Causes of GM's Burnout

I've already discussed the differences between burnout and GM's block over here, so let's discuss some causes.

Critical Players. Some players just like to complain or give a number of 'constructive comments' which might either be more negative than they realise or you might not be emotionally equipped to handle.

Perfectionism. Some GMs seek out a perfect game where all of the players experience Flow, just the right amount of Out of Character / In Character Bleed, and are perpetually enthralled by the game. Any session that doesn't meet these perfect requirements thus normal sessions provides no joy for them.

Lack of Recognition. It's human nature to start taking the good stuff for granted. A lot of players forget to recognise their Storyteller's efforts and even if they do it relatively frequently, it may not feel like enough if the GM is spending half a dozen hours a week on game preparation. There's also the chance the GM just can't take a compliment, either deflecting it or ignoring it, which makes it impossible to recognise their efforts.

Inadequate Repayment. It's essentially a volunteer role with no hope for reimbursement which can't be put on a resume. There may be travel costs, resources costs (printing, dice, pencils), system costs (books, which aren't cheap), miniatures costs in time (social events missed, entertainment time diminished due to game preparation, cleaning up after hosting) and sometimes even food costs (where the host provides food to all). As a general rule, the GM sinks more money into the game than the players.

Player Entitlement. Some players are especially demanding. They expect the GM to supply all the resources, complain if the GM doesn't have the supplement the player wants to use and even offer constructive criticism about how the GM doesn't have enough minis yet aren't prone to offering to pay for any of it ... even if the GM hasn't any more money than the player in question! They might also expect the GM to always be available to run a session (no personal leave allowed) or in games with a significant downtime element (like a LARP), they might expect the GM to be constantly available to them full stop.

Lack of Work. Some play groups want the GM to be a largely invisible force who sits back and waits for the players to call on them. In other cases, the GM really wants to work on clues, props and investigations while the players want to romp through pre-made dungeon crawls which leaves the GM feeling bored and underutilised.

Tasks With No End. Enemy stats created ... new enemy stats needed. Floorplan / map / clue path generated ... new floorplan / map / clue path generated. If you can wing it, then at least some of these tasks can be completed and then left to sit for awhile. Otherwise you keep on keeping on the same tasks with a vaguely fresh face.

Impossible Tasks. Some GMs also sometimes set themselves up to do massive undertakings - running 30 player LARPs single-handedly, running five campaigns a week which rely on pre-planning, or even doing both simultaneously!

Problem Players. Many GMs take on a player's problems as their own personal responsibility to solve. They convince themselves that they can do what highly paid and trained Managers and Consultants can't do to their paid employees ... change them to suit the role at hand. Only the player can change their problems and only if the players actually think those traits are problems.

Incompatible Demands. Some players needs stand in opposition to the needs of other players or the GM. Trying to integrate a player who adores gritty realism, historical accuracy and intellectual pursuits into your superheroes dungeon crawl in the long-term is difficult at best. Sometimes it just won't work.

Bureaucracy. Some GMs do all the paperwork, note taking, summarising, experience point tracking, damage tracking, rules tips and character sheet updates for their players. This might be because the players don't want to do it or because the GM thought they'd be helpful and took on too much work.

Value Conflicts. Some players / GMs see the other side as being subservient to their needs. The player sees the GM as a free entertainer whose every effort should toward player enjoyment and whose only reward should be a player's enjoyment. Some GMs see players as actors who must obey their every directorial whim. Sometimes the values conflicts involves, say, a historical reenactors' desires for accuracy versus a person of colour's desire for escapism from a racist world.

Meaninglessness of Achieved Goals. Once you get cynical, it's hard to find meaning in constantly being expected to provide entertainment for other people. There's no promotions, no pay rises, and no method of tracking your progress. Are you getting better or worse? This can be a particular problem for sandbox GMs who can't even grin at a job well done and a campaign well finished. What are the Key Performance Indicators of a GM, anyway for a GM anyway? Once you start getting burnt out and cynical, the goal of "give your players a fantastic time" starts getting a derisive snort and a "What makes players so special? Why is no one trying to give me a good time?" Once that sets in, the main reward is gone.

Role Ambiguity. What is a good game, anyway? How much are your players really enjoying it? How many liberties can you take with a campaign to ensure your own enjoyment before you become a dud GM? What are your obligations? Where can you ask for help? Confusion leads to questions leads to self-doubt, lost time and more expended effort as you mull it over.

Workload. Too much or too little are both problems. If you have too much to do, you become naturally exhausted by your efforts. If you have too little, you can suffer bore out where you start detaching from the game which can make the game seem like wasted time.

Regrettably, one of the first reactions to the start of burnout is often to intensify one's efforts. "Maybe if I put in more hours, I can make the game work again." "Maybe once this is fixed, everything will be okay." "Maybe once I try this, this irritant will go away." Maybe ... Maybe ... Maybe. Unfortunately one of the key causes of burnout is the levels of self-esteem crushing self-doubt, self-questioning and increased effort that some GMs pour into their games. It's like an exhausted swimmer flailing for a life raft and tiring themselves out sooner.

A GM's burnout has a multitude of causes. Only by recognising the particular issues affecting you, can you really start to pull yourself out of it once the dread, cynicism and sadness claws its way into your heart and brain. Yes, it's melodramatic, but having one's hobby start repulsing you is dramatic in its own right, especially when you have players scrabbling for you to keep running games.

GM's Burnout vs GM's Block

One of my pet peeves is how a lot of advice about GM's burnout is actually about GM's block (akin to writer's block). This bugs me because they are very different kettle of fish and because I've been somewhat burnt out for several months now and the absence of solid advice on how to counteract it. I've trawled through dozens of advice articles and web-sites and most of them talk about ways to boost creativity. My creative stores are just fine, thank you. I'm quite happy to write articles, world build and create adventure paths. In fact, during my period of burnout, I've actually written and edited about 80 pages of player information (not all for the same players, mind, about 10 pages per covenant, 2 per clan, 20 of general information, which can be perused or ignored at the player's whim). My problem is that I'm starting to loathe my GM time.

So let's look at GM's Block.

Your ideas become stagnant and stale. In fact, just generating new ideas seems like hard work because you lack inspiration. Your players start to comment on how they'd like to see a little enrichment in their game. They're starting to get a bit bored and you probably are too but you just can't think of anything new and interesting to keep everyone going. In this case, watching movies, dipping briefly into a new genre one-shot, or letting someone else run a few sessions so you can start champing at the bit again are all good things. Heck, I've even gotten inspired by attending concerts by musicians I didn't even like!

Now let's look at GM Burnout.

1) Exhaustion. Simply thinking about running a game leaves you exhausted. The mental resources required to comprehend an upcoming session makes you want to go and lie down. You look at the game preparation and/or actual session time as a dreaded chore that will soon be over. Hopefully. When the players are distractable at the start of the game, you sit back and let them talk, chat, ruminate.... You let the OOC Chit-Chat time drag on and on and on as every minute of reduced play-time is a minute won.

2) Cynicism. Your players suck. Things will never get any better. You have to learn to live with all those irritations that any player brings to the table and (see Point 1), it really doesn't seem worth it to you. Why are you putting in all this effort for so little reward? You must be a real sucker for punishment. What did the players ever do to earn your slavish devotion? Why isn't anyone slavishly devoting hours and hours and hours to your enjoyment? You know you can't / shouldn't expect a player to put in thirty minutes a week for the game without being a slave driver. They expect hours from you! It's so unfair.

3) Sense of Inefficiency. You suck. You lack the skills to make things work. Maybe it's all your fault, anyway. You've rewarded poor behaviours. You've punished good ones. Or something. If you were a better Storyteller, all those things that bug you would cease and you could just get on with it.

Obviously people vary on where they sit on this burnout scale but, as you can see, it's more hard-core and pervasive than a simple lack of creativity. Simply taking a holiday might not help, either, at least not in the short-term. If your last few months of roleplaying was a painful waste of time then it makes sense that having a few weeks break from it won't necessarily help. Even a few months won't necessarily put enough distance between you and the bad memories. Because, regardless of how good the game actually is to an outside perspective, it doesn't feel good to you. It feels horrible. Besides which, if you go back to doing exactly what caused you the pain in the first place you will probably suffer from it again. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different outcomes is a silly thing indeed.

The wikipedia entry on it has some interesting details on it, particularly the way it develops. It also gives players and Game Masters ideas on how to arrest the progression of symptoms ... or at least reduce the causes and therefore the progression.

Game Translation: Gears of War

Gears of War is a third-person tactical shooter that heavily relies on a pretty decent cover system.  You play a member of Delta Squad, a military unit who are desperately trying to defeat a subterranean race of creatures known as the Locust. You are Marcus Fenix, a former prisoner and incredibly muscular soldier who looks like he's been popping steroids for breakfast from an early age.


Cover is a vital element of this tactical shooter so the first thing you need to consider when creating your campaign will be ensuring your game system's rules provide enough attention and benefit to using cover. Luckily most systems I've read which are in the simulationist vein have something in there on cover. Best to print out those rules and pass them out to your players. They'll take that as a bit of a clue. Especially if you don't include any other rules in the print out (except perhaps higher ground rules).

If you really want to play a Gears of War-style campaign, I'd come up with some excuse for regeneration (and huge muscles), perhaps involving genetic modification or chemical spills. Then, if you're playing World of Darkness rules you could take the werewolf regeneration rules. If you're using some sort of D20 variant, Fast Healing equal to level should work out fine. Stipulate that the healing factor only kicks in when the character is resting and you'll have players seeking cover so that their characters can hide and watch their health tick up - just like you need to do in the game when that health indicating cog appears in the bottom corner of the screen.

Remember that if you want to be true to the videogame (rather than just playing a game like it), you need to go science fiction but with a very Earth-like setting. I mean, I didn't even know the game was set on another planet (Sera) when I played it because all of the architecture and much of the flora looked pretty Earth normal to me. I had assumed that immulsion had just been found on Earth. Therefore keep most of the descriptive elements pretty modern (rather than futuristic) and ensure that the players know that simply evacuating the new planet is as unthinkable as simple 'evacuating' Earth. This is the characters' homes now. The fact that the characters can be baseball-playing heroes living in homes much like our own (before the Locust attack, that is) should help reinforce the kind of player protectiveness that comes from having your own home world attacked.

This is neither a "Simply shoot things" game nor a "Sandbox game". Therefore ensure the players have very specific, very simple goals, that should generally be broken down into sub-objectives. The first game ordered you to descend into the Hollow within the planet to detonate a Lightmass bomb but between the start and finish there were a lot of other objectives -- some of which only appear once a certain event occurs to the characters. Having a leader speak to them over the radio can help with this as they point out new duties and obligations.

This is a game that would work well with miniatures. Cover, after all, is a big thing. If you're going with this, I'd recommend creating chest-high walls out of paper that is shaped to look like Locust-cover points (metal fences) or rubble. In this way the players' miniatures may be moved up behind the cover, as can the enemies, ensuring everyone knows where the cover is and just how much protection it gives. Since all you need is a printer or, at worst, some folded up coloured paper, this should be easy to do. You could also use fish bowl decorations, doll house furnishings and real world rocks if you want to go all out.

Create an enemy the players don't have to empathise with. This game isn't about the "Horrors of War", in terms of sympathetic bad guys on the other side of the fence dying cruelly. The bad guys are BAD. Making them alien-looking creatures that spend their whole time attacking people with hardly an overhead Locust comment for colour, ensures that the players can gun them down and feel good doing it. If you're using a game with some kind of Morality system, scrap it, at least in terms of killing Locusts.

I like to imagine these guys are watching a Christmas pageant.

This is a game designed to be epic. Use massive setpieces. Have a monster swallow them up and make them tear their way out. Have them rush about on crumbling ledges above a bubbling pool of Imulsion. Have them outrun an explosion which nips at their heels and threatens to blow them through a wall. This is an action game. Go all out.

Anyway, a campaign based around Gears of War or including elements of it, should appeal to - you guessed it - Tacticians and Action Heroes the most.

Tacticians will love the cover system, complicated killing strategies (i.e. that giant worm thing) and focus on teamwork.

Action Heroes will love the explosions, gun play, running sequences and occasionally quite Big Bads that need to be taken down.

Explorers would enjoy the strange places, the apocalyptic wastelands of the cities and the underground places rich with odd architecture and alien beings.

Investigators won't have much to do here so throw them a mystery as part of the through-line to keep them interesting.  Something like "What happened to your wife?" might help if they're still pretty keen on combats.

Communicators won't like this game.  No real chances for social manipulation.  While they might find much to like if they double as one of the other categories, odds are they won't really like it.

If you want to check out the trailer, you can find it here. If you want to read up on the TV Tropes you can find them here.

For the next Game Translation (which will be in a fortnight's time), you have a choice of these: Blood Dragon, Tomb Raider (the latest), Dracula: Origins, Outlast, Vampire: the Masquerade (Bloodlines) or Dishonoured. If no one picks anything by next fortnight, it'll probably be Tomb Raider.

If you want to see the list of games I've done thus far, you can find the Game Translation series starter over here.

Musings on Masks: Episode 9

EPISODE SUMMARY (Nesting): Wherein James Paterson, Australian private investigator in New York, finds a cheap apartment in Hell's Kitchen with an ... interesting price. Afterwards he goes on the hunt to find Sydney Silvers at the New York Weekly Messenger while chasing up a hot tip on the London eugenicists given to him by Elias Jackson.

EASTER EGGS: We were pretty jokey this session but I think it worked well as a bit of a tension breaker following the funeral and graveside visits.

You might notice how my constant demands for him to mark down how much money he's spending actually builds some tension for the player.  This wouldn't normally be the case but playing an immigrant private investigator with only a few bucks to his name not only is thematically appropriate but actually motivates him to get involved in some shady business.

Those who know much about September of 1938 in New York might have an inkling about what the wind and rain suggests.... Then again, those who have read my earlier articles about this particular campaign might well know as well.

Horrors: Home Front Is Creepy

I'm actually surprised that the various European and United Kingdom Home Fronts haven't been delved into for horror games much before.  I understand that the Occupied and Axis-aligned countries had enough true horror there that you really don't need monsters, but the Home Fronts of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and especially Great Britain work out quite well.

In a time with loud bombs a'crashing, sirens a'wailing and incendiaries a'burning, your neighbours probably won't hear you scream.  Especially if they've taken shelter.  The shelters themselves are overburdened by shelterers so you can come across nearly anyone in those claustrophobic confines.  You might even find yourself in a little-used shelter with a dangerous person for company.

The black outs drop you in darkness, turning a simple act such as crossing the road into a deadly exercise (especially when a shelled road could have treacherously deep pools of water), and preventing you from seeing just who is following you or what that snuffling sound down that alleyway is all about.

The government can get away with doing strange things which don't mean anything to you.  Cardboard tanks may lurk around a building, a block of flats could suddenly become off-limits, and odd fellows in suits could tell you to move along or forget that thing you just saw, and even the media will back them up on it.

There's just such horror potential there, even if you don't spike the risks with burning buildings, gas leaks, black out gangs and having to pull people out of the rubble, dead or alive and perhaps maimed.

But yes, still in musing mode so I thought I would post up a bit on why I adore the essential premise of Horrors on the Home Front.

Arrival: Vampires & Mountain Tops

Nico spun around in that white corridor to see an extremely pale man eyeing them rather hungrily. She tried her usual bluster and bravado, demanding to know who he was. He calmly demanded to know what she was doing and why she thought it a good idea to alter this layered spell. He also told her that she had to open the door. Apparently he was under a geas that prevented him from doing so. His job was to protect this place. He couldn't remember when it began but it was in a time of kings in old Londinium.

Oddly enough, he didn't speak medieval.

Nico point blank refused to open the door. If there was something in there worth sealing up, she sure wasn't going to release it.

He explained that the people who sealed it in weren't good people. What sort of good people would use one like him as a guardian? He stated that the entity inside may be simply trapped and in need of freedom. If it were released, he could leave also and all he wanted was to leave. He didn't seem to know about the apocalypse so Nico lied about their guns being capable of shooting both fire and lazers (figuring that should be scary enough).

All that did was get him to back away to the end of the corridor as they approached, leaving through the door. Of course, that gave him the advantage because they didn't know what he would be doing at the other end of the door. They knew he could be invisible, at the very least. So they set up camp against that door and tried to regroup.

After about an hour of trying to keep everyone's spirits up (Rochelle, in particular, felt at death's door), Nico radioed Gipontel for help. He seemed quite enthusiastic to get involved and a couple hours later he was coming in through the corridor, having met the men-in-black but having not met the vampire.

Feeling a bit more confident (she probably shouldn't have), Nico opened the door and demanded to talk to the vampire. They wanted out. The vampire re-iterated his demands. They had to open the door. Nico threatened him a bit more. He turned to mist and advanced. Moments later even the mist was invisible. Gipontel panicked a bit, though he could still "see" the invisible vampire and they all backed up down the corridor.

Finally when they had their backs to the wall, Nico offered the vampire a third option. "Come with us. We can break the geas."

He reappeared and they talked for a bit. He introduced himself as Malkiah. His memories seemed pretty scrambled and Nico pointed out the inconsistencies, which just made Malkiah grow more cross in that unearthly yet dominant kind of way he did so well. In the end, they called a truce so they could all take a look at the books in the place.

Gipontel figured out that the entity behind the door was thought to be a "supernal dragon" whose reemergence would mark the end of the world. The group of mages who used to live here both worshipped and trapped it here after accidentally summoning it, fearing what it might unleash. Gipontel seemed pretty keen on letting it out, figuring it would be an enemy to the Abyssals at least.

Nico wasn't too keen on letting out any new supernatural thing so barred that idea entirely.

Malkiah stated that if they freed him, he would obey Nico's demands and help her fight the demonic scourge. Apocalypses and the destruction of the human race meant the destruction of his kind as well. Jack's werewolf blood and regeneration could keep him fed, after all, though with the side effect of making him more aggressive.

Gipontel offered the team a private place to talk about the Malkiah situation and, upon their agreement, spirited them all away to a place in his pocket.

Arrival: Seeking the Gun

Piles of Stuff used as a Barrier

Dante had Johnny use his wind-ghost-thing to stash the notes up in a nearby building before they headed off in search of the gun that Dante had seen in his dreams that had been carried in the arms of a corpse destroyed by men in black suits. At about this time also, Dante transformed back into Nico. They had a fair bit of walking to do before they found the location. It was somehow within a single street barricaded on both sides with broken down cars and other equipment.

Annoyingly enough (and worryingly enough), the gun didn't appear to be at the other end of the street as it should be.

It seemed to be coming from somewhere underneath the soil.

Nico headed to a nearby door that was covered in government Do Not Cross tape and they headed inside a government building, heading downstairs to a large series of filing cabinets that seemed to contain taxation reports. They aimed to clear all the rooms but were assaulted time and again by men in black suits who told them it was a restricted area before trying to knock them down with fists. Soon after being 'killed', these men in black would simply disintegrate and shortly thereafter more would appear.

They would even appear out of recently cleared rooms!

The team eventually found a trapdoor with a ladder that led down into the dark depths of the sub-basements. There were two men-in-black on the ladder but they were easily dealt with. They started down the ladder and not a moment too soon as there was the clatter of dozens of footsteps as more of them made their way into the basement above.

The team made their way down to the fourth floor and started exploring, finding men-in-black with guns, some even set up behind kicked over desks, and Nico had to heal Rochelle when she got shot. Rochelle didn't even complain even though it were a bad hit. In the furthest room they found some creepy stone statues - angel and demon - with three sarcophagi. Needless to say that the team backpedalled from that little room. There was also an alchemists' room with a sigil-covered door that seemed magically sealed.

Nico could feel that the gun was on the floor above so up they went, exploring and shooting at men-in-black as they went. They found a classroom with books on magical formulae that boggled the brain. They found a few old laboratory rooms. They found the corpse that Nico had seen carrying the gun which appeared to be in a partial state of dissection on one of the gurneys. The gun itself had been placed in a hold in the wall.

Nico grabbed the gun, which had bandages wrapped around the stock, and which appeared to be both well-used and rather lovingly kept together and well-repaired. She had expected some kind of revelation when she finally found it. Some new flash of inspiration. Or at least the sense that the gun was ... well, magical. It seemed pretty ordinary to her so she just put it over her shoulder and kept going.

They found a few doors that led into kitchens and then into a long corridor flanked with fancy bedrooms well-decorated and well-kept. Most people might have seen rooms that people had lived in once. Nico saw possible loot just sitting around and being ignored.

They came across one room that just had a dirt floor with two big red fruit-like things dangling from the ceiling. Naturally Johnny poked one. Equally naturally it popped and released blood across the soil. That squicked them out a bit and Nico worried that they may have just set off some internal mechanism, but what could they do?

They kept exploring, hoping to find another way out since the one behind them was full of men-in-black.

They found a long corridor with white markings across it. The white markings grew denser as they travelled until the layers were so dense that the entire walls were pure white. At the end of the door was a thick door. Nico figured she should use one of her devil's traps before opening the door so she pulled out her spraycan.

Only to hear a masculine voice behind her ask: "What are you doing?"