TL;DR - what are your strategies for avoiding burnout and getting tired and fed up of the game?

More explanation below.

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Hi,

I have been playing in two campaigns as a player, running my own campaign as a DM, and doing one shots at least once a month.

I also do lots of character creation of characters that don’t make it into a game, but sometimes become NPCs in my own campaign.

I am tired of it all and my brain seizes up when I try to make a new character now. Which is what got me into looking for auto character generators the other day.

Anyway, I am just going to stop. I am going to leave the campaigns I’ve been playing in (asked the DMs if they can work a character death for my characters into their story, so I can leave without just leaving everyone in the lurch. I am also going to stop running my own campaign.

Also with the problems I’ve been having with my girlfriend and D&D and the way she left the campaign and stuff, I don’t really want to run it anymore anyway.

My friend has just stared up a new campaign after the lockdown rules were eased. She runs it once a month and it’s easy going, not super hard role play or anything. I am going to make a new character and play just as a player with her, once a month.  I used to play with her quite a bit before the lockdown and her games are always fun  

I don’t want to leave entirely as it’s an outlet for all my stupid creativity, but I just don’t want all the commitment required as a DM right now, or all the drama of the roleplay heavy campaigns I’ve been playing in. I just want to hang out, have fun, eat pizza and play some D&D.

I’m just going to put everything else to one side for now, because I feel burned out, tired of the game and somewhat upset that a person I care about doesn’t want to play it with me anymore.

How do I stop this happening again in the future? I’d really love to hear about all your strategies for avoiding burnout, so I don’t end up back at this point again in the future.

Thanks, everyone

XD

Forge

I have been playing in two campaigns as a player, running my own campaign as a DM, and doing one shots at least once a month.

I think this is the problem, right here in a nutshell. You are doing too much. You haven't said the frequency but this looks like you are playing multiple times a week, possibly as many as 13 times a month (2 weekly campaigns as player, 1 weekly as DM, and one shot each month), which is more than once every three days. It's hard for me to see how one *wouldn't* get tired of it if you play it that much.

How do you stop the burnout from happening? Don't play in as many games, as frequently as you are doing. Be more selective. 

Additionally, it might help if you play something *other* than D&D. Back in the day, when I ran Champions for 2 years, my game was on Friday and Saturday nights (yes, 2x a week, though on every other Saturday we usually didn't play unless the scenario wasn't finished). In the summer breaks during college, we still got together on the other nights, but one of the other guys ran some Rolemaster on those nights, or we went to the movies, or we played board games like Civilization or Solarquest or Talisman. And even so, I took breaks during the summer to let other people GM Champions on "my nights" because otherwise it was just too much.

I would not think too much about it and just do whatever feels right to you in the moment. For my group, we do not have a set schedule, and we just play whenever we are all willing and our schedules align, so there is no pressure to play. We just call each other up a few days to a week in advance to see which day works best, and if no day works out, we just put it off until next time. Not everyone is comfortable with flexible last-minute scheduling though, so if you prefer a set schedule, I would just stick with one session per month, and join one shots whenever you feel like it.

If you know what your preferences are and you know you do not care about a certain aspect of D&D, I would cut that part out and avoid it. For example, if you find being a GM to be too much of a chore, I would drop it and stick with playing as a regular player; I personally enjoy being a GM more than a player, so I do not bother playing anymore and just stick with running games.

Reiterating what the others have said: Avoiding burnout is all about the pacing.

I play in one remote game every Sunday, and play/DM one in-person game every other Saturday. This is nice because I still have 2 saturdays a month to do literally anything else. It's especially important to consider pacing when DMing, since prep work bleeds beyond the day of the session itself.

 "You can't miss something until it's gone." Plan breaks into your schedule deliberately, so that you can spend some time wanting to play, rather than actually playing non-stop.

You are doing the right thing stepping away.  I use to play twice a week and that was too much for me, I had to step away from one of the campaigns. 

There is no strategy for dealing with burnout other than to not bite off more than you can chew.  Like anything in life, D&D can become detrimental and unhealthy in excess 

Variety helps *a lot* with burnout. Instead of D&D 4 times a week, doing D&D once a week and something else each of the other nights will help with burnout.

Play stuff other than D&D, like cards or board games.

Go out to a park or the zoo with your friends. Even if you think the zoo is just kid stuff, it can be quite fun if you are with people you like.

Think about things other than D&D and it can maybe regain its shine.