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So I started DMing before this pandemic and I loved it, however the swap to online has been extremely rough and every session I am extremely stressed out to the point where I lose sleep and am picking up some of my old bad habits.
I want to put the campaign on hiatus, but all the players have put effort into their characters and are my friends and I don't want to disappoint them.
How do I step down from being DM and put the game on hold until we're back in-person.
I went through exactly the same thing. (As described in my profile.) And getting it off my chest felt wonderful. Here's the email I sent them, if you want to mine it for any bits you can use:
I'm also getting overwhelmed with [remote work], homeschooling 3 kids, and coronavirus... in the back of my mind this week I've been wondering if I need a break from running, so if there's something you've got in mind you've wanted to try/do--some one-shots, online boardgames, a bridge tournament--bring that to the table tonight and we can gather ideas.
For a lot of people stay-at-home/quarantine has been a great time to get in more gaming, and I've certainly reconnected with old friends in new ways. But gaming online with the people who I used to sit around a table with every week was not working for me, and I know them well enough to know that when this-all's passed, we can resume without hard feelings.
Your friends shouldn't be disappointed in you and you shouldn't feel unable to talk to them. I completely get your concern, but if they are truly your friends, they will understand.
My in-person group was similar in that the DM was very reluctant to try to DM online and just put the game on hold. I took up the mantle of Covid Online DM and have been running things. The first campaign was more of a 'getting used to online" to see if the DM would be more open to it once they understood it.
They opted not to because of discomfort with the whole system. Yes, I was disappointed not to continue our primary campaign, but I've been running games for the group online since.
Talk with your friends, maybe one of them is more comfortable with digital tools and can run a different game until you can get back in-person.
But your personal well being is above everyone else's. You need to just talk with them and let them know what's going on, how you're feeling, and what you'd like to do. You can bring up that someone else can run something online, but it's really not for you.
Instead of quitting cold turkey, give an advance notice of when you'll be putting the game on hiatus. This allows you to settle on a reasonable "pause" point, hopefully wrap up some plot lines, and allow the players to look for satisfying resolutions for their characters. This will likely go down with less friction and more understanding than an immediate rage-quit.
For other ideas, consider the episode of my channels's D&D talk show on Endings.
Say that you will finish up the current module or story line. Request that somebody else take over as DM for the next story line or module. You could mail the materials to the new DM. Then after that person finishes a story line, transfer to the next person. It would develop other people with DM skills and you could still enjoy playing with less prep.
When others become the "teacher" they learn more from the "students". You will have more people in your party increasing skills. Just think of how you would play since you have the DM's perspective. You would be more alert to traps and tricks, more prepared by asking questions and doing intel before the mission, and more efficient in the dungeon - skipping the monsters that just slow you down or cause damage without treasure or finding the goal. The new DM's will gain that perspective too.
