Par example, when I was in high school, the game was seriously the most fun/awesome thing ever. Over time, though, I find myself increasingly bored during every session I play through. I'm not sure if our DM is just becoming incredibly stale and lame, or if the game in general becomes less magical the older one becomes.
I will admit that our DM has been planning things incredibly lamely, lately. He likes to make incredibly difficult battles that take damn near 4 hours to complete. But even besides that, I'm pretty bored with battles that are shorter and easier as well. Is there a golden formula that needs to be achieved to make battle fun, and my DM's always suck and miss the mark, or does role playing become stale after about 7 years? I want to experience those magical sessions I remember from high school, but I instead find my weekly sessions to be horrible yawn fests. If it weren't for social pressure, i.e. the stigma from ditching one's friends, I'd probably just not play at all.
By the way, before you guys think I'm being kind of a whiney dude whose complaining, that's not it at all. I'm not trying to get the internet to solve my issues, I'm just curious as to whether other people have experienced a similar trend.
Then again, from what I'm reading here, I have no clue what is actually going on in your game sessions. I don't know what experiences you've had, what you'd like to do, or if there's some aspect of gaming that you find particularly satisifying and are not getting anymore.
IMO, the best way to keep D&D (and just about anything else) from getting stale is to change it up periodically. Play different games in different worlds with different people with different levels of technological development. If you're tired of fantasy, play some d20 Star Wars, or Call of Cthulhu, or just about anything, really; let your roleplaying experience expand over a wide enough area, and you should find something to interest you.
If you're doing it right, you should grow bored with D&D at about the same time as when you become tired of life.
...If it weren't for social pressure, i.e. the stigma from ditching one's friends, I'd probably just not play at all...
If they're your friends, they'll understand.
Better yet, why don't you offer to run the game for a month? You'll get a new perspective of the game, plus you'll be using different parts of your brain when you play. I can't say if it will turn out well, but you won't be bored.
Hey guys, I'm writing to pose a question. Does D&D become really boring the longer you play it?
Par example, when I was in high school, the game was seriously the most fun/awesome thing ever. Over time, though, I find myself increasingly bored during every session I play through. I'm not sure if our DM is just becoming incredibly stale and lame, or if the game in general becomes less magical the older one becomes.
I will admit that our DM has been planning things incredibly lamely, lately. He likes to make incredibly difficult battles that take damn near 4 hours to complete. But even besides that, I'm pretty bored with battles that are shorter and easier as well. Is there a golden formula that needs to be achieved to make battle fun, and my DM's always suck and miss the mark, or does role playing become stale after about 7 years? I want to experience those magical sessions I remember from high school, but I instead find my weekly sessions to be horrible yawn fests. If it weren't for social pressure, i.e. the stigma from ditching one's friends, I'd probably just not play at all.
By the way, before you guys think I'm being kind of a whiney dude whose complaining, that's not it at all. I'm not trying to get the internet to solve my issues, I'm just curious as to whether other people have experienced a similar trend.
I find it telling that you ask about role playing becoming stale but you only talk about battles, perhaps thats your problem...
Create a character thats fun to play, not just good at fighting but that brings you humor and excitement to play.
If you arn't playing a dynamic character that the game shapes around to some degree then your just playing a tactical minis game, and while fun they can become stale if they drag on....
Create a character thats fun to play, not just good at fighting but that brings you humor and excitement to play.
If you arn't playing a dynamic character that the game shapes around to some degree then your just playing a tactical minis game, and while fun they can become stale if they drag on....
To me, D1Tremere hit it right on. For instance, I personally find 4E limiting as everything is now "balanced". One stinky feat is pretty much as bad as the next; stinky powers don't really get any better as you advance, well, perhaps a tiny bit less stinky. So, to really have fun, play the character. In one campaign, I play a kobold wizard whose party let him keep a book of summoning Orcus. Yap Bootlicker continually rubs his hands over and over in twisted glee, muttering to himself about "plans within plans" ... if only the game allowed such to actually happen. Ah well. When the other characters spout off of who they worship, when it comes to Yap's turn, he starts with "I worship Orcu... er, Kurtulmak". That always turns several heads.
In a second campaign, my fighter with low intel always pays for the group stuff. Eating at a tavern or enjoy a drink? My fighter buys. While he has absolutely no charisma, his comrades love him.
Bring your characters to life. Not only will the fellow players enjoy it more, you will as well.
If you're really dreading the sessions that much you should reconsider dropping the group even if they are friends. You can hang out with them outside of D&D.
"Not neccasarilly ... but i sometimes find myself in a rut at times..."character rut" increasingly more-so these days i actually clicked this link for some advise for myself...
But .. hm So im going to explain something about my dm and our friends ... its sad and pathetic but we never manage to get to our 4th sessions we usualy do 1 or 2 then move on to another campaign ... its a mother... but our record is 5 sessions of 1... i dont know why but i stated this fact to help explain my rut...
Rut Explanation; LOL... so Everytime i play dnd i try to play a different character.... i try to be as open minded as i can playing... ive been playing for 7 years now and ive played all of the classes many times and alot of the bonus classes and of course i have a couple classes i like the most... im an extremist and can never find balance in my life and its reflected in my dnd sessions ... although these arent the characters i always play, these 2 are my favorites.... The Wizard... Smart as can be... And the Barbarian Slightly smarter than a brick and Strong as an OX... I always try being somthing ive never been before these days... and its at the point where im not having to much fun... i know a huge part of it is our incredibly short campaigns.... but the only people i know who play dnd our my close personal friends... they still enjoy it but not i. I find myself getting bored of all my characters probly cause i feel no connection.. I dont have enough play time to build relationships with other characters ... explore my owns mind and i dont have the satisfaction of start at 1 and devolping my character into a powerful one ...
one problem specificly is that ive already made all the characters im going to enjoy a few times already and they are all resulted in short lived campaigns...now i wander aimlessly alongside my friends in dnd bored... eating my my cheetos and drinking my soda... thinking ... i wanna go play Xbox
I need a talented DM to breath life back into the game for me... mayby thats what you need as well... I hope this helped you"
We have some remarcable similarities...we both have been playing dnd for 7 years... for me from 9th grade to now... and both of our highlights of enjoyment came from highschool.... and i felt like making a thread like this to express the staleness that has come over me.... but i disagree with what some of the people said... ive dm'ed nothing fun came of it... ive quite untill i got the yurning to play again and ... it wasnt fun... the dm i had in high school and the dm i have now are two different people... but thats not to say the dm i have now has never entertained me... just not anymore....mayby you can gather somthing from all ive said... i sure cant ... but i do know... i like dnd and its fun... i dont want to quite... and i do know im not having fun with my current group.... this is what i do know.... it seems the only answer i have is to find a different dnd group... enfortunatly i dont exactly know where to find one... and chat room dnd sessions.. lose out on the face to face experience. one time i went to meetup.com and found some dnd groups in my area... it didnt work out well for unrelated reasons but mayby you will have better luck... just ask yourself if you enjoy dnd in general if the answer is yes then you need to find yourself a talented dm to breath like back into the game for you.
And that, children, is how my current gaming group has lasted for 20 years.;)
I like to get my players very involved in the campaign, completely modeling the adventures around the characters.
Making things personal rather than just randomly being hired (yet again) in a dingy tavern to go and dungeon delve is certainly the key in my experience.
Evoking real emotion from the players is crucial to a gaming experience that doesn't become stale over a period of time.
Having the players personally, emotionally and even financially involved in a town, group or region and having attacks or disasters happen to these things can lead to amazing personal quests that the players will talk about for years afterwards, reminiscing fondly about the time that they had to stop such and such from wiping out so and so place where they lived.
Tracking down a lost comrade who had fought valiantly along side them for a campaign or two (say a retired player character whom the entire party enjoyed gaming with) across the world and being ever more drawn into unexpected and twisted plots that the comrade had been caught up in along the way.
These sorts of things when well planned out can breathe much needed life back into a group of players.
So take my tip DM's and players alike "Make things personal!"
You could try Savage Tide adventure path. It would give you different types of game challenges. But this only works if your DM is up to it. ;)
try and breathe new life into the game by bringing non-combat roleplaying (actual roleplaying) into it.
Our DM is a big roleplaying guy. All his campaigns are long, carefully thoughtout masterpieces, and are often designed to play off the characters alignments. We have to save the town from zombies. We have to save the inn. We have to save those kids. We have to do long, complex, and inordinately comprehensive roleplaying.
The campaign's been going for about three months now. We've just finished saving the town. And the DM REFUSES to send us on a proper dungeon delve.
Too much hack and slash might get boring, but NONE gets boring even faster.
But if you are feeling in a rut, try another game. There are hundreds of games out there, not all of them are d20 either. Try something else. Maybe modern horror or something futuristic. Or maybe you should just find something else to do if you seriously just aren't feeling it anymore.
Go outside of the battles and play your character, and encourage the DM to add depth and believability to the world, where choices matter, and every place you go, every thing you do if magic was real...could happen.
Best of luck.
Hey guys, I'm writing to pose a question. Does D&D become really boring the longer you play it?
Par example, when I was in high school, the game was seriously the most fun/awesome thing ever. Over time, though, I find myself increasingly bored during every session I play through. I'm not sure if our DM is just becoming incredibly stale and lame, or if the game in general becomes less magical the older one becomes.
I will admit that our DM has been planning things incredibly lamely, lately. He likes to make incredibly difficult battles that take damn near 4 hours to complete. But even besides that, I'm pretty bored with battles that are shorter and easier as well. Is there a golden formula that needs to be achieved to make battle fun, and my DM's always suck and miss the mark, or does role playing become stale after about 7 years? I want to experience those magical sessions I remember from high school, but I instead find my weekly sessions to be horrible yawn fests. If it weren't for social pressure, i.e. the stigma from ditching one's friends, I'd probably just not play at all.
By the way, before you guys think I'm being kind of a whiney dude whose complaining, that's not it at all. I'm not trying to get the internet to solve my issues, I'm just curious as to whether other people have experienced a similar trend.
That, in my opinion, is your problem. I've been playing D&D on and off for 15-16 years... and it definitely has its ups and downs, and that's all depending on your DM. Some DMs just make me raise my hands in 45 minutes, declare: "DONE!" and walk away, hating D&D for a few hours after... while some keep me coming back to their game for years.
And when things get dull as a player, I run my own game to shake things up.
We also play other games too. We switch most often between World Of Darkness and D&D. Sometime we play Shadowrun or Traveller. All of it really depends on the genre. If we want fantasy it's D&D, modern it's World of Darkness, Cyber Punk is Shadowrun, and Sci Fi is Traveller or Living Steel.
However, if you play once every one or two weeks with a DM who comes up with an original storyline (as in that he didn't steal the whole idea outright) and you use new material from time to time, trying out new classes and feats and equipment or even character concepts, then you'll be much more ensured of a fun time.
Heck, this is why homebrew stuff is so awesome.
If so, maybe it's the change. If not, maybe it's the lack of change.
1- talk to your DM and group and find out what they think of the current "state of affairs". a good round table will allow everyone to voice what they would like to see more of in the game. i'm guessing the DM is doing the battles because he thinks you want them. telling him you like them but you would like to have more variety with your sessions will cause a shift in style and revitalize your campaign (and maybe save those hard fights for the "boss" or end of story arc villain).
2- try another system. we're currently playing 2 D&D games and a third one started up. all 3 games are using 3 different versions (1st, 3rd & 4th). the first ed game is the Temple of Elemental Evil module and once that's done we're planning on starting up our GURPS game (the GM finally has a steady schedule... and my work now decided to mix up mine
). we tried our hand at White Wolf a little while ago. 3- try your hand at GMing. being on the other side of the screen is a whole different experience and can help revitalize your interest. my groups is mixed with a bunch of people who don't mind/refuse/love GM'ing, heck we're swapping GM seats in the 4th ed game (i started, then the ranger took over and the warlord will take over next)
4- take a sabbatical from gaming for a while. you might just be burning out, it happens. i burned out from GMing and took a sabbatical and only played instead of GMing for a long time and only a few months ago GMed again. sometimes you just need a break.
Certainly, interest will wax and wane with time. As with anything. Variaty helps, and so does breaks.
Does D&D become really boring the longer you play it?
Nope. The players or the DM can become really boring though.
You probably probably don't have any direct control over the DM, but one single excited, enthusiastic player can make others excited. And an excited, fun group can make even a poorly run adventure fun (and even inspire a bored DM).
Everyone has different things that inspire them. Some things to try:
1) Play a comedic relief type character (halfling rogue, gnome alchemist, etc.) and ham it up.
2) Level faster, so that you always have new powers to try out.
3) Face more challenging opponents (requiring you to try harder and/or lose occasionally)
4) Rotate DM's, so everyone gets a taste.
That really could be a reason why. Some people just think 4e has boring battles.
[Read: SOME PEOPLE.]
It really depends on the person and persons involved. I am still playing 2nd edition AD&D and enjoying it just as much now as I ever did in the past. You also have to remember that with D&D you get out of it exactly what you put into the game. If you put boredom into it you get boredom out of it. You put stupidity into it you get stupidity out of it. You put excitement and energy into it you get excitement and energy out of it.
The biggest thing to stave off lameness is variety. In my group, we always have multiple GMs running multiple campaigns, which we rotate through - one runs a few weeks, then another, then another. Different games as well as different campaigns with the same system; I didn't play any D&D on a regular basis between the original version and 4e. We've also tried various ways to co-GM, and some players who have GMed just a single session, because they had something they wanted to try. It's great for easing the pressure on the GM, and adds to the variety and scope of all the players - with different games, you get different ideas, and with so many who have GMed, you get a better perspective on how the table works in general.
It's not that D&D, or roleplaying, gets stale - it's the trap of falling into a rut, doing the same thing over and over. That can spoil anything.
Also, roleplaying games are not the only option. There are many awesome board games (such as Ticket to Ride) and card games (such as Illuminati, Bang!, and Munchkin). Card and board games are also great for when you do not have enough players show up to run the adventure.