Not really! I love being a DM. But then unlike my two friends I wasn’t the regular DM weekly for 12 years. So there’s that.
For forever DMs out there. Do you ever get to play?
Do you take regular breaks?
How does DMing work for you?
And thanks. I see you.
🙏❤️
Don’t tell my friends, but I actually like GMing more than playing now. It’s fun to have the galaxy-brain “always on” feeling and multitask information. (And it’s always your turn in combat!)
Practice makes perfect!
I’d say the most important thing is knowing who your NPCs are and what they want. That’s what you should prepare outside of sessions. Once you have that, it’s a lot easier to deal with players throwing curveballs.
A constrained scope helps as well. Give the group a prompt like “make characters who want revenge on the Lich Queen” or “make characters who care about the city of Korvosa.”
Use a different, simpler system.
DnD and PF are on the crunchier side of the spectrum for ttrpgs, as much as I love PF2. There are tons of great systems you can learn all the rules to in a matter of minutes and run awesome campaigns in without all the crunch. Personally, I love the crunch but it’s not for everyone so you shouldn’t force it if it’s not for you. Simple doesn’t mean dumb either, a great example is the newer system Shadowdark. Dungeon Crawl Classics is another solid choice, there are a bunch of others though. Like the indie system The Electrum Archive or TEA. The rules are free, simple, but engaging (with inspiration from Morrowind and Dune so bonus points from me).
Don’t confine yourself!
I tried setting up our game so that other people could take over and DM it and take turns. Alas, I am the forever DM. I enjoy DMing, but missed playing.
But about a year ago I got to join an OSRIC campaign. It’s been fun getting to play again!
Fucking love that my group is basically all the second guy. We’ve all taken the GM spot at one point.
That’s our group, we all swap out duties. Some people want to do longer-form campaigns, some just run til they’re bored, some (like me), specifically do shorter one-shots. We have to actually schedule things beforehand they’re so many people wanting to run stuff.
Same here. There’s the main game which has been going on for 4 years, and then whenever the DM is a little burnt out we all take turns. The result is years of steady dnd sessions with no burnout, despite playing online over text with no planned schedule and timezones literally across the world from each other
