Gamemasters are human, and just like everyone else, vulnerable to mental health problems. It’s entirely possible that the active participation in an immersive hobby like TTRPGs provides a measure of relief from, and insulation from, such problems, but reducing them in frequency and/or severity does not mean that they are eliminated.

Image by Hannah Williams (Shooinau) from Pixabay

My evidence for the relief factor is two-fold: personal experience (gaming helped me get through a rough patch by letting me step into a role that was not experiencing the same issues, in a game world in which every problem had a solution) and anecdotal (a friend who became so depressed after ruining his life that he took that life – after he had stopped gaming, it must be noted).

Work continues on the next installment of Trade In Fantasy, but it’s still not ready. There is light at the end of the tunnel, but that end is a long way away; hopefully the light is not that of an oncoming train!)

I always try to tell a bit of the backstory to my articles; amongst other benefits, it tells readers what to expect, or at least offers a hint or two! Today’s post started off as being about one thing, but was then infused with some related thoughts, and then another TTRPG blogger weighed in with a related article, upon which I felt that I needed to expand and expound, and with each of these inclusions the subject became broader and broader.

As a result, there may be a sense that this is three related articles in one post. I’ll do my best to transition in a cohesive manner so that it all ties together, but that’s a lower priority than actually getting the text out there.

Overview

What is it about TTRPGs that is is helpful to the mental state of GMs?

I think that there are many possible answers, and that some combination of those answers will be specific to any given individual.

• As already suggested, TTRPGs are a social activity that is fully capable of forging lasting friendships. While that means that people who are struggling with their mental health will tend to wan to drop out, peer pressure is likely to keep them playing just a little longer, which in itself can be enough for them to turn a corner.
• TTRPGs are inherently a structured and orderly activity, especially in the prep phases. If feeling overwhelmed by a chaotic existence, that can be therepeutic.
• TTRPGs are (generally) fun. Even prep, as much as GMs complain about how hard it can be, can be fun.
• Stepping outside your own life and into a life that is more positive in orientation can also mean stepping outside your personal problems, at least for a time. The mere fact that you are not obsessively fixated on those problems can be enough to shrink molehills that loomed like mountains back down to size.
• While there are some exceptions, most RPG campaigns are positive, pro-life experiences in which threats can be overcome with determined efforts. That’s an attitude that can be applied to real life, too.
• Those exceptions can permit explorations of the darker sides of the human existence while holding them at arms’ length. And that can serve in good stead when darker events manifest in real life.
• The problems faced in most RPGs eventually take a turn toward the existential purely because there’s so much scope for drama when that happens. Over time, the participants learn that most problems have more than one solution, and even the biggest problems usually have solutions. The scope of these threats can put one’s personal problems into perspective.
• Finally, and to bring the discussion full circle, Gaming exposes you to friends who can both assist and intervene if necessary. And who are used to not backing down from uncomfortable situations, making them more likely to intervene if its necessary.

Nor do I consider the above list to be exhaustive. On the contrary, it’s nothing more than a good beginning. It doesn’t mention the cathartic value of simply being able to hit something (metaphorically, of course), for example – and that alone is proof that there are more items to be added to it.

But there are a few problems that GMs might be especially vulnerable to, and I mean beyond things like deadline stress.

Decision Fatigue in GMs

Adam Savage, former host of Mythbusters, takes a lot of fan questions on his YouTube channel, and in one of these Q&A sessions, he spoke about the impact of being the sole focus of the shows in comparison to the Mythbusters experience.

The difference was that every decision had to go through him, and one day this reached the point where, when someone asked him if they should use blue or red wire for something, his mind went completely blank. Not just for a minute, but until the next morning, after it had received adequate rest.

It’s perhaps a miracle of conditioned reflexes that he was able to drive himself home that night, or perhaps a restorative nap – something he is known to take daily – was enough that he could safely operate a motor vehicle. That’s not the point.

The point is, from both himself and myself, that Decision Fatigue is a real thing, something he had never heard of prior to this event, and that I had never heard of until I listened to his recorded video.

So, what is it?

Decision Fatigue under the microscope

Decision Fatigue is a type of mental overload that can occur from time to time in some individuals and under some circumstances. There is debate as to whether or not it is restricted in effect to only those vulnerable or if it is a general limitation that applies to everyone to differing extents. Currently, the latter seems to be the more accepted theory.

It seems that humans have only a limited capacity for decision-making. Every decision that we make, no matter how trivial, subtracts something from that total. If there are multiple options, that ‘one decision’ may actually be several – first to reject alternatives and simplify the question and then to actually make the decision itself.

Some decisions are clearly more inherently stressful than others simply because of the gravity of the consequences – but that generally won’t apply to decisions in an RPG. When it does matter, though, that stress is an entirely separate issue to Decision Fatigue – unless we keep turning the question over and over in our heads, either prior to making a choice, or second-guessing ourselves after the choice has been made; those do count.

Something that Adam Savage’s video answer didn’t mention is that prior to reaching the point of being literally unable to make a choice, however trivial the question, our decisions become increasingly poor and even incoherent.

From Wikipedia | Decision Fatigue:

Decision fatigue is a phrase popularized by John Tierney, and is the tendency for peoples’ decision making to become impaired as a result of having recently taken multiple decisions.

Decision fatigue has been hypothesized to be a symptom, or a result of ego depletion. It differs from mental fatigue which describes the psycho-biological state that results from a prolonged duration of demanding cognitive tasks, such as multi-tasking or switching between various tasks.

Some psychologists and economists use the term to describe impairments in decision making resulting specifically from a long duration of having to make decisions. Others view factors such as complexity of the decisions being made, repeated acts of self regulation, physiological fatigue, and sleep deprivation as implicated in the emergence of decision fatigue.

Decision fatigue is thought to be a result of unconscious, psycho-biological processes, and is a reaction to sustained cognitive, emotional and decisional load, as opposed to a trait or deficiency.

Behavioral attributes of decision fatigue … [reflect] an unconscious method [of] …. individuals adapt[ing] their behavior to prevent further depletion.

Individuals experiencing decision fatigue are more prone to avoidant behaviors, such as procrastination; [Experiments by] Sjastad and Baumeister demonstrated that decision-fatigued individuals are less willing to engage in planning, and were more avoidant, compared to controls.

Decision fatigue may also induce passive behaviors, such as inaction and decision avoidance. Furthermore, individuals experiencing decision fatigue may display less persistence when putting effort into decision making, and thus may be prone to choosing the ‘default’ option. They may also be prone to impulsive, erratic or short-sighted behavior.

That certainly explains some of the decisions that I’ve made at the GMing table when improvisng … you know, the ones that you look back on later and wonder, “What was I thinking?”

Decision Fatigue impairs cognitive abilities and there’s evidence to suggest it may impact physiological endurance and self control – for example, reducing tolerance toward a poor-tasting soda, especially if the individual actually chose that soda because of decision fatigue. Pain and fatigue tolerance outside of the decision-making arena also suffers, amplifying and exacerbating any existing problems.

Even before the phenomenon was identified, sales techniques had emerged that attempt to take advantage of the problem, because it leaves people in a vulnerable and more suggestive state, and less able to resist the suggestion of adding ‘an extra, expensive, option’ even if it is beyond the budgetary limits placed on the purchase.

It has been shown, for example, that

…a trip to the supermarket induces more decision fatigue in the poor than in the rich, because each purchase requires more mental trade-offs. … [By] the time they reach the cash register, they have less willpower left to resist the Mars bars and Skittles. Not for nothing are these items called impulse purchases.”

— Dean Spears of Princeton University, quoted in the same source.

Other studies have shown that inherent biases are more likely to be applied unilaterally as Decision Bias sets in – so some judges become harsher and less tolerant of mitigating circumstances towards the end of their judicial day, while others become more prone to accepting claims of mitigation at face value.

Criticism of the concept

This is not universally-accepted science. In particular, the leading theory as to the cause, “Ego Depletion”, has been called into question, if that falls apart under scrutiny, it leaves the concept itself uncertain. My impression is that there is enough supportive evidence to show that something is going on, and that while Ego Depletion may not be the cause, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t one – just that ED isn’t ‘it’.

There is (surprise, surprise) also a psychological aspect to the concept that suggests that it might be a self-fulfilling prophecy – research that suggests that only those who consider their decision-making capacities to be limited are vulnerable to the problem. That research, however, then goes on to show that those who do not so believe may find it easier to make decisions late in the day, but did not measure the quality of those decisions – simply assuming that all choices were equally valid when testing only the ability to make decisions. This does split the phenomenon into two separate aspects – decision quality and decision capability – and shows that self-confidence can impact positively or negatively on the latter. So, as criticism goes, it’s rather weak.

Contradictions

There are cultural factors that are not understood.

A study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that although Western populations tend to show signs of ego depletion, similar tests in Indian populations show the opposite effect.

The Indian study participants performed better after first doing a strenuous task, while the Western participants tended to do worse after this task.

Again, researchers pointed to the idea of belief. The Indian participants tended to believe that exerting willpower was energizing, while the Western participants tended to believe that exerting willpower was draining.

— Medical News Today | Decision Fatigue

Even within the western culture, there are professional factors and pre-selections that go against the prevailing research.

…a study in Health Psychology found that nurses tended to make less efficient and more expensive clinical decisions about patient care the longer they went without a break.

— Same Source

How is Decision Fatigue different from Burnout?

Decision Fatigue is a progressive condition (if real) that becomes more impactful as the individual’s day progresses. It is least significant in whatever time-frame the individual considers “morning”. Burnout is a more stable and constant lack of capacity, not through inability, but through a lack of willpower to actually utilize the ability.

That’s not to say that there can’t be interactions between the conditions. It’s arguable that burnout makes decisions harder to reach, and that this accelerates Decision Fatigue or leaves someone vulnerable to it that is normally quite tolerant of the condition.

I should also link to one of my early articles at this point: Lassitude is not Burnout. Being unable to muster enough enthusiasm for a particular project or aspect of a project to commit your full attention to it is not burnout; it’s too specific. If you identify the cause of the lassitude, you can overcome it – or you can simply engage in some other aspect of the project under the assumption that you will complete the work, eventually, filling in the blank space; and that can be enough in and of itself to manufacture the enthusiasm needed to overcome the lassitude.

Combating Decision Fatigue

There are some techniques that can mitigate, minimize, or even prevent Decision Fatigue in the general population, and some that are especially relevant or only applicable to GMs.

1. The first is to examine your belief structure regarding human capacity for decision-making and willpower in general. Altering the cultural foundations upon which you operate may unlock greater capacities. The evidence is slim, though.
2. Making important decisions early permits them to be decided when you have the greatest capacity available.
3. Eliminating distractions can be helpful because it removes an ongoing trivial decision – to pay attention to the distraction or not.
4. Several famous figures deliberately restricted their wardrobes simply to reduce the number of trivial decisions that they had to make – Steve Jobs and Barack Obama amongst them.
5. Regular breaks can be enough to keep you from being overwhelmed. These are something that I recommend be taken every time you need an extra couple of minutes to consider your options, i.e. because the players have done something you hadn’t anticipated, or someone has pointed out a possible meaning that you hadn’t meant to imbue to events.
6. Applying the principle of planning in advance for as many decisions as possible, even the most trivial like what you are going to have for lunch, frees up capacity for other decisions, if the phenomenon is real.
7. That same principle can be applied to reduce the number of decisions that you have to make on the day – “If the PCs do [X] then I’ll do [Y],” – can take the need for many decisions off the table.
8. It’s arguable that this is the real purpose of game prep, but there is a caveat to that theory: It’s more fatiguing to follow a structure than to improvise. I presume that this is because you are always checking your decisions against the structure, at least doubling the workload. Deliberately leaving “holes” in your prep so that you can improv on the day, responding to the situation being presented by the players while limiting the harm that can arise, can take advantage of the fact. While players going off-script is inherently stressful, the fact that when it happens, mental resources get freed up to rise to the challenge keeps that stress from being insuperable.

In general, RPGs are played in a social atmosphere, everyone relaxed and having a good time, and no mood is so deathly serious as to be able to withstand the occasional quip or moment of levity.

Wellbeing Burnout

Wellbeing Burnout is a kind of burnout resulting from the stress of trying to appear well when you aren’t. It is not a clinically-recognized term at this time.

The report which claims to identify the phenomenon defines burnout as a “state of physical, mental, or social exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress”.

Burnout in general is characterized in five stages:

1. Honeymoon phase – enthusiasm and energy overcomes any stress.
2. Stress Onset phase – eventually, the enthusiasm begins to wane and the stresses of a situation begin to manifest. Some of the individual’s energy and focus has to be dedicated to overcoming those incidents of stress.
3. Chronic Stress phase – situations that previously caused stress become more stressful and difficult to manage, while situations that were previously taken in stride routinely cause stress. As a result, the stress becomes a recurring (chronic) condition. It is generally in this phase that side-effects of being stressed, like shortness of temper, begin to manifest.
4. Burnout phase – almost every aspect of whatever you are doing causes stress, and overcoming that stress leaves the victim constantly fatigued. It becomes difficult to focus or dedicate any energy or willpower to a task, and the individual is largely reduced to ‘following the numbers’ like an automaton.
5. Habitual Burnout phase – over time, people can grow accustomed to almost anything. When a significant break and treatments are no longer sufficient to ‘break’ burnout, the individual has entered the ‘habitual burnout’ phase, in which they complete tasks with all the drive and energy of a zombie, they punch in, they work, they clock out, and they generally feel like life is passing them by. Only a complete change of profession is usually enough to break the person free of habitual burnout – even changing to a related field or set of duties simply ports their existing burnout to a new circumstance.

The phrase itself always conjures (metaphoric) images of shooting stars, emerging from nowhere to shine brightly until there’s suddenly nothing left and they go perpetually dark.

So “Wellbeing Burnout” is a specific type of burnout that results from a specific cause of stress.

Cultural Factors

Clearly, cultural factors are going play a major role in susceptibility to Wellbeing Burnout. If there is no predisposition to ‘appear well’ when you aren’t, there is no resulting stress, and nothing leads to this particular form of burnout.

Micro-cultures within a particular workplace or industry can also be significant. “Corporate Culture” is sometimes referred to disparagingly, but a positive one can have great impact on the success of an organization over the long term.

The Macho Factor

A recent study reported that Australia is one of the countries whose population is most susceptible to Wellbeing Burnout. There is a generally “macho” factor within the Australian male, a sense of being able to cope with anything, turn their hand to anything that needs doing, and so on. There is some justification for the attitude, and that’s something my nation can take pride in, but many take it too far, a masculine code of conduct that forbids any appearance of weakness or vulnerability.

If that same sort of culture exists in your country, you too may be vulnerable. But it’s not the only one that can create such susceptibility.

Ladies, don’t think this lets you off the hook, either; even today, to succeed in certain roles, women have to be more macho than the men just to be taken seriously. That’s getting better all the time, but progress is never fast enough. And, in the meantime, it leaves you just as vulnerable to Wellbeing Burnout.

Japanese Workers

The legendary Japanese worker who takes an entry-level position in a corporate entity and is guaranteed employment with them for life so long as the company still exists was once reality, but no longer. With the collapse of the loyalty felt by employers to workforce, the sense of loyalty of that workforce toward the employer has also deteriorated – but the expectation is still that you will work ungodly hours (if necessary) and sacrifice yourself to the corporate well-being.

And that includes going to work, whether you are healthy or not. A “Career Man” who works obsessive hours and still gives his all to the employer. Societal factors ensure that illnesses of all kinds are chronically under-reported in Japan, and I have no doubt that the same is true of Wellbeing Burnout, which those factors should make rife.

Treatment

Direct action aimed at the overt symptoms can buy time but fails to address the real cause / problem.

Direct action aimed at whatever is making the individual feel unwell also reduces the stress from trying to appear well, a 2-for-1 benefit.

Simply knowing that you are doing what you can in that respect can be enough to relieve that stress, and that alone can make you feel less unwell.

Because that’s the dirty little secret of Wellbeing Burnout: the stress that causes it, in and of itself, can be enough to make you feel unwell! That means that it can be a slippery slope, a self-reinforcing feedback loop. All it takes is one bad day.

Or you could simply do as I do, and not try to pretend – I’ll sum up my condition that day (when asked) as succinctly as possible unless I don’t know the person at all. I do take the macho culture into account when doing so – the mere fact that ‘things are so bad that you don’t even pretend’ amplifies whatever people think I’m describing in capacity to handicap me, so I touch on things relatively lightly and let their interpretation adjust that description to whatever my actual condition is. So “my leg’s giving me a bit of trouble today” means “I’m in constant pain that is handicapping my ability to walk” when decoded by the listener, whereas “I can barely walk” means I feel like my leg is on the verge of needing to be surgically removed.

The GMing Equivalent

Now, I don’t think GMs are any more or less susceptible to Wellbeing Burnout. But there’s an equivalent that only GMs know, and that can be equally real: projecting confidence in your prep and its completeness in the course of each day’s play, from start to finish.

No-one who wasn’t looking over your shoulder the whole time knows what the game prep was really like – it might have been a doddle that took half an hour before everyone arrived, it might have been a larger, more sustained effort, but no more difficult; or it might have been one frustration after another, compounding into a nightmare suitable for a Tim Burton animation.

Even the admission, “prep for this session was harder than usual” implies that the prep was done and is complete and you are confident and ready to go. This lies in stark contrast to the ‘reading between the lines’ I described in the previous section; it minimizes the interpretation, underplays it, and can leave the GM feeling under-appreciated.

In part, this is because most GMs actually find the game prep to be enjoyable in and of itself. It’s a creative act that has a bought-and-delivered audience, after all!

I do find myself wondering how much “GM Burnout” is actually this form of “Wellbeing Burnout”. It’s not the process of actually GMing that the sufferer cannot face, it’s the effort needed to be able to do so seamlessly, to what the GM considers an acceptable quality (which is frequently a higher standard than that required by the players, let’s be honest).

Relieving the Prep Burnout Stress

First up, honesty. If your prep down certain potential pathways of game play is likely to be inadequate, tell the players that – but don’t tell them which paths you’ve prepped for and which you haven’t, you can put ideas in their heads!

Second, reducing your need for prep is a LOT more effective than trying to squeeze in some extra prep time, at least in most cases. Knowing that you can be reliant on certain resources in place of your usual prep can relieve a huge weight off your shoulders.

The ultimate extreme in that respect is to do no prep other than big-picture work and deciding what resources you are going to need, then compiling them into a ready-to-use stack.

It has to be remembered that work tends to grow to fill the available time – and then doubles, because what free time you had uncommitted gets treated as ‘available time’ for three or four or five projects all at the same time.

Prioritizing prep is priceless. Make sure that you’ve got the most important stuff done to a “good enough” standard before you invest time on the nuances and delicate touches.

I’ve done a number of articles here at Campaign Mastery pointing directly at this approach.

• Leaving Things Out: Negative Space in RPGs talks about some of the benefits of deliberately not doing certain kinds of prep, amongst other things.
• To Module Or Not?: A legacy article is all about adapting commercially-sourced adventures to fit your campaign.
• Part 7 of the Basics For Beginners series, Adventures, takes advice from many past articles and expands on it, especially in relation to game prep.
• Game Prep and the +N to Game Longevity discusses the prep process that I actually used at the time.
• Fire Fighting, Systems Analysis, and RPG Problem Solving Part 2 of 3: Prioritization offers broad advice on prioritizing problems, dismembering problems into smaller (more solvable) issues, does a deep dive into a theory of Criticality and problem interactions, and then applies the principles derived to generate two different, practical, ways of prioritizing game prep requirements.
• Part 3 of the Basics For Beginners series, Preparations, spends most of its time attempting to persuade the new GM that most prep is not only unnecessary, but potentially deleterious to a campaign. This is not the case for experienced GMs; this is advice aimed directly at the beginner and those of intermediate experience. But there’s some stuff on what prep is actually essential that might be more broadly useful.
• To Every Creator, An Optimum Budget? takes as its theme, “the neglected question of game prep is knowing when to stop.” and explores it thoroughlly.

There are sure to be more – it’s a popular subject here!

Being A Dungeon Master is NOT Stressful

The final part of today’s article stems from a blog post by Jeff Craigmile at Jeff’s Game Box, November 16, 2024,.

I’ve included the link in case you want to read the whole article, but I’ll do my best to summarize it for you because the page is VERY slow to load due to the number of ad breaks inserted into the text. It is worth it if you persevere.

Stress and the ordinary GM

Jeff was inspired to write this post following a YouTube videoblog in which (in his opinion), the poster confuses “Hard” with “Stressful”, concluding that GMing is inherently stressful – or seeming to, at least until quite late in the video blog.

The critical takeaway from the next part of Jeff’s post is that everyone is at least a little bit different, and will have a different reaction to game prep in terms of their mental health – and if you are one of those unfortunates who finds it all to be hard work, maybe it’s not something you’re cut out for. But for most GMs, while parts of the process may be stressful, most of it is the exact opposite.

Before I gave the game away, though, I would look for someone who is strong in the areas that are giving you trouble and look to co-GM with them. After a little effort working out how to hot-seat at the game table, it might prove to be the perfect answer.

There follow a couple of paragraphs that I agree with so completely that I’m going to quote them verbatim:

You have to take care of your mental, physical, and emotional health. Downtime for depression and other mental health issues is real, family. I know all too well. Social anxiety is a thing, too. No doubt these things take a toll on physical health, relationships, and finances.

I cannot stress the value of therapy or any other mental health practice that works for you. Anxiety and depression are no laughing matter. Players- if your DM/GM comes in and says they’re getting stressed out over gaming, please take them seriously and try to help. They’re not going to be much fun if they’re hiding in their bedroom instead of running/playing the game.

The final section of the blog post considers whether or not WotC could have an ulterior motive in encouraging the concept that GMing is hard. Since you can find an ulterior motive for anything if you use the right assumptions and look hard enough, it’s not surprising that he finds one, and yes, it’s possibly valid – but I don’t think it is.

Instead, I think they are trying to revisit something that’s been lost to the gaming culture over the last 10-15 years: the notion that GMing is an elite, that the GM is on another level to the players. The DMG used to say explicitly, “The GM is always right”. That’s been watered down a lot, lately; the game mechanics have been elevated to primacy in a lot of people’s minds, as have RAW (rules as written).

My Take

My take on the issue, for what it’s worth, is that, at the game table, GMing can be mentally and emotionally exhausting and great fun, all at the same time. During game prep, it can be both fun and stressful, both at the same time.

The primary cause of game prep stress is over-commitment, and trying to squeeze too much into too little time. Self-imposed deadline stress, backed up by actual deadline stress, in other words. Throw in a little frustration from time to time, and the recipe is mostly complete. Other causes of anxiety, like not being ‘good enough’ to complete the task, seem to be relatively rare.

So it has to be acknowledged that oftentimes, the harder the prep, the better the play, and vice-versa. Somewhere in there, a happy balance exists for almost every GM; they simply need to find it and adapt a style to suit its constraints.

TTRPGs are unique in this way: as the GM, you get to set your own rules, your own limits. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have limits, or never transgress against them – we do it all the time! – but mostly, out of enthusiasm. They reinvent themselves in front of our very eyes, responding to our own creative input – and that tends to perpetually restart and rejuvenate the “Honeymoon Phase”.

That, in turn, doesn’t mean that Game prep is not stressful – as I’ve demonstrated, it is – but rather that our enthusiasm and energy can carry us through those moments of stress and out the other side. And there aren’t very many activities where that’s the case.

Writing doesn’t have it – feedback takes too long. Acting for TV and movies, likewise. Acting on stage, one could argue, is closely analogous. In fact, any live performance. But in both those cases, there are outside expectations to contend with. Nothing approaches the TTRPGs capacity to define itself and redefine itself. That’s one of the many things that makes it unique as a hobby. And you, as GM, are the architect and ringmaster of that redefinition – it happens in direct response to your approach.

So if you find it stressful, it almost certainly means that you have chosen an approach that’s wrong – for you. And if you face burnout, it’s even more likely that this is true. You set the agenda, so if you need to make a change, make a change.

Wrap-up

It would be wonderful if I could end this article on that point. Alas, it can’t be done.

We all live in the real world, and the real world can impose its own stresses on a situation. We all carry our state of mental health with us, no matter what we do; the best to hope for is that we can escape its restrictions for a little while.

Real-world problems generally need real-world solutions. Do whatever you need to in pursuit of your mental health. Work on solving those problems before they compound and grow beyond your control.

If gaming offers some relief, as it did for me, many years ago, that’s great! Take any help you can get.. But don’t expect more than that; if you have real problems, you can’t entirely leave them behind; you need to seek solutions. Do what you have to, and celebrate the resulting small victories at the game table.