Not a description of my current emotional state, but rather a brief post in response to a comment by welbygreenacre, here: https://nerdtropolis.home.blog/2019/08/14/a-table-for-three-part-2-game/
I fully empathise with young Welby. The enthusiasm which heralds the dawn of a new campaign can quickly lead to feelings of having taken on too much, and a subsequent erosion of confidence in one’s ability to deliver that which has been promised. In the worst cases, such feelings can lead a perfectly good GM to never run a game again. So, acting as some kind of gamer life-coach, allow me to offer some practical advice to avoid feeling overwhelmed.
1. Read the preceding posts
Simple and self-aggrandising, no? The equivalent of an actual life-coach saying, “Achieve your maximum potential as a human being by buying my book.” Seriously though, if you carefully consider the type of game you want to run at this moment in time, you’ll be off to a good start. Sometimes we get excited about a particular game and decide to run it before we are ready for it. I’ve come close to running the Trail of Cthulhu campaign ‘Eternal Lies’ on several occasions, each time when I’ve not been ready for it. Thankfully I’ve managed to cease preparation before feeling too overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task. Choose your game wisely.
2. Be honest with yourself
Running a complex, multi-layered, long-term campaign is not for everyone. Such games require a lot of hard work and take their toll, emotionally and intellectually. The expectation that you will deliver a great session week after week will soon feel like a burden, rather than a joy. If your initial excitement was sparked by a setting, run a short adventure in that setting; one to five sessions will tell you if you want more, or if you’ve scratched an itch you thought was much larger than it proved to be. If you want more, nothing is stopping you from running another short adventure, and then another, and another. Hey look! You’ve got a campaign!
3. Ditch the support material
Yes, I know I said in the preceding post that support material is good, and loads of support material is even better, well sometimes it’s a hindrance rather than a help. If that first burst of excitement was caused by the prospect of running a particular system, too much support material can again lead to feeling overwhelmed. Take TORG for example; an interestingly different mechanical approach (when it was first released), supported by a horizon-filling amount of adventures and setting books, all of which look cool and have “USE ME!” scrawled across them in lettering visible only to GMs. I feel tight-chested just thinking about it. If excitement clouds focus, choose another game, or if you’re determined to run TORG, choose a single setting and run a short adventure as per point 2, above.
4. Focus on the fun
Retuning to young Welby, I’ll let him have the last word because he makes such a great point:
“Need to remember it’s just a game and a bit of fun.”
Nerdtropolis 