Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 151 - Burnout

Episode Date: November 20, 2022

Much is written about DM burnout.  But you're a player and while you know you should be excited for the Dungeons and Dragons or RPG session tonight, you find yourself dreading it and it doesn't even sound like a good time.   If this is you, you might be experiencing RPG burnout.  In this episode, we talk about the causes of burnout and what you can do to find that joy again.   #DungeonsandDragons #DnD #Pathfinder #DMTips #PlayerTips #Burnout   Resources: How to be a Great GM - https://www.youtube.com/c/HowtobeaGreatGM 

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. Maybe your group started as a D&D 4E group that naturally migrated to 5E when it came out, and you've been there ever since. The group never changes the games they play, and they're always 5E. And don't misconstrue what I'm saying. I love me some 5E games, but I can't imagine playing it and only it for eight years. It is finally that time of year. There's a crispness to the air,

I have chili simmering on the stove, a steaming cup of Earl Grey tea in my hand, and the yard desperately needs to be raked. It's a wonderful time of the year. Except for the falling leaves, by the way. They can get bent. Thank you for listening to episode number 151 of the Taking20 podcast, this week talking about player and DM burnout. Before I get started, I want to thank this week's sponsor, The Alphabet. I am really good friends

with 25 letters of the English alphabet. I don't know why. It is time to announce the winner of the beautiful Fairy Dice Tower from 3D Crafts and Curios. Ross Curry from... Shit, I forgot to ask where he's listening from. I will share your contact information with Brenton who should reach out to you to make arrangements to get that beautiful tower sent to you. I want to thank everyone who entered and followed Brenton on the Soch. Is that what the kids call it Instagram these days? The Soch? Because I am so connected to the zeitgeist of the youth of today.

Everything I do on this podcast is pulled from today's headlines, including the sponsors. That's why I'd like to thank this week's sponsor, Old Mordecai's Liniment Powder. Old Mordecai's cures common and uncommon aches and pains, provides a real pick-me-up on those low-energy days. Good for the consumption, dropsy, and the Antarctic exploding hookworm. Old Mordecai's Liniment Powder, made from 100% amphetamine and cocaine. Pick some up at your local barber slash apothecary today. Have you told anyone about the podcast? Why not?

It's not a secret. You don't have to go into some back alley behind an abandoned arcade and buy this podcast from a black market illicit podcast dealer, right? Well, if you did, you should probably go to the cops because this podcast is available on something that I'm being told is called the internet. Please tell your friends about the podcast available on taking20podcast.com, Spotify, iTunes, and wherever fine podcasts can be found. Have you ever just not been that enthusiastic about a gaming session? You have a group meeting on Friday, and maybe you're playing the Druid Skywind the Fair,

or maybe your GM's finishing up the prep work, getting ready for a night of adventure in the Dilmarc caves with traps and monsters and mysteries. The players play their cards right, maybe they befriend the kobold priestess, and who knows where she can lead them through the secret tunnels. You know you should be excited. You only game once per week, and maybe once every other week, and you love the hobby. But as the hour approaches, you just don't feel it. Instead of eagerness, you feel a bit of boredom and maybe even dread. I've been playing RPGs in some form for four decades,

from the D&D Redbox all the way through Pathfinder 2E, and I can say with no sense of embarrassment or hesitation that this hobby has made some of my favorite memories in my life. My first-level fighter picking a bar fight with a mouthy schmuck that turned out to be a high-level head of the Rangers Guild. My low-intelligence rogue sticking his finger in a roiling black mass of negative energy because he thought it would open a locked door.

The touch-and-go fight between the characters and a flock of erronees when the characters were able to get their first intelligent magic item any of the players had ever had. To one of the players' birth of a meme at our table that the sorcerer who couldn't make the session was outside, quote, burying the horses, end quote. That's a long story. As much as I have embraced this hobby, and believe me, I have.

I play two to three times a week and run a podcast on it for the love of Shailen. But I've experienced my share of burnout. There have been times in my life when I just didn't look forward to gaming sessions the way I previously did. I looked at the next session with apathy or maybe even dread. Tabletop RPG gaming provides a great escape from the drudgeries of our real world. It is amazing, creative, improvisational, funny, serious. You can spend part of your evening chewing your fingernails to nubs,

screaming at little math rocks for rolling the wrong number, or cheering with your friends when the Minotaur Queen finally falls. Your next session's coming up, so why aren't you more pumped? Why does the game feel more like an obligation than a source of joy? The answer very well may be that you are burned out. You may just be mentally or emotionally exhausted. There's a ton written about DM burnout, and yes, there are DM-specific reasons for burnout to occur. But much of the reasons are both player and DM focused. There's a lot of common elements there. The most important thing I can say about burnout is do not suffer in silence.

Talk about it with your gaming group, your DM, and your gaming peers. If your group is mature, generally functioning adults, we all know about burnout. We get that way with work and hobbies and family and friends. Believe me, we all understand. Talk to your DM and your players about it. It's only going to get worse when you just go through the motions to get through this gaming session, only to dread the next one too. Okay, let's all back up. What causes player and GM burnout?

Well, number one, and the most common cause of burnout that I've found, is that you play too many games. If one game is good, six is better, right? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's the same logic as one cookie is delicious treat and an entire sleeve of Oreos make you throw up. You may just be in too many games at one time. Your RPG eyes got too big for your RPG stomach and it's making you sick, tired, and it's sucking the joy out of the hobby for you. What defines too many games, by the way, varies from person to person. Some top out at one game session per week. Any more than that and the game begins to lose its luster.

Meanwhile, some people have the time and the resources to play two, three, four games, or even more per week. When I was in college, I played two to three, four games or even more per week. When I was in college, I played two to three times every week. There were different groups that played different games, like D&D and a Marvel superhero system published by TSR based on the Phase Rip system. And there was even another group that played MechWarrior, or as I affectionately referred to it, Math with Robots. I had the time for that amount of gaming every single week.

Now, I have more responsibilities and I just can't play that often. Now that leads me to the second reason for burnout. The next most common source of burnout I've seen is that outside needs and obligations are taking up more and more of your free time. Back in college, I worked for the college teaching labs and later freshman level classes. I worked weekends at a pizza place and made a little money that went to pay for food and books and etc. But I had a lot of spare time back then compared to 2022. Now I have a teenage son, two jobs, a podcast to research for, write episodes, record and publish. I just don't have a ton of time for

gaming. That's why I cap myself to two games per week max, and one of those is really only possible because it starts between 8 and 9 p.m. on a Saturday night and runs to about midnight. If that game were earlier, I'd probably have to miss a lot more sessions due to obligations, but I have alternating Friday games and my Saturday night game, and that's pretty much my limit. Do I wish I could play more? Absolutely. Starfinder, Pathfinder 2nd Edition, Delta Green, 1D&D Playtest, 5e, they're all calling my name right now, whispering, Play us, Jeremy. Volunteer to run a game. You could probably sneak one more game in, maybe late on Tuesday nights. I want two beautiful game systems that I can't get enough of, but I don't have the freaking time.

I'm still recovering from major medical procedures this year, and I'm getting more rest than I used to, because I have to. And oh, by the way, I like to see my son and wife every now and then. I know if I did take on one more game, I'd start to burn out bad. Third reason for burnout. Maybe you don't enjoy your current role anymore as DM, healer, frontline fighter, or whatever. Now this point is where I lump in DM burnout. No one else in your group wants to DM and you're stuck behind the screen because that's what the group expects of you now.

You used to love DMing, but damn it, you want to play some too. Maybe none of your other players think they can DM. Which, by the way, if you're listening and you don't think you can DM, I want to invite you to go listen to the early episodes and, hell, most of the rest of the podcast, because I simply want to say the fact that you can't DM is bullshit. You can do it. Maybe I need to rehash those first couple episodes and

re-release kind of the So You Want to Be a DM and update it with some of the stuff I've learned since. But it's not just DM burnout, by the way. A lesser discussed aspect of burnout is like healer burnout, or fighter burnout, or scout burnout, or whatever the party roles happen to be. There was one group that I played with where no one else wanted to play a rogue, so I played a rogue in three straight campaigns. Don't get me wrong, I love me some sneaky sneak backstabby stab, but these campaigns lasted for two years each. I played a rogue for half a decade of games every other week, and I finally got out of that role to get shoehorned into a healer for two campaigns after that. I kind of burned out on those roles, and by the end I was ready to play anything else. No one wanted to play rogue or

healer, and the alternative was either I play them, or we don't have one. The point is, being forced to play a role you're not interested in playing can rapidly lead to burnout. Fourth cause of burnout. You don't enjoy the meeting format anymore. Like most of you, my in-person games went online during the pandemic. And let me start by saying both in-person and online tabletop games have their advantages, but most of us prefer one to the other, no matter how slightly. Your gaming group may have settled into one format or another, and it's not the one you would prefer.

And if that's the case, you will burn out quicker. Personally, I miss in-person gaming. All three of my gaming groups have migrated to online only for different reasons. One group were geographically diverse. Another group has starting to have children and finds it harder to find a babysitter and get away for a night of gaming. And the third group just likes the convenience of not commuting to someone else's house for a game. I completely understand their positions, but man, I really miss getting the other in person. Fifth reason for burnout. Some of you may not want to hear this reason, but I think it's important to consider. You may be burning out because you don't enjoy the game system the group is using anymore. Maybe your group started as a D&D 4E group that

naturally migrated to 5E when it came out, and you've been there ever since. The group never changes the games they play, and they're always 5E. And don't misconstrue what I'm saying. I love me some 5E games, but I can't imagine playing it and only it for eight years. Eventually you get tired of the system, the rules, the little annoyances and foibles that each system has. 5e, for example, for its positives as a rule system that gives DMs a ton of flexibility, is really shit at lore. Take a look at Spelljammer and Strixhaven, and they're way too light on lore and potential campaign backgrounds. They mostly just hand wave it and say, yeah, you DM, you come up with the lore yourself.

Paizo's Pathfinder and Pathfinder 2e systems have their flaws, but lore isn't one of them. You can find deep dives in books and articles and podcasts about damn near every nation and area of the world in the inner sea of Galarian. From Bavoy to Sargava, Jalmaray to the Ironbound Archipelago. Countries are defined, adventures are published, and lore from daily life to political structure to influence of the deities are documented in glorious detail for use at your gaming table. But if you want a blanker's slate on Galarian, continents like Sarasan and parts of Garand are left barely mapped and unexplored to give GMs areas of the world to homebrew their technocracy or barbaric lands or whatever their hearts desire.

If you're suffering from burnout, consider giving another game system a try, whether it's a well-established big system like 5e or Pathfinder 2e, or even a rules-light system like Fate or Fiasco. There are even what I call one-page systems where literally every rule to run the system fit on a single 8.5x11 page. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and a break from your most played game system may be just what the doctor ordered when it comes to rekindling your fire for the hobby. That last sentence, by the way, could also be part of a relationship podcast. This week on Wining and Dining, can a candlelit dinner help you find that spark for the RPG you've played for so long?

I guess it depends on how flammable the pages are. Sixth reason for potential burnout. You've been stuck in the same area of the same game world for too long. Sometimes it's not the rules or the game system that's burning you out, it's adventuring in the same world over and over and over and over again. I have an unabashed love for Galarian and the variety of the nations and areas keep you from burning out. But if the group I was adventuring in, I don't know, they kept it in the nation of Galt for the fifth time, I'd probably get sick of that too. Maybe you need an adventure somewhere else besides Absalom Station or Water

Deep or Iman or Istar or wherever you've been adventuring. As DMs, it's tempting to reuse the world that we've made because we've already sunk a lot of time into creating the world and it shortens prep time, so we use it over and over and over again. DMs, vary your adventure locations, even if it's in the same world. Adventure elsewhere with new nations, new rulers, and new threads. Another thing that can cause burnout, and the seventh thing, is if your game is indefinite, it can easily lead to burnout. There's no end in sight. I'm currently DMing a pirate sandbox campaign,

and one of my players said after last session, I could adventure in this type of world for years. I'm glad he's having a good time. But there is no way in Hades I want this type of pirate adventure to go on for a decade. I have too many other games I want to run, adventures to provide, dangers I want to throw at them that doesn't easily fit into a yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirate's life for me. If I did stick with the campaign for that long, I am absolutely certain I would burn out on it as well. Okay, Jeremy, I've decided I'm burned out now. What can I do about it?

Well, what you need to do will depend on why you're burned out. The first thing I want you to do is take some quiet time for yourself and see if you can determine the source of the burnout. If you can figure that out, your next steps are pretty simple. source of the burnout. If you can figure that out, your next steps are pretty simple. Is it the frequency of gaming? If so, give yourself more time to breathe between games. Space them out more. Maybe play in fewer games. One of my favorite YouTube DM channels, How to Be a Great GM with tips by Guy Sclanders. I'll put a link to the channel, by the way, in the resources section of the description. Go check it out. He made a great point in one of his videos called How to Avoid Burning Out. We may game for three to four hours per session,

but our brains need to process what happened in the session for hours or maybe even days afterward. We have to work out the story, determine the whys and wherefores of what happened, and it takes time even if you're not aware that your brain's doing it. Know your gaming limits. My heart wants to game seven nights per week and probably seven days as well, but my brain knows that that would cause me to burn out even if it were seven different settings with seven different game systems and seven different groups of people. I've learned my limit. Two nights per week. That's all I can do right now. Now my hope? In 15 years, this is my main hobby, and I'm gaming more often.

But right now, with the stresses of real life, running a podcast, taking care of my health, two nights is my limit. Is it that other concerns are crowding into your gaming time? If so, take some time to take care of those concerns so you have the air and space to game. Are you tired of the game system you're using? You're tired of Pathfinder, Starfinder, 5e, Blades in the Dark, whatever. Ask your gaming group if they'd be willing to try something different as a one-shot, and maybe you could even volunteer to run that session.

Before you say, I don't know if I could be a DM, see my earlier point. Yes, you fucking can. Get behind the screen. You may feel panicked, but if you focus on the player's fun, that's 90% of the battle. Is it the people that you're playing with that are sucking the joy of gaming out of your life? Well, it might be time to find a different gaming group. I've got a lot to say on that subject, and next week's topic is about leaving your gaming group the right way.

So for now, I'll just say, if it is the people that you're playing that are sucking the joy out of your gaming life, maybe you need to leave. Are you playing a character or a role in the gaming group that you don't enjoy? Are you tired of being the healer? You're tired of always being the party face and having to do all the diplomacy? Are you tired of being the DM? Talk to your gaming group. Ask them to change. Ask to switch up roles. Ask someone else to GM for a few sessions.

Run a one-shot. Something. Or maybe it's just you need to take a break. Sometimes we get overwhelmed, and if you need to take a break, self-care is important. Whether that's no gaming whatsoever, or playing a completely different RPG, or playing in a completely different group, or you know what? Maybe these friends that you know and love, let's ask them to run a board game one night,

play some cards, just hang out. If you're experiencing burnout because the campaign you're in has no anticipated end, by the way, voice your concerns to the DM. Maybe it's time to start act three of the campaign and start wrapping shit up. Burnout may not be a medical diagnosis, but it's a very real thing. Your mental health is critically important and you have to stand up for what you need because if you don't, no one will. If you feel like you're burning out, talk to your gaming group about it. 99% of the groups out there would be happy to accommodate giving you a break.

And if your group is the 1% who won't accommodate you, time to find a new group because the one that you have is a bunch of assholes. Take time for self-care. Talk to your gaming group. That way you and they can once again have fun doing it. We have a coffee. ko-fi.com slash taking20podcast. I haven't had any donations in a while,

and I'm just about $30 away from covering all the costs for 2022 of running the podcast. If you'd be willing to donate, I would greatly appreciate it. Tune in next week when I'm going to talk about the right way to leave your gaming group. But before I go, I once again want to thank this week's sponsor, The Alphabet. A-E-I-O and U really get on the other letter's nerves. I guess the entire alphabet suffers from irritable vowel syndrome. Go on, ask me if I regret that joke. This has been episode 151, all about DM and player burnout. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube media production.

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