As you may already know, I have a bit of a “long” backstory with TTRPGs.

My current interaction with D&D starts around May 2024. 5e campaign.

One session per week, around 3 hours. Pretty standard.

I have a lot of fun.

My players have a lot of fun.

Around September, one of them asks: “Hey Guido, I have 2-3 friends looking for a group, how about you start another campaign with us? I love how you play!”

Why not, I’m thinking?

Here comes the first mistake. And no, it wasn’t about agreeing to another campaign.

The actual mistake was giving options to this other group.

I came up with three ideas for a new campaign.

One was in the same setting as my first campaign. With a bit of distance in between, like a couple of travel days between the two groups. But the same local powers, guilds, most venerated gods. Not much work needed to recreate the overall setting - just the city around them, and some locations.

The second and third options were in far away lands. One was still under the same king, the current ruler of the Great Human Kingdom, but in a duchy, ruled by an old, tyrannical vampire, and the dangers of a spread-out Plague turning people into monsters; the other was outside of the kingdom even, in an island archipelago where maritime “republics”, an ancient dragon empire and sunken gods battled day and night for supremacy.

Of course, the second group didn’t choose the first option. They chose the second.

And all of a sudden, I had to world-build a whole new part of my setting.

You know all those advice about “You don’t need a full-fledged setting! You just need a village with two shops, an inn, and a mysterious forest?”.

IMHO: forget about them. I mean, they make sense… as far as session 1 goes, maybe. But soon cracks start emerging. Players very eagerly ask “How do people salute in your world?” or “Who are the gods most venerated in this town?” or “What guilds can I join as an adventurer?”.

You need answers for those. Not DETAILED answers, but a general idea, something to build from, yes. Improvisation can only go as far. Especially for experienced players, they may notice you’re inventing on the spot. Or they’ll realize, when you change the name of the god of merchants, the session after this one, because you can’t remember the name you came up with at the moment they asked.

So, a very serious attempt at creating a whole new duchy started. Names, relationships, organizations. An army of black spears, bloody loyal to the vampire ruler, Viktor Vesper IV. The inquisition, to battle with the rampaging plague. A group of wandering monks and soldiers, under the banner of a blonde knight-lady and her merciful god Adria.

And what is the ultimate cause of the Plague? Not so urgent to pick a choice now, but at least I need some ideas, to make the world move in ways I can predict a little bit.

What does the vampire want? Is he behind the Plague? If not, who? Why?

But let’s move to the second mistake.

For my first campaign, I had some digital tools to my aid. The first was my combat management app. Nothing extraordinary, and not much work needed to adapt it to this campaign B.

The second was my RPG Telegram bot, from where I schedule future sessions, and let my players know through notifications, plus send them a reminder on the day of the session. I also added an XP tracker to it, later. Very neat, and only needed a one-time setup for a second campaign. No big deal.

But alas, the third tool is my website, where I collect campaign lore and session recaps.

Setting it up for a second campaign was, just like the Telegram bot, a one-time thing.

But keeping it up to date, with information, session recaps (I write them myself, but I should just have given up to an AI for help…), new NPCs they encounter, lore drops, new places and events… and doing it for two campaigns, every week?

It quickly became too much. I gave up after a couple of sessions.

But the thing is, at that point, I was starting to burn out with all the work I was doing to play.

I actually agree with the advice about prepping little, but at least something is needed. Doing it for two sessions per week adds up quickly.

The final straw was that, around the end of 2024, I started growing up tired of DMing.

From my experience, all DMs know the feeling. Sometimes, we just wish to withstand the story of someone else, and play the naive player character.

But my third and last mistake was trying to resist it.

I didn’t communicate how tired I was, and just got along with the sessions, each week. As weeks went by, players noticed a bit of a drop in my motivation, and less and less preparedness at each session.

At one point, one of the session was canceled, due to a player having a last-minute urgency. And I felt relieved. I smiled.

That’s around when I realized I had burned out. Not totally, not completely maybe, but I couldn’t stand more DMing for the near future.

The second campaign found its own glorious end. We were approaching the final confrontation with an army of orc invaders, and we had a blast as our last session.

But the first campaign, the older one, didn’t go as well. One of the players had actually already left - not really my fault there, he just realized TTRPGs weren’t for him.

But then, a second one followed. He’s a good friend of the first one who left, and for him, the game wasn’t the same. Plus, we were all growing tired. There were some interpersonal issues between players. I was less entertained, them too. We stopped altogether, without giving a proper end to the campaign.

Life goes on, I guess.

I’m now a happy player character. One of the guy from the second campaign volunteered to DM after I told them I was having a break. I’m now Hiss, a Kenku thief who also does magic tricks, in the land of Barovia. We’re having fun, the DM asks for some advice here and there, and I happily give him what I know. He’s actually a better roleplayer than I am - he’s a theatre actor after all.

My final piece of advice?

Not much:

Listen to yourself, to your feelings. Just realize it’s a game, and should go on only as far as you’re having fun.

Speak with your players. Tell them when you want to play as a PC, and ask who wants to DM.

Don’t give yoursellf 150% for a game. If you want to give players notes and recaps, sure, go on. They probably won’t read them most of the times. Just take notes for yourself.