my delight in running games again.

I am going to try and play, Thomas, my patron saint of gaming, has been encouraging me to find more game groups to find another game I could play in and I plan on giving that a try.  The Ginger Giant is relaunching his groups in 5E and I am looking forward to getting to play 5E for the first time since August of 2013 when it was in the earlier playtest stages.

And if any of my players want to try their hand at a session or two, I have a ton of great modules that I've barely had a chance to skim and would be willing to give any assistance, hints or encouragement I can.  While I'm not running my two ongoing groups until January, after mid-November I may run a few small games to try out different systems, maybe a game of Tremulus, now that I have the rules, or 13th Age or Numenara.  

Hopefully playing will inspire me to write a blog post or two, or maybe I'll write a post here once my break is truly underway and I can try and figure out what I miss about running games.  In any case, I think that a real break from running games will be good for me and will revitalize my love of GM'ing.