Tyler Do'Urden
Soap Maker
I recently cancelled my campaign. I was sick of the cat-herding, trying to get my bare minimum of players (3) to show up for a once a week game, that, due to everyone's schedule conflicts, seemed to have dwindled to once a month at best. While I'd advertised in game stores around the metro and got a fair number of responses, it always seemed that not enough people were available on any given Sunday to make it happen. In addition, I'd just lost my two core players - one had decided to take an extended break, and the other had just taken a multi-month assignment overseas.
But my frustration speaks to something larger than this.
A few months ago, I went to DaveCon. Now, if you're interested in very old-school gaming and live in the upper midwest, I highly recommend making the trip and meeting a bunch of the old grognards who have been there since the beginning. I played Braunstein with Dave Wesley; I played Dungeon! with Dave Megarry; I played in a 1st edition AD&D tournament. I also chatted with YouTube's "Professor Dungeon Master" for a while (nice fellow once you get past his New York abrasiveness, which often rubs middle Americans the wrong way; reminded me of one of my college professors). When I told him about my burnout, he just suggested I was making it too hard for myself. And, of course, he is right.
But for me, that's the point.
I'm a "simulationist". A hardcore simulationist. A style that, despite now having ever-more amazing computerized tools at our disposal for simulating our worlds (I'm a Claude addict), is quite out of style.
Prof DM comes from a different school. He likes simplicity; he only cares about what goes on at the table. It's a storytelling exercise to him, not a simulation.
But whenever I simplify like this... I get bored and lose interest. It's no longer real to me, or interesting. The world becomes flat and arbitrary. I don't want to be a "frustrated novelist" trying to see my players through a storyline, or dropping sequences of interactive scenes in front of them. I want to be the demiurge of an interactive world that grows, evolves and behaves separately from the PCs, but which they can influence and build on as well. (Similarly, I've never liked PLAYING RPGs - that is, being a player, not a DM. I can barely get through an entire session without growing bored, unless I know the DM is from the same "school" as me, and is trying just as hard to simulate his world. To this day, I've only played with one other DM like this, and that was over two decades ago now.)
I'd read about old school campaigns and West Marches games with numerous, proactive players, and thought that was the kind of game I wanted to have. Maybe one that would grow so big that I would have sub-DMs. I'd love to have parties competing with each other and scheming against each other; building kingdoms and fighting wars. I've dreamed of this since I was a boy, sitting on my grandmother's couch reading the Rules Cyclopedia 30 years ago, and building castles and rolling kingdom events in my notebooks.
I've always wanted to take the game "to the next level".
But now I'm 42, and after more than a quarter century of DMing (admittedly with a hiatus from 2005 to 2019), I just don't think that's ever going to be possible. It doesn't seem to be what the hobby has become or wants to be. Two weeks ago I found myself sorting lists of spells into a database, and suddenly realized, "you're never going to use any of this. Nothing in here will ever hit the table. You never get to that point, and even if you did, it might impact one or two of your players a handful of times."
So that was it. I cancelled my campaign. I put up my books. I walked away... and started thinking about better uses for my time. Reading my endless reading list. Writing those books I've always said I wanted to. Trading options. Getting advanced certifications in my field.
Yet I have a feeling this cycle will repeat. My D&D manuals will sit on the shelf taunting me and tempting me. One day again, they will call out to me, and I won't be able to resist... and I'll wake up a few months later with a hexographer map and 20 Excel files open on my computer, wondering why the heck I was trying to calculate how many goblins lived per square mile in a kingdom that was 500 miles from where I'd ran the last session and my PCs had no intention of going to...
But my frustration speaks to something larger than this.
A few months ago, I went to DaveCon. Now, if you're interested in very old-school gaming and live in the upper midwest, I highly recommend making the trip and meeting a bunch of the old grognards who have been there since the beginning. I played Braunstein with Dave Wesley; I played Dungeon! with Dave Megarry; I played in a 1st edition AD&D tournament. I also chatted with YouTube's "Professor Dungeon Master" for a while (nice fellow once you get past his New York abrasiveness, which often rubs middle Americans the wrong way; reminded me of one of my college professors). When I told him about my burnout, he just suggested I was making it too hard for myself. And, of course, he is right.
But for me, that's the point.
I'm a "simulationist". A hardcore simulationist. A style that, despite now having ever-more amazing computerized tools at our disposal for simulating our worlds (I'm a Claude addict), is quite out of style.
Prof DM comes from a different school. He likes simplicity; he only cares about what goes on at the table. It's a storytelling exercise to him, not a simulation.
But whenever I simplify like this... I get bored and lose interest. It's no longer real to me, or interesting. The world becomes flat and arbitrary. I don't want to be a "frustrated novelist" trying to see my players through a storyline, or dropping sequences of interactive scenes in front of them. I want to be the demiurge of an interactive world that grows, evolves and behaves separately from the PCs, but which they can influence and build on as well. (Similarly, I've never liked PLAYING RPGs - that is, being a player, not a DM. I can barely get through an entire session without growing bored, unless I know the DM is from the same "school" as me, and is trying just as hard to simulate his world. To this day, I've only played with one other DM like this, and that was over two decades ago now.)
I'd read about old school campaigns and West Marches games with numerous, proactive players, and thought that was the kind of game I wanted to have. Maybe one that would grow so big that I would have sub-DMs. I'd love to have parties competing with each other and scheming against each other; building kingdoms and fighting wars. I've dreamed of this since I was a boy, sitting on my grandmother's couch reading the Rules Cyclopedia 30 years ago, and building castles and rolling kingdom events in my notebooks.
I've always wanted to take the game "to the next level".
But now I'm 42, and after more than a quarter century of DMing (admittedly with a hiatus from 2005 to 2019), I just don't think that's ever going to be possible. It doesn't seem to be what the hobby has become or wants to be. Two weeks ago I found myself sorting lists of spells into a database, and suddenly realized, "you're never going to use any of this. Nothing in here will ever hit the table. You never get to that point, and even if you did, it might impact one or two of your players a handful of times."
So that was it. I cancelled my campaign. I put up my books. I walked away... and started thinking about better uses for my time. Reading my endless reading list. Writing those books I've always said I wanted to. Trading options. Getting advanced certifications in my field.
Yet I have a feeling this cycle will repeat. My D&D manuals will sit on the shelf taunting me and tempting me. One day again, they will call out to me, and I won't be able to resist... and I'll wake up a few months later with a hexographer map and 20 Excel files open on my computer, wondering why the heck I was trying to calculate how many goblins lived per square mile in a kingdom that was 500 miles from where I'd ran the last session and my PCs had no intention of going to...
