Bad. Session.

I want to talk about my flair tonight1: I had a bad session. I consider myself a journeyman Game Master, one with a lot left to learn about our craft. I have run two longish campaigns so far, and many one shots in a few different dungeon crawly RPGs. My first effort was a 24 session online 5e campaign that crashed and burned when a couple players got bored--totally fair, I was beyond stressed at work and thought DMing required writing half a novel for backstory. My second long 5e campaign, in its 25th month now and 68th session, has gone much better (a backstory of <2 pages)But tonight? Tonight it was boring. All the excitement and tension wasn't there, the beats were off. There were good moments--a teleport trap, the death of a ghost shark, a good trick by an enemy. But the dungeon I ran was very linear in design2, in a way I missed, so searching became, for half an hour, "figure out what the DM is thinking".3 They were never scared, only frustrated when their superhero powers didn't…