Being a game master shares its risk with burnout, especially as a Forever GM. It takes a lot of dedication and hard work to run a typical role playing game for your Players. But running a forum based role play adds an additional strain. Your undivided attention to detail. You have to meticulously plan and plot everything because everything is written down, can be reviewed and researched later. And there are other issues that don't typically happen in a traditional table top setting. Like ghosting.
There is probably nothing more frustrating for everybody involved in a game when Players simply vanish from a game. It stalls the game first of all, and may cause the game to die if action isn't taken quickly enough. This is one of the problems I've experienced time and again with single board role plays--something I'm hoping to finally conquer with the structure of Prismatica. When ghosting happens again and again (usually it's from different people), that has an effect on the mental well-being of the Game Master. It shakes their confidence and possibly can erode a person's self-esteem. But remember, that ghosting is always because somebody is a jerk. There could be other issues, like simply life getting in the way, poor time-management skills, and possible emergencies that take precedence of priority.
A Game Master who pours their creative soul into a game, only for it to die a quick death is probably the leading cause for burnout. But there are other reasons to keep in mind. Over planning could cause burnout, over stimulation (in a forum environment, this could mean attempting to be on-call to quickly answer any need), and probably one reason that's overlooked is the lack of meaningful constructive criticism.
Another reason that could cause burnout is attempting to shoehorn the rules and mechanics of a role playing system-- that was designed to be played around a table, in person, but we're trying to roll dice, create elaborate character sheets, and resolve combat dialogs.
Let's talk about some strategies we can use to help avoid burnout.
There is probably nothing more frustrating for everybody involved in a game when Players simply vanish from a game. It stalls the game first of all, and may cause the game to die if action isn't taken quickly enough. This is one of the problems I've experienced time and again with single board role plays--something I'm hoping to finally conquer with the structure of Prismatica. When ghosting happens again and again (usually it's from different people), that has an effect on the mental well-being of the Game Master. It shakes their confidence and possibly can erode a person's self-esteem. But remember, that ghosting is always because somebody is a jerk. There could be other issues, like simply life getting in the way, poor time-management skills, and possible emergencies that take precedence of priority.
A Game Master who pours their creative soul into a game, only for it to die a quick death is probably the leading cause for burnout. But there are other reasons to keep in mind. Over planning could cause burnout, over stimulation (in a forum environment, this could mean attempting to be on-call to quickly answer any need), and probably one reason that's overlooked is the lack of meaningful constructive criticism.
Another reason that could cause burnout is attempting to shoehorn the rules and mechanics of a role playing system-- that was designed to be played around a table, in person, but we're trying to roll dice, create elaborate character sheets, and resolve combat dialogs.
Let's talk about some strategies we can use to help avoid burnout.
