Stuck in a rut

sup Veeky Forums, I'm coming to you with a genuine concern.

It dawned on me when I got home from my 5e session today.
I've stopped enjoying my RPG sessions, and I'm not sure why.
It's been a slowly mounting feeling, but it's finally come to a head and sort of a revelation.
Different systems don't seem to help, different groups hasn't helped so far (though some are worse than others), and I personally don't feel into it, putting in a fairly small minimum of effort, as it's all I can muster.

>Groups, current and recent
>D&D 5e, player, weekly, Storm King's thunder, group A (GM X)
>D&D 5e, player, weekly, Hoard of the dragon queen, Group A (GM Y) (just started tonight)
>D&D 5e, GM, ended, Lost Mine of Phandelver, Group A (ended against a dargon)
>HackMaster 5e, infrequent, player, Group B, Frandor's Keep w/ heavy modifications
>HackMaster, GM, very infrequent, Group B + 2 more dudes, custom campaign based on the campaign notes of the previous GM who ragequit
>WHFRP 2nd, player, ended, Group C, fell apart due to inexperienced GM and That Guy

Group A I met like 6 months ago, and they were all new to this stuff. Inexperienced, bambi-on-ice in some cases, but mostly enthusiastic, if reluctant to RP.

Group B are long-running pals and experienced gamers

Group C are (were) acquaintances and people I don't get that well along with.

Dude you game a LOT

That's a hella full schedule

Is it just flat burnout?

Thats alot of swords and magic. Maybe you need a new setting.
And while the dice are different, they all play very samey

Group breakdown for more insight, names fictionalized

>Group A
>Nathan - electrician, beard enthusiast, general cool guy. Most experience of the group excluding me. Significant other to Jesse.
>Jesse - Quiet gal who mostly likes skyrim and surface-level nerd shit like nuwho and sherlock. Harmless, but bland, like those rice cakes you can get at the store.
>Jack - Powergamer/build connoisseur, but simultaneously probably the most invested in playing his character and RP'ing along with Nathan.
>Dwayne - Very good at certain types of characters, but a bit of a one-trick pony. Student, fond of drinks and smokes, otherwise I don't know a lot about him. His barbarian in my campaign was Grog-lite, but in the good way.
>Billy - Small, mousy guy who never grew out of edgy teen rebellion completely, but still wants to be a decent guy. Always wants to play "weird" characters.

Group B
>Elvis - Martial artist who takes that shit serious af. Hamplanet wife. Possibly autistic. Extremely serious about rules and simulations and accuracy. Unironically wears fedoras and matching getup. Sometimes it works. GMs pretty well.

>Betty - PhD candidate and housewife at heart. Often hosts our sessions and is great at it. Patient mediator, note-taker, excellent roleplayer, not great with numbers or extreme amounts of rules.
>Chaoticus Maximus - Electrician. Manic, lacks any kind of foresight. Plays nigh-exclusively dwarves because they let him be a stubborn, honor-bound bastard who'll let an insult drag him into a surefire one-way ticket to hell. First character shit in a well and got executed first session. Part of Group C as well.
>Memeticus maximus - Memester extraordinaire, reddit/funnyjunk type guy, has a fidget spinner and an anxiety disorder. Likely to shoot up some manner of public place. That Guy of Group C. Still an ok guy at heart.

>Group C
>Jim-Bob - Jim-Bob idealizes Guts and shouts HERESY! at anything he doesn't like. He plays exclusively murderhobos with half-baked justifications. 40Kfag.
>Skallagrim 2 the revengening - HEMA nerd, workaholic, pedant, glutton for punishment and liable to bend over backwards to kiss the ass of NPCs
>Captain Autism - Your run-of-the-mill MAGA memer and witcher fan. Legit Asperger's diagnosis, Conan-esque barks of laughter. Lifts.
>Chaoticus Maximus
>Memeticus Maximus
>Tall blonde and anal - Teacher by trade, uptight, troll-y, serious, whiskey drinker, control freak.

I mean, I've had that thought, yeah, and it might be that.

Well, see, my groups are/were pretty autismal about sticking to THE ONE TRUE SYSTEM, and the one Shadowrun campaign I saw happening was filled up quick as I could blink.

Fapping is no longer satisfying, you take a break.
Weed no longer gets you as high, you take a break.
Coke no longer tastes as good, you take a break.
Tabletop RPGs are no longer fun, you _______

fill in the blank.

Thinking about it try these games
FATE- super rules lite. You can keep this in Swords and magic if you like. But its more about the roleplay then the rollplay. Most settings work in this too

Star wars - There are three star wars systems out there. Its swords and magic in space, but people know the setting and wont be hard for them to understand the world. Its one of the few setting when playing an evil group can work well because there is (less) back stabbing
MERP- middle earth role play system from the 80's. It handles so much different to hackmaster and DnD.
Starfigher- Its pathfinder in space, its a d20 system so the rules might be easier for the groups.
TMNT- the old palladium system. Play some mutants. I played a hillbilly bird with twin uzis

Fair enough, although I wasn't sure if it was burnout or just having shitty groups/campaigns/systems
It might also just be a more general feeling of being stuck in a rut, and I wouldn't know how to solve that, either, but this was the Veeky Forums related portion of it.

So DnD in space might be your best option too.
Also every member sounds like trash. Maybe find BETTER players. People who are not dick heads.

>Every member sounds like trash
I mean, you're not wrong, but at the same time, this is a small-ass town, and I dread to say I might've gotten the cream of the current crop of RPG players in town.
>D&D in space
I mean, that might work

I did try a one-shot of Mouse Guard and kind of fucking hated it.
FATE and story games seem, so far, not my forte.
The others might be worth a look, though.
Except starfinder, because Paizo is retarded.
For what it's worth, I was in a Rogue Trader campaign some months back as well, and that was...also not super good, partly due to Jim-Bob being the sort of GM who sets his roll20 nick to "God" and has memetastic players who post gore in the chat instead of doing anything constructive, so I guess I've had some space adventures.

How about a kingmaker type game too?
They need to set up their own kingdom/ adventuring guild.
They need to find NPC's to do the work
They need to pick what building get built first.
They need to make sure their is enough food for everyone.
They need to deal with crime that won't piss off or not piss off the right people.

I did this and set it on a new island. I gave the players a hex sheet that I filled out 10 hexs on.
The town, 3 land and 3 sea. I did a mountain range (2) and a VERY large tree.
Problem being that was far away, and the town would go to shit if they left do to the fey messing with the towns folk. They have starting cash too, are they going to buy a shit ton of weapons, 1 magic weapon, horses, armor, other living items that will keep their villagers happy, medical stuff

They have enough food for 2-8 months depending on how many people they bring.
They have enough coin to pay these people for 1-3 months.
They have enough building material for 3 things. They need to pick from (for example):
a wall
a well
a farm
a lumber yard
a Tavan
real houses (rather than tents)
Stables
Chruch

Oh sweet jesus, yeah, I might really enjoy running a Kingmaker type game, actually.
I'm not sure how I'd feel trying to play in one, partly due to being a little impatient and partly due to most GMs around me being kind of...well, inexperienced, riddled with control issues or just awful (or all three, god forbid.)
It'd probably work with Group B, to some degree (except that Chaoticus Maximus would find some way to ruin the fun for the others, I guarantee it.)
Still, it's a solid idea.
Group A, on the other hand, kind of have a tendency of just skipping a lot of things, fast-forwarding often and far and not really describing a lot, instead compressing sessions to 'get more done', and combine that with Jesse and Billy being kind of non-existent or not very good at roleplay, and the others being enthusiastic-if-not-great, there's not a lot of inter-character relationships or NPC-character relationships or what the fuck have you.

Holy shit you have a lot of groups, and consequently no sympathy from me you spoiled faggot.

>Elvis - Martial artist who takes that shit serious af. Hamplanet wife.
Like, I know I'm gonna agitate the /pol/tards here, but what does his hamplanet wife have to do with anything you're talking about

My old DM had a hamplanet wife with a literal his wife's son that ruined our group because she constantly accused him of sleeping with the female players, to the point where they apparently had to make up a bizarre lie about being lesbians so she'd leave us alone long enough to roll some dice, but in this case, it seems like you just threw it in there.

>newfags STILL falling for bait threads

Fair enough, although realistically, it's two a week - the STK and HootDQ campaigns - the campaign I ran died, as did WHFRP, and the HackMaster campaigns have been dead since mid-december and are showing no signs of life, and even then they're at best 1/month.

I'm not sure it has anything to do with anything, to be honest, I just wrote down things that came to mind when thinking about him, with no filter.
Although, when you mention it, he *did* make a push to add his wife to the HackMaster group he's running, and took actual visible visceral offense to it when we said it was a bad idea because
1. It was already a 5-player group and he's consequently been very strict on "5's the max" and we've agreed on that
2. Her and I go together like oil and water, and part of that is that I think she's a snarky cunt with a princess complex and delusions of superiority.
3. Any GM is gonna favor their SO in some way if in a position to do so.
3.B. She has him so by the short hairs it's ridiculous.
4. Even Betty, friend to the hamplanet, thinks she can get to be way too much in gaming contexts.
5. Hamplanet never pays attention and sits on her phone or laptop playing diablo 3 - we had this happen in a previous campaign.
6. Hamplanet has no sense of tact, tone, plot, or understanding/care for the social contracts that underlie TTRPGs.

This isn't bait though. If anything, it's a shitty blog.

From your list of games, it feels like you play a lot of similar stuff. Try something fucking weird, or at least more than a stone's throw away from D&D.

Tenra Bansho Zero. Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouf. MAID. Lady Blackbird. Dread. Fiasco.

The further away you get from the usual routine/cycle, the more likely you are to experience something that shakes things up for you.

I know that feel

Most of my friends never played so I have a group of 5 first timers and 2 people that have played before. The new guys are really engaged with everything that's happening and it's awesome but the others just aren't. They don't say a lot or get involved with much of anything.

They tell me that they're enjoying it and all that but I always have this self doubt that says that what I'm doing is shit and they're lying to me. It doesn't help that this is my first time GMing.

Oh yeah, there's a lot of similarities - Fantasy, magic, adventuring, and a surprising amount of sheer fucking misery porn where the PCs can't do jack shit and take forfuckingever to recover from wounds (jeez, especially fucking HackMaster).

>Tenra Bansho Zero
Ain't tried, what's it about?
>Actual cannibal shia labeouf
Huh. I mean, maybe - is it anything like Everyone is John?
>MAID
Played it once before. It's...interesting, but I don't have enough knowledge of animu tropes.
>Lady Blackbird
Never heard of, am intrigued
>Dread
I've heard good things about it, I might try it if I can convince the rest to try
>Fiasco
Played it before, not good at improv, but I suppose this is a tool to get better.

It's weird, right?
But I mostly had a good thing going when I was GM'ing the whole thing with Group A, they were giving me rapt attention and trying to rp, and I even got Jesse to start coming out of her shell a bit.
Then the campaign kind of ground to a halt after they died against Venomfang and lost the drive to finish.
The Storm King's Thunder group started up with literally the same people except Nathan was the GM, and it's been really really up and down.
He's showing the sort of great judgment you'd expect out of a GM with regards to saying "No fuck you pre-written module, this makes more sense", and he's a good, enthusiastic storyteller, but he struggles a bit with slight railroading, skipping too much and having severe difficulties with balancing shit (two sessions ago an ancient blue dragon fucking teleported from the horizon and breath weapon'd us, and the only reason I wasn't straight-up killed was I made the DC 23 Dex save on the dot.)
Four-five sessions, Jesse left the campaign due to it not being 'her speed', gliding in and out of engaging with the rest of us.
I don't know, it felt like the RP was better earlier in the campaign, and I don't know why.
Billy and Dwayne are respectively quiet and one-note/obsessed with stats/solo schemes

So it's often myself and Jack that're left up to do any sort of inter-character roleplay, or engage with any NPCs or take a leader role, while the others dither behind, at best, and are needlessly contrarian at worst.
Only, I don't know why, but even though Jack's character and mine are even romantically involved, it feels like even that spark's gone out or at least been muted and I can't pinpoint the cause.
And again, I can't overstate the adverse effects of treating anything outside of combat or just being on the road as an skippable aside - so we had one incredibly bad shopping session, that happens in vitually every group.

Meanwhile, in the Hoard of the dragon queen campaign - well, it's just been sessions 0 and 1 so far, this time the players being myself, Nathan, Billy and Jesse, with Jack GM'ing, and again it feels a bit...like we're disparate people happening to go in the same direction, chasing after a goal we don't even understand or care about, bandied around like a cosmic pinball.
Also, while 'builds' and 'viability' shouldn't be the highest concern, we have some severe-ass overlap, and actually nothing in the way of anything remotely resembling a tank, which meant we actually got our asses torn up in combat.

Also, we're basically Mono-DEX:The party, and my dainty elf rogue is the only one who doesn't have Strength 8 - instead rocking an impressive *10*, but with 8 CON, because I like having a low stat, but also not sucking at Athletics, because turns out that's a useful skill.
Jesse's basically playing less obnoxious/more wallflower-y Beauregard from the new Critical Role campaign (butch grrl power monk), Nathan is playing a ranged fighter (and exclusively ranged apparently even despite having a rapier and I think also a shield), and his character is...kind of like Marisha Ray the person - not a bad people, but prone to stupid shit and too much drugs. Billy's playing a fungus druid (circle of the spore) and fully embracing the idea 110% because it tickles his autismal edgy desire to be a special snowflake.
So we're basically DPS + DPS + DPS/utility/face + Druid, and lacking a tank/healer.

Hell, going back to the Storm King's thunder campaign, it's much the same.

>Jack - Devotion Paladin 5/Warlock 2 ("Just a dip to get some cool shit, all the best builds do it"), slow-to-wind-up tank/DPS with abysmal DEX and approximately equal tankyness/DPS to the barbarian
>Billy - Unwashed anarchist Berserker barbarian with a contrarian streak and no real reason to go with the party. Theoretically has Medicine and Stealth. Realistically just a meat sponge and chainsaw to fell our enemies.
>Dwayne - Halfling Ranger. Spends way too much of party funds on his horse, don't got nothing of Nature/Survival, threw away his best spells, but he's got the feat combo that lets him shoot thrice using hand crossbows, so he's putting out sick DPS and almost can't miss
>Jesse (quit) - Sorcerer. AoE blaster + DPS.
>Me - Lore bard, skill monkey, buff-giver, debuff/crowd control, party healer (paladin treats his lay on hands as extra hp for him), party face and ersatz rogue