Burnt Out?

My Forgotten Realms campaign has died.

There are several reasons for this, which I'll not go into. However, the main one is that my heart just wasn't in it. I couldn't face up to doing the preparation required to run a good, unique D&D campaign.

Worryingly, this is the second such campaign in succession to fail. The Shackled City campaign worked, but largely because the bulk of the work was done for me. Dragons of the Cerulean Ocean fell apart because I couldn't face doing the required adventure preparation. Cavcari's Last Incantation has now gone the same way, and for much the same reason.

The thing is, it's not down to a lack of ideas. The Cerulean Ocean setting was replete with adventure opportunities, and the way the campaign was set up should have guaranteed some entertainment at least. Likewise, the premise of Cavcari's Last Incantation should have provided the hook for a really solid campaign. Nor was the problem that I was doing a particularly poor job running the game. Given my total lack of preparation, I felt it was going rather well. True, I was having some problems with the format, and a few others with the mechanics (and it didn't really feel right going directly from church to running a game, although not for the reasons you probably think). However, none of this was the issue.

The issue was preparation.

The thing is, the d20 system is so mechanical that I can't run encounters on the fly. If I have a monster, that's fine, since I have useable stats for such things. However, pit the PCs against a human NPC cleric, and I'm done for. I don't have worked out stats, I don't have any clear list of what spells he'll cast to prepare, or how he'll fight, and I have no idea what treasure to assign. I need to work all these things out in advance.

Additionally, if I'm going to the trouble of working loads of things out in advance, I have no interest in running yet another vanilla campaign. I've done those to death. Evil overlord waking up? Check. Artefact desperately needing retrieved/destroyed? Check. Ancient prophecies coming to fruition? Check.

Give me something new, or I can't be bothered.