Mandatory solution to most problems: talk to them. Share your feelings and ask for their preferences: quickened conclusion or just a indefinite pause? Maybe there's a solution you haven't even considered, like some else DMing or changing to a low-prep system.
The golden rule still apllies: don't look for in-game solutions to out-of-the-game problems.
This. Your campaign is not just your campaign. The players might want to continue it with a different DM, in which case trying to wrap it up quickly will just disappoint them and make it worse than if it just ended abruptly.
Nobody can help you with burn-out or lacking proper time but you don’t bear some greater responsibility for it ending properly. That’s for the whole table to share.
>I've come to the heartbreaking conclusion that I don't want to continue as a DM any longer in a homebrew campaign that started a few years before Covid, where we got together almost once a month. The main reason being that I'm just burned out, I don't get the same enjoyment out of preparing the sessions anymore. There is also the fact that I'm in a time of my life where I don't have as much free time anymore as I used to.
Say this but to your players
You could shelf it for a bit and ask another player to DM for a while. Either a new campaign or a few one-shots. I was getting burnt out on my homebrew, but once we finished, I returned to a player, and now I'm ready to DM again
I did this, asked someone in the group that I knew wanted to test out DM’ing wanted a go. So we switched it up and they ran their campaign for a little. Then a different player tried it out.
I never dm’d again cause I’m still burned out and that was 3 years ago but 🤷
This! If you still like the people you play with and are just burnt out, see if someone else would be willing to take up the mantle for a bit until you get to a better headspace! Who knows, maybe someone was thinking about DMing and just never had an opportunity, and then you could be a player instead of a forever DM! Worst case scenario no one wants to, and the campaign ends. Best case scenario, your group gets to stay together and have fun while you recover!
Ofc ending a campaign is entirely fine but there is something you might want to consider.
In a lot of cases we reach burn out because we keep pushing things, better NPC, more interesting plot, bigger fights and so on and on until the prep for every session feels like a full time job. One solution to this is simply bring the pace and intensity down for a bit. What I mean, is that once the current party objective is complete instead of jumping straight to the next big thing, just have the party fuck about in a town for few sessions. Let them talk with already established NPCs and RP between themselves. Have a shopping session, celebration party, have a local bard who is writing a ballad about the party's heroic deeds interview the PCs so the players can reminiscent about all the cool things they did sand all the cool challenges and encounters you put in front of them so far.
This will relieve the stress for a bit and buy you time to prepare the next big thing at your own pace.
There's a few different options, that each vary how long you're prolonging the end. If you know which sounds best for your case, I can give more info specifically about that choice:
1. If you're *done* done, and don't want to do another session, you frame the message around that. In the group chat, it can basically be a farewell letter: "hey team, I'm really sorry to write this out but I won't be continuing our campaign. I've loved the stories we told together, but life is just too big right now and I need to be able to focus on that. I appreciate you all."
2. If you're okay with getting folks to wrap up, then you can mostly say the same as above, and add some descriptions of how the world would move when the PCs accomplish their quests. Then you can open it up to the players as well, to give each of their characters a unique epilogue. This can be done over text, or it can be your final session together. (There's even some tiny RPGs, as well as some improv exercises, if you wanted to have a guided session about it.)
3. If you're okay with a handful of sessions, you fast-forward to the end. Tell your players mostly the same message as above, but change it to something like "I'll need to wrap up our campaign in a few sessions. I know this is abrupt, and I would like to get as cohesive an ending for our story as possible." hand-wave or gloss over most of the active quests, allowing players to simply narrate what their intentions and goals were. Then, you all can meet for the big finale, if there is one: play out the Death Star Trench run, or the Defense of Minas Tirith, or Jon Snow's Battle Beneath the Wall, or whatever epic climax you have. Then you can run the same epilogue exercise if you have the capacity for it.
4. If you're willing to stick it out longer than that, then it becomes more about writing the final arc. Again, tie up loose ends, finish the side quests, and run the arc as intentionally as you have the capacity for it.
5. If you think it's something you're willing to come back to eventually, tell the players that. You can just put the campaign on hold. In the meantime, maybe the IRL group takes some time apart, or someone else DMs for a while, or you do a premade adventure that takes less prep, or you switch to an easier-to-run system, or you play a different game together. Maybe the party can play Baldur's Gate together, or someone picks up an old copy of Gloomhaven for cheap, or something else
It's one of my favorites! I wish I could play more often, but it's just too unwieldy to set up regularly (or keep set up). Good luck with your group, friend
This was my exact situation a year ago. I had the talk with my players, I said we will round of the campaign by fast forwarding the main plot and dropping some subplots. Did a big dungeon with the bbeg and players were happy.
The obvious solution is to talk to your players, but I personally feel better when I'm prepared for a conversation. Here are some ideas!
The good news is that there are a lot of options you can take. I also had some xtreme burnout a while ago, and this is the solution we came up with. We no longer run weekly sessions of my game. Instead, we siwtch out. We each take turns doing short campaigns, while I continue to run our long-term campaign in less frequent sessions. It's given most of our players a chance to DM at least once, which is tons of fun.
Of course, that may not work for you. Here are some other options:
1. Suggest someone else take on the reigns as DM for this campaign. You can work with them to pass on all your knowledge/notes, they can ask you questions when required, but generally you can divest yourself. (You might even want to join as a player!)
2. The obvious one; take a break. Maybe a long one. Explain that you are burnt out, you don't enjoy DMing, and you need to take months to recover. Advise your players that you may never recover, but that's okay. You can either stay with the group as a player, and let someone else DM their own campaign, or completely leave to give yourself a chance to recover.
3. TPK, the final solution. Explain your burnout to your players, and offer them one last glorious chance at battle. Do a time skip to the ending/final boss, or just let it flow naturally.
4. Allow your players a final wrap-up session, but not a final battle. Instead, you can decide to do absolutely no prep, and give total power to your players. Let them interact with each other for the last time, describe how their lives change, and how they complete the story on their own. It can be a more free-form storytelling type of session.
As everyone in the threat has already said, just explain what you've posted here to your players.
If you want to hold one last session but can't bring yourself to prep the battle, why not pick a strong legendary monster with lair actions straight out of the monster manual and challenge the players to go all out on this one. Might be a fun way to say goodbye to the campaign while having one last hurrah. I did something similar during a session 0 (at my players' request) and they had a ton of fun fighting a monster they were under leveled for, and they lasted longer than I had expected!
My main dm wanted to stop for the same reasons, he just didn’t have the time and was burnt out, he just told us and I ended up taking over as the mainish dm until someone else came up with a more permanent campaign
Now I dm when we want an extra session or if our main dm can’t make it. Our old main dm is just a player now and our group didn’t lose any members
Have you conveyed these long standing feelings to your good friends who you have been gaming with for over 4 years?
I’d start there if not, this way whatever you decide won’t be so sudden. If you’d have told them this months ago you would likely have made your clean exit by now.
Tell you players you need a break and ask if they can DM some small adventures while you recharge your batteries. It really helps me.
Also, your campaign has been going on for a LONG time. Maybe it's time to start something fresh. Do some smaller adventures to mix things up. We've been doing a loosely connected series of quests from Candlekeep Mysteries, Journeys through the Radiant Citadel, and Keys from the Golden Vault. We started with the level 1 quests and are almost done with the level 2 quests. Two of my players have stepped up and we each DM a book. It's been so great, and I'm really getting excited to DM ID:RotFM after we finish the next quest. I figure I'll DM that for 6-8 months and then we'll do level three from the books to give me a chance to recharge.
Good luck!
Our group has gone through DM burnout twice. The first time, we talked about it, and we all agreed to go out in a blaze of glory TPK. It was pretty fantastic and everyone was satisfied with how it ended.
The second time, we talked about it and agreed to put the campaign on indefinite pause. We recently talked about it again, and agreed that since we left it on a cliffhanger, it was a bit unsatisfactory for us all. It been over a year since we played, but our DM now feels like they might be able to run a one-shot to resolve the cliffhanger we ended on. One of our beloved NPC Sidekicks disappeared during a fight, and it's been weighing on us as players and also on our PCs. We agreed that finding her and not TPKing would give us the closure we need to leave the campaign indefinitely.
This isn't our main campaign anymore, so we can wait for that one-shot, knowing that it's in the works and without pressuring our former DM.
TLDR? Discuss it with your group. A burned out DM isn't good for anyone.
Bruh just talk to your players. This will solve a majority if the problems posted on this sub. I'm sure they will understand the burnout. Players are understanding, if it's been that long of a campaign its been a good run. Explain everything you said and if your up to it give it one last good session wrapping stuff up. Even if you can't do that it's still fine to just end it, do what's best for you and your mental health.
Take a break.
Was a in a campaign once where the GM suffered exactly this. We finished at a major plot arc that set up the next story, then took a several month break where we still met as friends, did some one shots, boardgames, someone else GMd a bit.
three months later, the GM was recharged, and *raring* to go, and the campaing lasted many years after that,
Just like from work, we need vacation from GMing. Even better if you're a player during that time to remind you how much fun it is, and get the creative juices running again.
Mandatory solution to most problems: talk to them. Share your feelings and ask for their preferences: quickened conclusion or just a indefinite pause? Maybe there's a solution you haven't even considered, like some else DMing or changing to a low-prep system. The golden rule still apllies: don't look for in-game solutions to out-of-the-game problems.
This. Your campaign is not just your campaign. The players might want to continue it with a different DM, in which case trying to wrap it up quickly will just disappoint them and make it worse than if it just ended abruptly. Nobody can help you with burn-out or lacking proper time but you don’t bear some greater responsibility for it ending properly. That’s for the whole table to share.
Every system is a low-prep system if you're lazy enough.
>I've come to the heartbreaking conclusion that I don't want to continue as a DM any longer in a homebrew campaign that started a few years before Covid, where we got together almost once a month. The main reason being that I'm just burned out, I don't get the same enjoyment out of preparing the sessions anymore. There is also the fact that I'm in a time of my life where I don't have as much free time anymore as I used to. Say this but to your players
Talk to your players and explain situation to them
You could shelf it for a bit and ask another player to DM for a while. Either a new campaign or a few one-shots. I was getting burnt out on my homebrew, but once we finished, I returned to a player, and now I'm ready to DM again
I did this, asked someone in the group that I knew wanted to test out DM’ing wanted a go. So we switched it up and they ran their campaign for a little. Then a different player tried it out. I never dm’d again cause I’m still burned out and that was 3 years ago but 🤷
It's not for everyone. I haven't DMed for about 6 months, but recently bought Dungeon of the Mad Mage and I want to give that a go.
Sometimes fresh inspiration is all that’s needed :) haven’t done that one, enjoy!
This! If you still like the people you play with and are just burnt out, see if someone else would be willing to take up the mantle for a bit until you get to a better headspace! Who knows, maybe someone was thinking about DMing and just never had an opportunity, and then you could be a player instead of a forever DM! Worst case scenario no one wants to, and the campaign ends. Best case scenario, your group gets to stay together and have fun while you recover!
Ofc ending a campaign is entirely fine but there is something you might want to consider. In a lot of cases we reach burn out because we keep pushing things, better NPC, more interesting plot, bigger fights and so on and on until the prep for every session feels like a full time job. One solution to this is simply bring the pace and intensity down for a bit. What I mean, is that once the current party objective is complete instead of jumping straight to the next big thing, just have the party fuck about in a town for few sessions. Let them talk with already established NPCs and RP between themselves. Have a shopping session, celebration party, have a local bard who is writing a ballad about the party's heroic deeds interview the PCs so the players can reminiscent about all the cool things they did sand all the cool challenges and encounters you put in front of them so far. This will relieve the stress for a bit and buy you time to prepare the next big thing at your own pace.
There's a few different options, that each vary how long you're prolonging the end. If you know which sounds best for your case, I can give more info specifically about that choice: 1. If you're *done* done, and don't want to do another session, you frame the message around that. In the group chat, it can basically be a farewell letter: "hey team, I'm really sorry to write this out but I won't be continuing our campaign. I've loved the stories we told together, but life is just too big right now and I need to be able to focus on that. I appreciate you all." 2. If you're okay with getting folks to wrap up, then you can mostly say the same as above, and add some descriptions of how the world would move when the PCs accomplish their quests. Then you can open it up to the players as well, to give each of their characters a unique epilogue. This can be done over text, or it can be your final session together. (There's even some tiny RPGs, as well as some improv exercises, if you wanted to have a guided session about it.) 3. If you're okay with a handful of sessions, you fast-forward to the end. Tell your players mostly the same message as above, but change it to something like "I'll need to wrap up our campaign in a few sessions. I know this is abrupt, and I would like to get as cohesive an ending for our story as possible." hand-wave or gloss over most of the active quests, allowing players to simply narrate what their intentions and goals were. Then, you all can meet for the big finale, if there is one: play out the Death Star Trench run, or the Defense of Minas Tirith, or Jon Snow's Battle Beneath the Wall, or whatever epic climax you have. Then you can run the same epilogue exercise if you have the capacity for it. 4. If you're willing to stick it out longer than that, then it becomes more about writing the final arc. Again, tie up loose ends, finish the side quests, and run the arc as intentionally as you have the capacity for it. 5. If you think it's something you're willing to come back to eventually, tell the players that. You can just put the campaign on hold. In the meantime, maybe the IRL group takes some time apart, or someone else DMs for a while, or you do a premade adventure that takes less prep, or you switch to an easier-to-run system, or you play a different game together. Maybe the party can play Baldur's Gate together, or someone picks up an old copy of Gloomhaven for cheap, or something else
Thanks for the thorough response, I'll have a think on it. Funnily enough, I used to play Gloomhaven with a few people from the group!
It's one of my favorites! I wish I could play more often, but it's just too unwieldy to set up regularly (or keep set up). Good luck with your group, friend
Pass baton to a player. Apply large meteor to setting.
I actually kinda considered the all destroying disaster event for awhile :P
Rocks fall *everbody* dies /s
This was my exact situation a year ago. I had the talk with my players, I said we will round of the campaign by fast forwarding the main plot and dropping some subplots. Did a big dungeon with the bbeg and players were happy.
The obvious solution is to talk to your players, but I personally feel better when I'm prepared for a conversation. Here are some ideas! The good news is that there are a lot of options you can take. I also had some xtreme burnout a while ago, and this is the solution we came up with. We no longer run weekly sessions of my game. Instead, we siwtch out. We each take turns doing short campaigns, while I continue to run our long-term campaign in less frequent sessions. It's given most of our players a chance to DM at least once, which is tons of fun. Of course, that may not work for you. Here are some other options: 1. Suggest someone else take on the reigns as DM for this campaign. You can work with them to pass on all your knowledge/notes, they can ask you questions when required, but generally you can divest yourself. (You might even want to join as a player!) 2. The obvious one; take a break. Maybe a long one. Explain that you are burnt out, you don't enjoy DMing, and you need to take months to recover. Advise your players that you may never recover, but that's okay. You can either stay with the group as a player, and let someone else DM their own campaign, or completely leave to give yourself a chance to recover. 3. TPK, the final solution. Explain your burnout to your players, and offer them one last glorious chance at battle. Do a time skip to the ending/final boss, or just let it flow naturally. 4. Allow your players a final wrap-up session, but not a final battle. Instead, you can decide to do absolutely no prep, and give total power to your players. Let them interact with each other for the last time, describe how their lives change, and how they complete the story on their own. It can be a more free-form storytelling type of session.
Fake your death, move to Canada, become a lumberjack
Haha, not such a bad idea !
Suddenly and unceremoniously is fine
As everyone in the threat has already said, just explain what you've posted here to your players. If you want to hold one last session but can't bring yourself to prep the battle, why not pick a strong legendary monster with lair actions straight out of the monster manual and challenge the players to go all out on this one. Might be a fun way to say goodbye to the campaign while having one last hurrah. I did something similar during a session 0 (at my players' request) and they had a ton of fun fighting a monster they were under leveled for, and they lasted longer than I had expected!
My main dm wanted to stop for the same reasons, he just didn’t have the time and was burnt out, he just told us and I ended up taking over as the mainish dm until someone else came up with a more permanent campaign Now I dm when we want an extra session or if our main dm can’t make it. Our old main dm is just a player now and our group didn’t lose any members
Have you conveyed these long standing feelings to your good friends who you have been gaming with for over 4 years? I’d start there if not, this way whatever you decide won’t be so sudden. If you’d have told them this months ago you would likely have made your clean exit by now.
Tell you players you need a break and ask if they can DM some small adventures while you recharge your batteries. It really helps me. Also, your campaign has been going on for a LONG time. Maybe it's time to start something fresh. Do some smaller adventures to mix things up. We've been doing a loosely connected series of quests from Candlekeep Mysteries, Journeys through the Radiant Citadel, and Keys from the Golden Vault. We started with the level 1 quests and are almost done with the level 2 quests. Two of my players have stepped up and we each DM a book. It's been so great, and I'm really getting excited to DM ID:RotFM after we finish the next quest. I figure I'll DM that for 6-8 months and then we'll do level three from the books to give me a chance to recharge. Good luck!
Our group has gone through DM burnout twice. The first time, we talked about it, and we all agreed to go out in a blaze of glory TPK. It was pretty fantastic and everyone was satisfied with how it ended. The second time, we talked about it and agreed to put the campaign on indefinite pause. We recently talked about it again, and agreed that since we left it on a cliffhanger, it was a bit unsatisfactory for us all. It been over a year since we played, but our DM now feels like they might be able to run a one-shot to resolve the cliffhanger we ended on. One of our beloved NPC Sidekicks disappeared during a fight, and it's been weighing on us as players and also on our PCs. We agreed that finding her and not TPKing would give us the closure we need to leave the campaign indefinitely. This isn't our main campaign anymore, so we can wait for that one-shot, knowing that it's in the works and without pressuring our former DM. TLDR? Discuss it with your group. A burned out DM isn't good for anyone.
Bruh just talk to your players. This will solve a majority if the problems posted on this sub. I'm sure they will understand the burnout. Players are understanding, if it's been that long of a campaign its been a good run. Explain everything you said and if your up to it give it one last good session wrapping stuff up. Even if you can't do that it's still fine to just end it, do what's best for you and your mental health.
"I am no longer enjoying this, and do not wish to continue"
Take a break. Was a in a campaign once where the GM suffered exactly this. We finished at a major plot arc that set up the next story, then took a several month break where we still met as friends, did some one shots, boardgames, someone else GMd a bit. three months later, the GM was recharged, and *raring* to go, and the campaing lasted many years after that, Just like from work, we need vacation from GMing. Even better if you're a player during that time to remind you how much fun it is, and get the creative juices running again.
There is that one homebrew ritual spell that just ends the universe if its casted for 666 hours. If you want to end it with a bang.
tpk
And then the sun magically blew up