GM Burnout - It's a Thing! (Or maybe I'm just getting really old)

 I've started to admit to myself that I may have a new, special level of generalized burnout that goes way beyond the normal levels. For the record, the normal levels have, in the past, boiled down to the following:

--GM is burned out because the cool campaign has run its course and is now on autopilot;

--GM is burned out because he lacks time and energy to properly prepare a game, but would be happy to run if time was more readily secured;

--GM has played out a genre or game system to the point where it is not motivating him, but cure is to find a different genre or game;

--GM is bored with whatever is currently going on and wants a change of pace, but can't decide what it is.

For the record, all things I have experienced at one time or another. But lately, there's a new layer to this, one which I think has been percolating for months now, but I am only recently beginning to concede may be an entirely new form of GM burnout:

--GM is really burned out on the entire hobby, but realizes his friend group is tied to RPG nights so keeps chugging along despite that fact that picking up a game book and thinking about running not only doesn't elicit a sense of enjoyment but even causes mild stress/pain.

So yeah, I am going through a bout of this right now, which is really frustrating, because a side effect of realizing I am extremely burned out on the hobby in general is the recognition that a lot of my social life is tied in to it in a way which does not allow for easy escape without causing a collapse in the network.

Looking at a lot of what I have run lately only makes me less excited. My D&D burnout is beyond adequate analysis at this point....I am running a live game of D&D 5E but it is by the books and the moment that plot comes to a close I am putting D&D down for a while, I need to give it a break. On Saturday I am running Vaesen, and that has been interesting (but difficult) to accomplish. Not the system; its a very easy game to run, but rather the era the game is set in, getting a sense of what Sweden in the 19th century was like, and wrapping my head around the concept space of the game. It's been successful so far, but not precisely my cup of tea I now realize. The players are enjoying it, though, which is good!

The good news, at least, is that I am enjoying being GM (or a player) "in the moment" which is to say, actually sitting down to play or run a game is fun and enjoyable. It's just that, once its over, I find the "between session" time I need to prepare for a future game or even thinking about it to be entirely unpleasant.

I am eyeing my collection with thoughts on what takes the Least Effort to prepare and read. This is leading to me eyeballing shorter RPGs again, and Mothership is high on the list for obvious reasons. Another RPG of note is "Dancing with Bullets under a Neon Sun," a wildly minimalist Cyberpunk RPG with enough meat to make a good game, but short enough that I can read and run in an hour or less. There is also "Death in Space" which is a fun, existential and metaphysical romp through a universe being slowly devoured by the void, a kind of stylized variation on the scifi horror genre aimed at emphasizing a campaign setting of a specific sort....not quite as much my cup of tea as Mothership's more procedural take on space truckers, but intriguing nonetheless....and right now, intriguing is something I am desperately clinging to in the face of my general burnout.  

For fantasy gaming and other genres I think I can find some satisfaction in Basic Roleplaying, especially now that it has received an actual revision from Chaosium, suggesting at last that the BRP rules are not going to be neglected outside of Call of Cthulhu and Runequest. There is also Magic World, now in POD format, which along with all BRP-powered engines I find capable of penetrating the malaise that permeates this new level of burnout I am dealing with.

So not all is lost....I just need to figure out what will break the unending spell of discontent that has overcome me of late! BRP, Mothership, and unique zinerpgs seem to be in the right general space for what I need right now.