Handling Forever GMing

Just out of morbid curiosity, I am wondering how others handle being Forever GMs. A friend of mine is dealing with a rough patch of it, and he needs some advice.(Totally not me, I swear ^_^)

what is Forever GM? You never play?

It is a term for people who only ever get an opportunity to gm or can only find games by gming. "my friend" has a very tight schedule and lives in an awkward time zone. And due to this hasn't been able to get in a game as a player in over 5 years. 1 year of looking on roll20.

Yeah, dealing with different timezones are annoying, however we do what we can.

None of his players are willing to take a turn at GMing? If he's been doing it for as long as you say, surely it would be only fair for one of the players to trade out with him. Even if only for a little while.

Play a GMless game like Fiasco with his existing group. Everyone likes to make it sound like GMing is a "job" or is hard. It's really no more difficult than playing and about as rewarding. If you understand the core concepts, it's really quite elementary. Point your players to the GM Academy (LFG listings) and get them trained up.

Rotating GMs hasn't worked in the past. Usually ends up just getting passed back rapidly, because everyone wants to get back the previous game or GM style. I suppose that is a compliment to his GMing.

Moved to Off-Topic

I usually end up GMing, but I like the challenge.

I really prefer gming. it allows me to create my world's. But when I do feel like playing it normally comes down to playing d20 style level based games, which I hate.

I finally just told my group point blank that I needed one of them to start an alt-campaign we could run weeks I'm too burned out from work to dm unless they all just wanted to skip a week once in a while. And one of them did. I guess I just got lucky. (Or they're all such addicts that dm'ing seems better than not playing.) Is your friend looking for a permanent game or just a break once in a while? If I may ask, your profile says you're ... UTC+7? Is that East Asia?

South East Asia to be specific. Burning out isn't really the issue, just a longing to be a player. Restricted Schedule + Time Zone is a killer, especially since finding local players is impossible.

Forever GM here, DM actually, same group more or less since 1984. I do get the odd chance to play but not often. Last time I sat down as a player was 2006. Anyway only way to forever DM is you write the schedule. I play once a month usually sometime twice but never more and sometimes less. Point is if they are not gonna have an alt campaign to prevent your burnout then you only play when you know it wont burn you out. Hope that helps took me about 10 years to figure that out. cheers

I've been forever GMing for a while. If your friend is just burned out from too much of it, he can just take a break. No one can stop him. Either pause the campaign for a while or wrap it up with a big explosion and be done with it. If the GM is not having any fun there's no point in running the game. Hint: If you pause long enough, addicted players may get so antsy during detox they start campaigns themselves just to get a fix. A system/setting change can help. Take a break and do some arcane thing like read books or whatever. Most campaign elements are righteously stolen from other people's work, so a GM can get decent ideas and recharge this way. If he just wants to be a player without pausing his own campaign, I'm sure he can find a group to crash if his players won't take up the flag. There are net-based RPG communities outside of Roll20, so you can check out Google+ or wade through Reddit. IRC even.

From my experience as a forever DM, the best way to handle burnouts is to find a way to get excited about DMing again. Usually its by the acquisition of good ideas, and then taking the game in a direction change. Reading a book, Playing a game, or Watching an interesting TV show usually does it. Handled my first one by having my players begin gathering an army to fight off an evil invasion force. So many ideas flooded into my head that I couldn't let the players DM even if they wanted to, just too much to do.

Another forever (30+years) GM here. I find that while I enjoy playing occasionally, I often spend more time evaluating the gms style, and often feel I can do a better job. (flaw hubris?). And my players dont really want to run a game. There are a few things that help me when I start to get burned out. The first is to run a one shot of something totally different. (New genre, or system.). Roll 20 has allowed me to resume role playing with my rl friends who are now scattered all across the country. I find that playing with people I really enjoy hanging out with in rl is a huge bonus. Finally, I was getting a bit burnt out on the chore of DMing (GURPS and Ars Magica) when I picked up Savage Worlds. It is not for everyone, but as an adult with a wife and 2 kids, the fact that I can pick up a book (with an included plot point campaign and play with virtually no prep time takes away all the pressure. The fun never turns into work. When I need to, I can work up a high level npc in about 1 minute, add some mooks, and whip up a map in about 5 minutes and I am done. There have been plenty of nights in our current campaign when I felt a bit "meh" about dming before hand, and did minimum prep, but still had a great time. I think that keeping fun from becoming work is key to preventing burnout for me.

I think if you're getting burnt out, then obviously you're not enjoying DMing. If you're not enjoying it, you're probably doing it wrong. I remember when I first started, I was constantly frustrated and burnt out. Players weren't staying on their railroads, my campaign was going nowhere, I had to do tons of prep, etc, etc. Since then, I've radically changed my DM style. I now DM mostly one-shots and episodic games of up to 5 sessions long. I don't have to plan out a huge character arc and then get pissed off when my players invariably do something else. I do less prep, and more soliciting my players for ideas. Instead of planning out plots, I create situations and let them do their thing. I don't get committed to success or failure in an encounter, so I don't worry about my dice being too hot or too cold. I let the dice fall where they may, and don't worry about fudging. And I genuinely cheer on my players, making sure to call them badasses multiple times per session. I enjoy it much more, and don't really get burned out because I'm having a great time doing it. I think not only has that improved my games for my players, but it greatly improved my attitude towards DMing.

Burned out from recruiting 10 players and 5 show up. And they want to play 3.5 when you've advertised 2nd. They don't want -re-gens, they want to look at the book and pick stuff for so many hours the game time has expried, yet they want to play "Right now." Next week, They want to change up their PCs, and play barbarian freebooters in a dark ages world with few wizards, but don't want to do it using Conan (Mongoose) because they don't have the books. "They just bought the 3.5 book, or got the .pdf off a Torrent." Then they want to play Pathfinder, but you want to play One Ring. So they play pathfinder, you play one ring for a whole new group then the pathfinder game dies because the GM quit on session 3. So they hit you up, "c'mon buddy let me in your one ring game. it;s like D&D but sort of less magic right?" Nope, full. "You sucked as a GM anyway." I know I am not alone.

Joseph Z. said: Another forever (30+years) GM here. I find that while I enjoy playing occasionally, I often spend more time evaluating the gms style, and often feel I can do a better job. (flaw hubris?). And my players dont really want to run a game. There are a few things that help me when I start to get burned out. The first is to run a one shot of something totally different. (New genre, or system.). Roll 20 has allowed me to resume role playing with my rl friends who are now scattered all across the country. I find that playing with people I really enjoy hanging out with in rl is a huge bonus. Finally, I was getting a bit burnt out on the chore of DMing (GURPS and Ars Magica) when I picked up Savage Worlds. It is not for everyone, but as an adult with a wife and 2 kids, the fact that I can pick up a book (with an included plot point campaign and play with virtually no prep time takes away all the pressure. The fun never turns into work. When I need to, I can work up a high level npc in about 1 minute, add some mooks, and whip up a map in about 5 minutes and I am done. There have been plenty of nights in our current campaign when I felt a bit "meh" about dming before hand, and did minimum prep, but still had a great time. I think that keeping fun from becoming work is key to preventing burnout for me. This is almost totally me. We have long since given up any notion in my group that anyone else will gm. However, with some effort I have found some others game locally and on roll20 to try. some work, some don't meet my standard. It's no loss for anyone really to try. The biggest issue is if you have the TIME to play on another night. I know with me if I didn't dm then none of my friends would play. This has led me to playing like 2-3 nights a week (one of those as DM). Its almost gaming overload after a long drought of not playing at all, And just a suggestion, not an indictment, if your dm is burnt out then provide him/her more support. I get tired mostly when i spend time crafting hand outs, lists, write ups or whatever and the players show up to game having obviously never looked at it. I know it sounds silly but every once in a while really get deep into the story behind something and praise his work. Tell him how totally cool Shadowvale Peek was and how excited you are for the next session. Help kindle his spark. :)

Feefait, well damn said.

I've been playing under the same DM for the past 10 years, more or less. There were a few small breaks, but its generally understood that he is the GM, and we are the players. For the past couple of years we've been meeting once a month, or once every 6 weeks or so and playing like a 12 hour session because we've all grown up and moved away. I have like a 4 hour commute to the game. Well, since we've found roll20 we've started a weekly session on Sunday evenings to augment our monthly sessions to keep everything fresh and whatnot. But some of the group wanted more now that we've found a platform that we all like. One of the players asked me to run a new campaign, so I started one up on Wednesday evenings. 9-11pm. I picked up the pathfinder version of Rappan Athuk and have been going at it full blast. I probably spend two hours a week prep'ing for my 2 hours a week playing just because I like my maps to be nice and detailed and I'm still in the process of building up all the NPCs. I talked to my DM about playing and he's really enjoying it, because no shit, this is the 3rd time he's ever been a player in a campaign. He's done a few one shots, or campaigns that lasted like 2 sessions before falling apart, but in 10+ years of playing, he's never had a character over level 4 before. Talk to your players and tell them that you really want to play. You can grab a full on adventure path for like $100, get 5 friends to all go in on it, $20/person and call it a Christmas present to each other. Give it to your "best" player, and ask him to run it. Anyone who says they can't find 15 minutes a day to do the prep work it takes to run an adventure path is lying. If they say they don't have time offer to swap out weekly on your play time so they'd only be GMing every other week. These guys are your friends, just be honest with em and let em know you need one of em to step up and run something. You're fine with it being a module or whatever. You're not asking him to create the next middle earth, just to run something to let you stretch your playin' legs.