Session #13: How I Avoid Burnout (spoilers, I don't)

There is a monster in GMing that doesn't always see the light of day, especially by the players. It's called burnout.

I'm sure many of you have heard of burnout or even experienced it in your work, school, or overall life. But what is it?

(via Google)

Burnout is a state of severe physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion from prolonged, excessive stress, leading to lost motivation, reduced effectiveness, feelings of helplessness, cynicism, and a sense of having nothing left to give.

Unfortunately, GMing with ttrpgs can be a very easy place for burnout to occur. The nature of being a GM involves being constantly prepared, constantly thinking and planning for what your players could do. What about magic items? Do you want to add homebrew rules? What happens if they go the "wrong" way?

For me, burnout as a GM also tangles itself up with analysis paralysis. Where I have rough ideas, rough thoughts about what I would like to do but I can't bring myself to sit down and actually do it. Sure, I'd love to set up a fantastic boss battle but, that means I have to go find a boss stat block...and I have to set up their path of travel and motivation and...ugh, never mind.

It's tough and I honestly make it worse for myself by frequently running multiple campaigns so I feel the same sort of panic and freeze and lack of motivation across multiple groups. My greatest fear that comes with all of this is that my players will notice and that they too will lose motivation to play. (My wife swears this doesn't happen, but what does she know?)

So what do I do? Burnout can deter anyone from wanting to continue being a GM and can often be what ends a campaign dead in its tracks. I have a couple baseline methods to help knock me out of my stupor:

1. Use resources

2. Take a break

3. Lean on the players

Use Resources:

The internet, in this respect, is an awesome place. There are so many people that offer up free one shots, ideas for campaigns and plot twists. You're not the first person to think of a music battle between your bard and Asmodeus so why not use someone else's mechanics that worked for them?

I also have recently be really loving the use of ChatGPT for helping me get my thoughts better organized. ChatGPT, as a whole, doesn't do a great job creating full campaigns but what it does do really well is organize data. You know that campaign hoo

k in your head that you want to flush out into a kingdom-wide ball with a murder and a huge battle on the dance floor? You know how you feel stuck actually figuring out how to put it on paper? Use ChatGPT. Text dump your thoughts about how you want it to go, the NPCs you want to have involved, and let it fly. The ability for it to immediately organize the thoughts into a linear campaign outline that you can then start to fill in on your own time or with your players is a fantastic way to take the weight off of your shoulders.

(It's also a way to make use of AI's data crunching without taking information that isn't theirs)

Take a Break:

Does this mean stopping the campaign? Hardly. But, any worthwhile GM has a surprising amount of lore

and prep already in place to carry the story. Instead of continuing to plan two, three or even four sessions ahead, sit back, take it in, let your work finally work for you.

This can sometimes add some extra pressure, though, as it does create a bit of a "ticking time bomb" as you watch your players suddenly sprint through two sessions of work in one. But sometimes, this can also be a good way to give you an understanding of time. Just how long have been struggling to prep? Is it time to look deeper or do you just need a good day to let yourself write?

Lean on the Players:

Do you have awesome players that love to get involved? Do you have players that are even just a little bit curious? Excellent. This is their time to shine. Give them a nudge to take the reigns for you. Ask them what they want to do, where they want to go, and use your own guardrails to help build off of that. Do they want to explore the sewers? Okay, what do they want to find down there? A rat king? Great, there's now a rat king in the sewers.

Doing this is an excellent way to both meet your players expectations without putting massive amounts of stress on yourself. Good players (even just average players) aren't looking to defeat God or overturn a kingdom in every session. Knowing they can sometimes just kill rats in a basement for some extra gold can be just a fun and fulfilling.

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After all of that, what if you still don't feel like you're out of it? Well, now it's time to have a real conversation with yourself. Are you just done with the campaign? Do you need to take an actual break and come back from it? Forcing sessions that mean nothing is fun for no one.

This is a game of fun, after all. It's meant to be a place where you can relax and enjoy your time with friends. If you're constantly feeling stressed out then maybe you're trying too hard or maybe the magic of the campaign is gone. Talk with your players about the truth of what you're feeling. A lot of people will step up to try and help in any way they can. But they can't do anything if you keep claiming everything is fine and you just need to get out of the funk.

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I personally, find a lot of value in continuing to show up for sessions with my burnout. I get inspiration from my players that frequently helps bring the motivation back. I watch videos of new ways to run things or other options for writing bad guys and NPCs. I try to improve on my own skills so I can try them out in sessions. Burnout, to me, is a time to test out things that aren't specific to the campaign, to see how else I can be a good GM without feeling overwhelmed.

What about you all? What sorts of things do you do to get out of burnout? Have you ever had to cancel a campaign because of it?

Looking forward to your sentiments.

See you next session.

Julia