Planning

So the Dungeons and Dragons game finally got to second level.

Yesterday was mostly about leveling up characters.
Other goals we need to meet are wishlists for magic items, quest goals and a few other things. I'm working on more index cards to keep track of everything. Puzzle Keys (Purple), Treasure (Orange), Quests (Brown) as well as everyone having their own Power Cards (Green, Red or Blue).
Unfortunately with the power cards, I specifically stated to put them in front of them and flip them over so I can see how much the fights are draining the party. Naturally the players aren't complying with this request. Of course one player even refuses to use cards because 5 minutes of prep for a game is so hard. At this point I should mention that I usually spend about 2 hours planning an encounter (picking monsters, rewards, clues, etc), that's supposed to last for one hour. Fortunately for me, with one encounter a week I only have to do two hours a week, but I usually figure in 10 hours of planning a week, plus the 5 hours we play. All of this for a game I didn't want to run in the first place, but since the players wanted to play it, I am running it.

So there's the road map to getting burnt out on gaming and game mastering. Enjoy.