Hi I am sister of said brother. Been trying to help him with figuring out some way to save things. Help please. I have no clue what to suggest and all we can think of is just finish this as much as possible and forget it ever happened to retcon.

Our group has a new DM every... 7 weeks? My brother is currently dming. He's a good dude. Cares about giving his players a good time, he's funny, and has fantastic NPCs. About midway through his campaign things started to go downhill. Pacing was off, parts of the story didn't connect well, and there were some struggles with character backstories. Classic story of bit off FAR more than he could chew and now he is choking on it. This is his first every serious backstory campaign. (Previous experiences include: Campaign he hosted during a very difficult time in our lives and had trouble handling criticism, and somewhat silly campaign people loved.)
Once again, he is a good guy. He's been beating himself up ever since feeling terrible and feeling he's ruined a part of everyone's backstory (All the characters hate his characters evil dad.) He's definitely a perfectionist...

Right now, he sees only two options.
1. BS his way to a neutral ending with a campaign he hates...
or
2. Retcon everything...

This campaign has been going on for... 4 - 5 weeks so retconning isn't just something he can simply do. Plus, my character only joined in the campaign before this one and that campaign was set in the time frame of a day while his has lasted 3 days. In this time my OC and another character have been developing a lovely relationship (Dude asked her out after he's known her for a day and a half it was awkward but funny.) We also did backstory reveals in this campaign... Or at least three of our players did. My brother's character shared his in a much earlier campaign. My character didn't feel like sharing her trauma with the party just yet.

I just feel terrible for him, but I have no clue how to help him fix things and he's been beating himself up about it like he's betrayed everyone and ruined the campaigns after his.

Please don't be mean to him... He's trying his best and it hurts to see him so disappointed with himself

Update!: All is good now!!! Had our best session in a while this week!!!

The unfortunate reality of DMing is... sometimes you do things that just don't work. You learn from it and try to do better the next time.

I suggest an open discussion with all the players in the game -- "Hey guys, I was trying to do something and it isn't working", and get a sense from the players for how they would like to see it end. If they aren't having fun.. maybe just end it and either switch to something else or run one-shots. If they are having fun, knowing what they find fun may give new inspiration -- or the players might have interesting ideas that you didn't think of.

A full retcon rarely works well, but a reinterpretation in a new light is a useful skill.

It’s tough to give specific advice about salvaging things without details of what’s happening and what went wrong. But otherwise, I’d agree with pantagruel. Sometimes you take a shot at something and it doesn’t quite work. The only real option is talking with the whole group and seeing where to go with it. That can really help with buy in if the players all know they need their characters to do a specific thing or forget a certain piece of information to make things work. 

Ok, it sounds like to me, that he thinks the campaign is going worse than it is, and with the history you mentioned of not handling criticism well, there's probably not much you can do to convince him otherwise. So IMO, the campaign needs to end ASAP, not because it is unsalvagable, but because he isn't comfortable DMing it anymore. TBH It's not at all uncommon for creative people to be overly self-critical, there are loads who write and rewrite stories endlessly because they aren't happy with them, and many of the most successful writers are the ones who come to terms with their own failings to just get stuff out and published. 

So, if I were in your shoes, what I would try to do is get the other players together first to explain how stressed your brother is, and then have a whole-table meeting to talk about how they can make sure he has fun as well. Without saying anything about how the campaign is going well / poorly in general, and mostly focusing on what parts you as players want to keep as cannon because you really liked it. 

There are lots of ways to make a sharp break in an on going story to "reset" - have the party get kidnapped by aliens, be flung backwards/forwards through time by crazy magic, step through a portal to a different plane, get thrown in jail, or wake up from a dream. 

Hear me out…. Time travel ;) 

Thank you all so much for your suggestions :) This has been very helpful! Thank you all also so being so kind and understanding! This is a group that has been playing with the same cast for multiple campaigns so it's hard to just switch to new characters.

Seems like the discussion idea is definitely on the table. It definitely seems like getting advise from people who aren't in the group or close to it.

We've been discussing how he'll move forward and I think we're heading somewhere great.

Once again thank you so much all of you!!

Quote from JoyPawZ >>

Thank you all so much for your suggestions :) This has been very helpful! Thank you all also so being so kind and understanding! This is a group that has been playing with the same cast for multiple campaigns so it's hard to just switch to new characters.

Seems like the discussion idea is definitely on the table. It definitely seems like getting advise from people who aren't in the group or close to it.

We've been discussing how he'll move forward and I think we're heading somewhere great.

Once again thank you so much all of you!!

Just find a way to quickly end it immediately.  Cut the losses and do a one shot every week until his turn is over. or as it sounds like the characters are mid-high level, end the campaign and do home maintenance and role play those restock and repair the base of operations.

One quick way of ending it (similar to time travel, but is not) is everyone wakes up in their home base bed.  They realize those last 5 weeks were a dream, they never actually happened and the cause of the dream and finding out why they had the similar dream is a plot hook for a future campaign.   The dream can be some unknown, BBEG probing the countryside for future enemies?

Allow for XP, but anything found does not actually exist, unless it might be some weird plot hook for players to follow in the future.

Quote from JoyPawZ >>

Thank you all so much for your suggestions :) This has been very helpful! Thank you all also so being so kind and understanding! This is a group that has been playing with the same cast for multiple campaigns so it's hard to just switch to new characters.

Seems like the discussion idea is definitely on the table. It definitely seems like getting advise from people who aren't in the group or close to it.

We've been discussing how he'll move forward and I think we're heading somewhere great.

Once again thank you so much all of you!!

 Sorry, but you seem to be misunderstanding. No one is saying you need to create new characters, but the narrative being run by your brother needs to end. He is miserable, it doesn't matter how much fun the players are having, if the DM is stressed and unhappy then the current narrative/plot needs to end and you either need to swap DM, or let the DM start over with something they are more excited to run. The players trying to tell the DM what to do is unlikely to be more than a bandaid for a few sessions. 

Quote from Agilemind >>

 Sorry, but you seem to be misunderstanding. No one is saying you need to create new characters, but the narrative being run by your brother needs to end.

Not necessarily. It really depends on what comes out of the discussion. 

There are several ways to deal with a situation like this and it is hard to assess since there is insufficient information. 

Depending on the age and maturity involved ...

1) The DM asks the players for their opinions on the plot line. It is possible that so far, only the DM feels like it is screwed up - keep in mind that the players usually have FAR less insight into the story and may not see any problem. It is possible the DM feels frustrated and sad because they may not know where to take it next. They may feel like they are boxed into a narrative corner. If this is the case then these forums represent a vast source of ideas for plot lines that could continue from the current point and perhaps reach a more satisfactory ending. 

Either way, the group could discuss where they would like the stories to go and the DM could base campaign modifications on that input. 

2) The DM has decided they are done with running the game for now ... resolve the immediate plot, have the party return to a town and someone else can start a new adventure for the characters going in a different direction. Maybe the group will come back to some of the backstory elements later, maybe not. 

3) From the sounds of it, the campaign may have some structural issues that will make problems like this more likely. In your original post you said "(All the characters hate his characters evil dad.)". This makes it sound like everyone's character including the DM continues to play the game while the DMs rotate. It also sounds like the current DM decided to use his characters backstory to drive the plot of a game for the other characters. I don't know if that is the case but it could be the fundamental source of the problem ... the DMs character should strictly be an NPC that the DM tries to ignore as much as possible when they are running the game for the other characters. They are along for the ride but most of the time, one of the other players should be making the character decisions and rolling the dice for them. 

Building a plot around his character's evil dad that now has all the other characters hating him .. could be a potential problem. However, if you want a quick fix ... the REAL big bad guy could suddenly kill off the character's evil dad for trying to take over their power/influence/something more nasty. i.e. a power struggle within the bad guy hierarchy - which the party has likely never heard of since we just made it up. The idea behind a move like this is to disentangle the backstory of your brother's character from the rest by giving the party a different bad guy to go after and a larger plot line to discover that is different from whatever your brother originally came up with that isn't working for him. If I had to guess, I'd say your brother may be mostly unhappy with how the story has come to involve their character, their backstory and their character's evil dad ... and the best way to get out of that type of situation would be to change the narrative entirely to try to disentangle the story line from your brother's character. 

Most of the last is just speculation and could be way off but perhaps something to consider. 

Hello everyone!!! Update on the whole thing! :D

Brother did not talk to the party... For some reason idk ._.

BUT! This week's session was WAY better than usual! It felt just like his sessions from the beginning! Good puzzles! Great NPCs! The players were doing way better this time! (Lovely shenanigans such as helping cheat at poker, Rations Delivery and Maintenace 2 for 1 deal, and my character having to play of a mom and a wife!)
Basically, it was our best session in this campaign yet!

Thank you all for the advice either way! I think he just needed to get out of the head space of "I'm terrible at this the players are going to hate me AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" Which they do not lol. And get that he is still new to DMing compared to some of the best DMs we have played with. I also think it partially was that this campaign was on and off with it being summer and the summer is always way busier, so people were still getting back into the wings of things :( (That was also on us since we had to travel a lot T-T I didn't want to lol)

Things are going way better! Moral of the story. Perfectionism sucks and playing on and off sucks to  ;-;