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The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal, page 152

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DM Burnout (And how I Deal With it)

Hello everyone! It’s about time I hunker down and discuss one of the more plaguing issues as a DM: DM burnout. DM burnout can be described as the dungeon master’s equivalent to writer’s block. Sometimes, after playing a lot, a DM can experience this feeling. They’ve burnt through their best content. They’re run dry of ideas and inspiration. Heck, maybe they’re even getting bored of playing. The same ‘ol thing every session can get drawl. Whatever it is that triggers this state of mind, DM burnout can be one of the most frustrating things for a DM (And even the DM’s players) to experience. Hopefully this’ll help ease the load.

Guys, let’s get something straight right off the bat. DM Burnout is a normal thing. Experiencing a bump in your inspiration, especially if you play frequently, is something that can definitely happen, and it’s often tough to approach. In my experience with it, I found it the most difficult to approach my players with it. I was uninspired, unmotivated, but still enthusiastic. I loved playing, but I couldn’t quite find the reasons to get excited to do so. However, my players were still ready and rearing to go, and I had trouble bringing it to their attention. I didn’t want to offend them, or make them upset. I didn’t want them  thinking I disliked playing, or get any sort of wrong Idea.I was left at an Impasse, and i had no idea how to go forward with it. Here’s how I went about dealing with DM burnout.

For starters, The first step is to bring it to the players’ attention. This can be tough, but players, you need to be kind to your DM. It takes a lot of effort to DM and make the amazing game you play fun. You can’t blame your DM for burning out. I understand if  you really like your campaign, and not playing can be agonizing, but you need to give your DM time. DMs, the second thing i’d do is take a break. Take however long you need, but express to your players how you’re feeling, and make sure they know that you just need a little bit to regain yourself. This doesn’t mean your game is over, it means that there’s a bit of a intermission between acts. Take some time off to find your place again.

Next, I recommend you shift focus. Instead of planning more again, you need to find what it is that makes you so motivated to play. For example, in my case, My favorite thing about my campaign is watching how my PCs interact with NPCs. So, I dug back and looked at my best NPCs, and looked back on the best moments I had with them. What made them so great. This got me thinking again, and it even started to fire me up again. It took a few days to get there, but once  I got there, I was ready to move on to the second step.

Next, I began to plan again. But, I used a different formula. I began to plan something I’d find fun to DM for. Because, believe it or not, the DM has a right to have fun too! The DM’s job is to make a world for the players to explore, but it’s no shame to create something that you’ll enjoy DMing for. Of course, you should be sure to make sure the players also will enjoy your new idea, but spend time making something interesting. What that’ll do for you is make you eager. Make you hungry to try your grand plan. Your master scheme.

Lastly, I’d say that the best thing to do is to take just a bit more time to make sure you understand what brought forward this burnout, and make steps to avoid it next time. But remember that DM burnout can come around more than once in your DMing lifetime. So don’t be shy or upset when it happens. Take care of yourself as a DM, so you can continue to make great stories for your players to explore as a part of this amazing game!

To review, here’s the steps again.

1.) Bring it to your player’s attention.

2.) Take a break.

3.) Find your spark

4.) Make something to look forward to!

5.) Reflect and identify the reasons behind your burnout.

6.)  Get back to the action!

Hope this helped, everyone! 

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“I specifically designed something you can’t do, and you have spent half an hour trying to do it.”

— Our very exasperated DM

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Auntie?

The DM had just revealed a twist they’d been building for several months; the Queen of a major country, and one of the PC’s ex, who had killed her father and married her brother, was a disguised, ancient Lich. Naturally, the player panicked.

Player, steadily getting more higher pitched and screaming: [DM’s name]! [DM]? Hey, HEY [DM]? [DM]!

DM: This is all in character. You’re just screaming at the Gods. [NPC love interest] is watching you in concern.

Player: [DM]! What the fuck. What the FUCK - wait.

Back in character as the Elf Sorcerer: Wait. What about the baby?

Tiefling Rogue: What?

Elf Sorcerer: What the fuck. What the FUCK!

Tiefling Rogue: I’m sorry, what baby?! Did you knock up a motherfucking Lich?!

Elf Sorcerer: No! My brother’s child! My niece! The baby they JUST HAD!

Tiefling Rogue: Are you telling me you’re the aunt to the Antichrist?!

Elf Sorcerer: First of all, fuck you. Second, oh god I am. 

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DM tip

something we did off the cuff in one of our campaigns a while back and has now become standard practice, is to take a strip of paper, write a player character’s name on it (or “DM” or “monster 1” etc) and fold it over our DM screen, and then moving them into the initiative order during combat, which makes it easy for everyone to know the order and their place in it.

In my own campaign I’ve made rough little sketches of the player characters, and occasionally I also sketch some new ones of whatever monster or npc they’ll face in that session

One handy thing about this is that on the back of them I can write down key rules, such as their attacks, saving throws and spells so that I can see them at a glance, and as you can also see in the first picture I wrote in pencil that Valdred has one ‘negative level’, so that the player doesn’t forget that he has a penalty on some of his rolls. 

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Get This Party Started - Unique ideas to start a campaign

We’re going to dive in with a Question from a Denizen. This week, we’re looking at a note from Anonymous, who says they they could really use some ideas on unique, interesting ways to start a campaign.

Well, we all know that the classic way to start is to say, “You all meet in a tavern,” but that’s not the most interesting way to get things going to be sure. A similarly not terribly exciting opening is, “You’ve all been hired by Lord Suchandsuch to do X”. Bear in mind, while these aren’t terribly interesting, they are perfectly valid ways to get the characters together and/or give them a common motivation. You can always throw a twist on them. Perhaps the players are all workers at the tavern when it’s attacked by goblins, forcing them to reveal that they possess skills that would be helpful in adventuring. Or perhaps they’re hired by someone…who turns out to be the major villain…which was my premise in the Tomb of Horrors game I ran recently (sadly, the PCs didn’t return to find out at the end.)

In my opinion, the nature of your campaign should help inform how your story begins. In my most recent campaign, I wanted the characters to be childhood friends. As I’ve described elsewhere in more detail, I ran several sessions before the characters were level 1, giving them scaled down stats to use and mostly just role-playing scenes from important moments with them.

One trope I’ve seen to simulate this borrows from the “Yes, And…” rule of improv. In this opening, it’s assumed that the characters are already together and have had one adventure. They can make references back to things that happened during that adventure, and folks have to agree with what was said. “Just be careful…we don’t want this to be like the time with the kobolds. I don’t know what made you think that you could convince them you were a god.” “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. How could I know that the kobolds were atheists?”

Another trope I think is fun is for the characters to get thrown together by circumstances beyond their control. This could be anything from being shipwrecked together, ending up in the same jail together (which is how the characters met in the game I’m a player in), to being enslaved together (the premise of Out of the Abyss). One Ravenloft campaign run by a friend of mine actually began with the characters all locked up in an asylum, with amnesia as to who they were, and discovering that was the key to escaping.

One fairly common trope, often folded into the others, is “a common threat”. The characters are forced to work together when an attack happens. This gets things started with a bang, and it gives the players a chance to show what their characters can do right off the top. One of these days, I’m literally going to start a campaign with “Roll initiative!” And then, when things wind down, I’ll set the stage more completely.

But you asked for unusual and unique ways to begin a campaign, so here are a few I’ve dreamed up for you.

- The PCs begin trapped on another plane of existence, and they need to work together to get home.

- The PCs are all conscripts in a war, fighting as part of the same unit again strange, alien creatures.

- The PCs have all been enslaved by the same hag. They are sent on quests for her, but their first big goal will have to be finding out how to escape her!

- The PCs wake up in a dungeon, next to dead bodies that look exactly like them. Are they clones? Twins? Dead doppelgangers? The PCs can’t remember, but the dungeon is full of danger, so they’ll need to work together to escape and solve the mystery.

- The PCs are normal people in a small village. They wake up one morning to find that the village is completely empty, except for them, and that they have powerful abilities they never had before. Before they can properly suss out what’s happened, they’re attacked by strange creatures. Solving this mystery might be the goal of the overall campaign.

I hope these help spark your imagination. If anyone decides to take inspiration from these, let me know how it goes!

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How I Introduce a Main Villain

So recently, I introduced my campaign’s main/top villain. Basically, the villain that they’re gonna be chasing around the entire campaign in their travels. And I wanted it to be extra special. So I wanna talk a little bit about how to really build up to a villain and make their first appearance truly terrifying, from the perspective of a creative writing major who’s entire life has revolved itself around good storytelling and narratives.

Introduce a common goal and get your players asking questions.

It’s very important to not just throw the villain at the players and say “fight them”. You want to build up to the experience, really set up the reputation of this villain. My villain is a prophet to a forbidden goddess of war who wants to reign war on the continent for both it’s punishment and salvation. So with her being so worldly, I intertwined her into each character’s backstory without telling any of the other characters. I’d drop something simple like a symbol they saw in each background, and told them this is their only clue to their goals. Then, when they finally all saw the symbol again, they were all like “OH FUCK! I KNOW THAT! Wait… you know that too? Wtf is going on?” And from there, they start asking questions about this symbol. You don’t have to do it this way, as it’s just one example of course. But your goal is to get them asking questions. Maybe have your players witness a brutal execution, or solve a murder, and eventually relate it back to the villain without actually having them show up. Just get them asking questions. Make them care about stopping whatever is going on, without actually knowing who is behind it.

Set the reputation of your villain and introduce some foreshadowing.

Once the players start asking questions, you obviously need to have some answers. And I say “some” very earnestly here. You don’t want them to have all the answers, so don’t reveal too much. Just give them an inch and let them take a mile if they want to. Let them build an idea of this villain in their mind. Have most relevant NPCs have at least a little bit of information on your villain, even if it’s just a name or a title. But be prepared for difficulties such as divination magics and the like. Sometimes players dig too hard before you’re ready, so think hard about what you’re ready to reveal and prepare in advance for spells and trickery. When it comes to setting this reputation, you wanna give tidbits of information like rumors of their atrocities and cruelties. Gossip can be outlandish and crazy, so don’t be afraid to have conflicting accounts of things. It makes things interesting. You can introduce encounters with henchmen of said villain and reveal information that way, too. Mislead, fool, and lie to your players to confuse them if you can. Hell, you can even throw in some things you can parallel much later on in the final reveal. The more mysterious this villain is, the more enticing they’ll be and the more the players will want to seek them out.

Think about what your villain knows about the players and how they try to stop them from getting in the way.

Players love their backstories coming into play. Everyone loves everything being about them. So maybe your villain knows some good shit about your players and uses it against them. Maybe someone gets kidnapped, or tortured, or even killed. You want some motivation to really go after this villain, so have them pull some sketchy shit long before ever revealing themselves. Having someone you’ve never met before come after you from behind a curtain can really piss someone off and motivate them to seek you out. And it can make the final reveal that much more important and dramatic.

The final reveal of your main villain.

This is the biggest and final step. You want to take everything the characters have learned and put it all together in this final reveal. There can be a lot of pressure, and yet a lot of fun involved in this step. The first you wanna do though, is set the mood/atmosphere. How I did it was I turned all the lights down to very low, but still visible lighting. I played eerie music, and then I began to use a little strobe light i got from spirit halloween from behind my dm station, and I used the scariest, deepest voice I could possibly muster when speaking as her. I gave her a long winded introduction that confirmed to everyone that this was indeed the one they’ve been seeking. I believe it went “My name is Nirnasha. Prophet to Apollyon. Among the last of the Aasimar. The only war cleric left in Sephias…. And I am the one who cannot die.” Introductions are important, because it establishes the truth of who this person is and how they carry themselves. But your villain might not even do it like this. It really depends on their personality. Maybe they just go straight for the kill. Maybe they’re super cruel and brutal and attack with a viciousness and intent to mutilate. Really think about how they fight and keep it interesting. And definitely don’t forget dialogue. Please, guys. This part is so important to keep the atmosphere. Bring up rumors, gossip, trickery, lies, shit talk, low blows, anything and everything to piss off the players and make the win even better…. if they win. You can even throw in disadvantages for being so enraged that you can’t control yourself. But the three important things for your final reveal is: atmosphere, dialogue, and descriptions. And finally, don’t forget to ask your players how they wanna do this when/if they get the final blow on their villain. That will make everything feel like a major play off.

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A Guide to Creating Grim/Dark D&D Settings: More Than Just Player-Character Deaths.

A new DM once presented a problem: His players expected a Grim/Dark setting, but he wasn’t sure if he had the “guts” to kill off his player’s characters. He was, therefore, curious to see if there was any way he could still have that setting, but without all the PC murder… It’s certainly a good question: How does one create a grim/dark setting while still retaining that low-mortality, long-form RP narrative style? Are soft-hearted DMs just out of luck?

Not exactly. As a Dungeon Master who has killed very few PCs in my entire DMing carrier, I still have players who tell me that my settings kept them up at night. So then, how do I keep my soft-chewy center so hidden? Here are a few suggestions that will help you build your world without the seemingly obligatory PC killing. And, if you don’t mind killing PCs, all the better! Implement these suggestions and you’ll have their characters begging they were never born it will be fun fun fun! Disclaimer: Although not technically a wholly grim/dark setting, I will be using some examples from Matt Mercer’s campaigns. Any spoilers that may come from these mentions will be marked accordingly.

How to build Grim/Dark settings…minus the PC Murder.

1) No NPC is Safe

Adopting the “no npc is safe” rule is probably the quickest route to instilling that sense of dread at the table. Showcasing the dangers of the world with early non-player character deaths will make your players paranoid, and push them to fix problems as quickly as possible, lest they lose their best blacksmith, their crime boss, their favorite temple cleric, the little girl who always waves at them when they go to buy supplies… 

To avoid feeling bad for killing NPCs, they must be designed to be expendable. Now, don’t get me wrong, this can be hard at first, but creating them with the express expectation that they will most likely die can help softy DMs prepare. A fair warning: There is a fine line between necessary and unnecessary NPC slaughter. You don’t want to overdo it, or your players might catch on. You have to be careful, making sure that the death is contextualized in a realistic situation, and that there is still some room for player intervention. You never want to completely remove player-agency. You may plan the death of many NPCs by tying them into plot points/campaign events, and when they don’t die, you can secretly feel warm and fuzzy inside. You’ll find that most DMs tend to do the opposite: They make all NPCs crucial parts of the story, grow to love them, and then get pissy when they get killed. You can still grow to love them…but you also need to know when it’s time to murder the things you’ve loved like your own kin let go… Examples: One DM who I think pulls off this strategy is Matthew Mercer, DM for Critical Role. The show itself has a two-sided reputation: It has its soft-hearted, funny, slice-of-life moments, and then it has situations that feel like they’ve been taken out of a Game of Thrones episode. However, unlike Game of Thrones, Matt hasn’t desensitized his audience. He kills NPCs just enough to remind his players that it’s possible, while still doing it infrequently enough that it retains that shock factor. In episode 39-41 of Critical Role’s first campaign (Spoilers ahead) Matt Mercer showcased his lack of any fear in destroying everything he has created. With four ancient dragons, he not only executed hoards of innocent NPCs in numerous cities, but he killed some important ones as well. This successfully instilled a sense of urgency in his players, prompting them to search for other NPCs and ultimately saving Gilmore from a narrative fork that Matt later revealed: They either found him in time, or delayed and found him dead. (Spoilers for ep 39-41 end here). In episode 51 of Critical Role’s second campaign (Spoilers ahead), Matt showed off his skills with a much quicker, albeit effective example of expectation setting, showcasing just how dangerous Xhorhas truly is. Not only did he murder a bunch of friendly rangers (minutes after the party had them) with world-building enemy magic, but he immediately followed the encounter with a potentially deadly encounter, by displaying the quick deaths of Bugbears by the claws of a 60ft roc, teaching his players that they needed to treat these “Mad Maxian” badlands with far more caution than they had in previous situations, potentially avoiding unwanted PC deaths in the process. (Spoilers for ep 51 end here).

2) Look for Inspiration in Media

Literature is filled with juicy ideas for your grim/dark setting. You’re going to want to brush up on your post-apocalyptic tales, and stories that were a critique of the status quo, particularly those written by old white men that you “read” in high school. Granted, many stories that are part of these genres are based in the future, but these stories can be adapted to fit a medieval/renaissance setting. For instance, in George Orwell’s book 1984, the region was ruled by various tyrannical and ever watching ministries, keeping the poor weak and ignorant, oppressing and carefully monitoring the middle class, and pampering the rich. In Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle, work conditions were so poor and gruesome in the factory settings that people were losing limbs, children were being eaten by rats, and adults were being overworked into madness. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, censorship was so prevalent that all books were being burned, causing certain stories to literally be lost forever. 

Not a big reader? Just go onto the first page of your favorite World News channel and start taking notes: Rich companies dumping their toxic waste into local town’s drinking water? Check. Authoritarian regimes separating refugee children from their parents? Check. Countries censoring all media to hide the corruption of their own government at the expense of their citizens? Check. Organizations whose sole profit is the buying and selling of people and their organs? Check!

Fair Warning: When using real-world events, do so tactfully. Always be aware of the temperaments and opinions of your players, lest you accidentally hurt or insult someone in the process. Playing out social/political themes can be fun in games, but only if your players consent to that brand of storytelling. Having regions in your world function in this manner can grant your players an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. It will make them want to safeguard and protect anything that allows them to stay-afloat: a book, an NPC, an organization, even if it might be dangerous. Some would be willing to lose it all to protect a worthless little tavern with an anti-scrying charm so they can continue to organize their rebellion, hide refugees, heal the injured so you can kill them all when they’re all gathered in one place…

3. Make your players question their morality at all times.

Creating that sense of dread goes far beyond raw and dangerous settings. One of the best ways to make players truly fear every single decision they ever make in the world is to instill in them a fear from which they cannot escape: themselves. If you have players question their own morality, it will make that decision making feel all the more relevant, bringing weight and consequence to an otherwise hack-and-slash reality. One of the simplest ways of doing this is to expose your players to the raw suffering of their enemies: have baddies beg for mercy, cry for their mother, scream that they have a child right before the killing blow. Here: Which situation do you believe causes more existential dread? This?  DM: How do you kill him? Paladin: I chop his head down the middle! He killed that poor librarian. DM: You raise up your sword and cleave off half his face, causing his limp body to crumple to the ground. OR this DM: As you raise up your sword to slice his head in two, the thug screams out “They have my son Sa-” but the deed is done. The left side of his face is cleaved off, and you are left there panting. Food for thought, I hope. Fair Warning: The example above is extreme and removes a lot of player angency. Only resort to such storytelling techniques when you have already discussed their use during session 0, and when everyone at the table has agreed to use them. A lighter modification is to have a player make a reactionary roll to stop the blade. You can make the DC as low as you want.  You can even not kill him, but cut off his ear instead. As long as it makes them think. But setting up difficult moral decisions can go far beyond giving the “enemies” a personality. Staging situations where there is no wholly positive outcome is often enough to get your players questioning their role in the world. Have enough moral ambiguity and even Rainbow Happy Land will feel grim and uncertain. Fair warning: You don’t want all decisions to be incredibly difficult or your players might start getting frustrated and feel trapped by their real or perceived lack of player agency, which can often lead to rage quitting. Besides, you want some good and easy things thrown in there to make the very tough decisions all that more daunting.

Example:  During one of my campaigns, the party suspected the daughter of the priest to be a hag, but the only way to be certain was to either to wait for her to transform on her 13th bday in 3 days, and risk dealing with a full coven, or… burn her at a ritual stake and force and early transformation. The tragic dilemma was that the little girl had no idea she was a hag.  They argued for hours on what they needed to do. She screamed bloody murder till the very end. One of my players cried he was so conflicted. He shifted from CN to NG. Another player shifted from LG to CE. But hey, at least none of them died, right?

Conclusion: Now, I hope this goes without saying, but your world should only be as dark and oppressive as your players want. Don’t ever impose any of these storytelling tips on your players if you know this isn’t something they would enjoy. But there you have it, a few tips and tricks that should hopefully help you build those grim/dark settings you always wanted. Be sure to have fun, expect the worst, but always secretly hope for the best as that soft-hearted DM hidden deep down in the depths of your soul, lost somewhere along the way… Sincerely, The Scarecrowlover — If you end up using some of these strategies and enjoy them, don’t hesitate to reblog your D&D stories so other DMs may gain some inspiration. Love to see what you all come up with.

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The app that “mistakenly” fucked up all of the results from last night’s Iowa caucus was developed by Shadow