Griffin Mountain Game Vs. Pavis & Big Rubble Game; A study in burn out
Note to readers, this post is long and self involved. It initially started as a personal journal post, but I thought it may have some interest for others.
I haven't written a full blog post in a while. Why? Because of fatigue, some depression, and burn out.
The first two are cyclical for me, I have a history of overdoing things and depression.
The third, burn out is new. What did I burn out on? Blogging, a little, but mostly because of Dungeon Mastering/Game Mastering (here after GMing) RPGs weekly.
I returned to gaming again after a break of almost a year by playing an rpg, one on one with my friend (note, all my gaming these days is online). That got me thinking about how I really have wanted to GM a game for a while. I asked him to let me GM for him, and he agreed. Then I started talking on the Gay Beholder (GB) OSR Server I lurked on about GMing for a group.
That really got me to thinking about GMing, and I did start GMing an OpenQuest RPG game of Griffin Mountain (Glorantha) every other week (See my blog for more about this game). The key thing here is that I was GMing every other week. I really enjoy GMing for my Griffin Mountain group (Shout out to N., S., O., (Oldhawkeyes/Daranth), and Pelican (Pelican/Yeleska)), so I think it was natural for me to want to do that more often.
Since those folks, for various reasons, couldn't play weekly I decided to start a Second Game. I decided that I was still interested in GMing Glorantha, and after some deliberation I choose Pavis and Big Rubble as a setting. (I had really wanted to do a more obscure location, Ralios; but I couldn't really find the information I wanted on it [and despite what my Player's claim I'm not particularly creative].)
I was scratching my itch to GM OpenQuest, so I thought that I would try to GM RuneQuest (RuneQuest/RQ). I'm also a RuneQuest nerd, I have several editions of the game. I'm absolutely taken with a lot of the design ideas in RQ: Adventures in Glorantha (RQG for short) of Runes, and I really started to be interested in the idea of Passions in RQG. I decided to recruit for a game of RQG in Pavis & Big Rubble.
I should say RQG is very rules heavy on character building, and this can result in a lot of Players building their characters to be Really Powerful, in game terms. My first several recruits for my Pavis & Big Rubble game were well versed in using the RQG rules for that purpose, and they asked to create the kind of powerful characters they played in other GMs RQG games.
Because of my own insecurities I said yes, even though I didn't feel comfortable with that. When I finally spoke up about placing a limitation on a character build I immediately lost a player, and I felt scared because I had two players at that point. Because I felt the behavior of min-maxing (minimizing tactical/magical "weaknesses" and maximizing strengths) might continue and because I was planning on GMing RQ 2's edition of RQ's Pavis I decided to switch to that edition of the game (it's much harder to min-max in RQ 2 because so many things are random in that edition that are chosen in RQG, and the overall level of tactical and magical power is almost half of RQG).
I advertised for RQ 2 players and got one. Then I really started with LFG posts on several servers, no luck that way. Then I put our a LFG on Reddit. Wham! That's where everyone was hiding, I had fourteen responses, initially. Four of those players have panned out as of this writing.
I started GMing RQ 2 weekly, and I enjoyed that frequency, initially. RQ 2 is a rules heavy game compared to OpenQuest, and I became more aware of that over time. GMing weekly also started to become stressful over two months. Finally I had enough, and after feeling like I didn't want to game anymore I was able to get to the deeper feeling, that I didn't want to GM RQ 2 weekly.
I have moved the Pavis RQ 2 game to a bi-weekly footing, and I told my players I needed to switch to OpenQuest rpg. My players have been very sympathetic with my decisions. I'm writing this on hiatus, for about one month from the Pavis game (I'm still GMing Griffin Mountain bi-weekly).
Griffin Mountain has not seemed stressful to run during this period. I can attribute that to a couple of missed sessions, lower frequency of play, and OpenQuest rpg. I'm interested in seeing what difference switching to OpenQuest rpg and decreasing frequency of play will have on my Pavis game.
Other differences between my Griffin Mountain group, and my Pavis group are long term goals of the groups. I was lucky enough to receive a plot outline for a group in Griffin Mountain, to focus them and still allow a bit of Sandbox style of play to occur. I had no such plot outline with the Pavis group. I opted to establish them and then see what plot hooks they would take. This is definitely having an impact on how I'm able to prepare for each group session.
With the Griffin Mountain group I have a fair idea of where the characters are planning to go each session, maybe not all of what they will do but at least where (almost specifically) they will be (and frequently who they will interact with). This allows me to fast track preparation for the Griffin Mountain group.
I'm almost absolutely clueless with the Pavis group. Where in Pavis, who the group will interact with is a mystery to me session to session. I'm basically flying by the seat of pants each session. This is actually a source of stress for me. Low level stress I grant, sometimes eustress (as I connect new events to old events [sometimes my Players have no clue how these are connected]) but stress nonetheless. I'm probably going to have a chat with my Pavis group about establishing a Long-term goal to reduce the stress I face as a GM.
An idea I liked in reading RQG was having one story-arc/adventure per Gloranthan season. This would allow me to have a timeline, and the characters could have real downtime (healing, studying/researching/training/). It could also have other game effects like seasonal return of Rune/Divine Magic.
All these thoughts, feelings, and reasons are why I've been suffering a type of burnout. Time will tell if implementing the ideas I've mentioned in this post will help me GM with less chance of burnout, and maybe others will find this useful.