The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy. There’s been work, which moved (briefly) from its regular parttime status where I get to spend Monday at home, to full-time affairs which interacted somewhat badly with my “game until I drop” weekends.

Urk. The weekends have been horrors of endurance. Roleplaying Friday night, boardgaming Saturday afternoon, Roleplaying Saturday evening, Roleplaying Sunday afternoon and evening. It wouldn’t have been as bad if I hadn’t had the Sunday evening session, or if I wasn’t meant to *run* it. But I ended up running the Serenity RPG campaign, and so every second weekend has been absurdly busy.

This stage of absurd busyness is soon to end, though. In a fortnight’s time, we’ll be saying goodbye to the Star Wars campaign Martin’s been running for the past year, as well as the Serenity campaign. When I took over Serenity, I wrote out an arc for the campaign so it would be over in 13 sessions. In two weeks, we’ll have the last session. Whether it will properly end the campaign is another matter, but I’ve done my best to put the pieces on the chessboard. Now to knock over the chessboard, I guess.

It’s coincidental they’re both ending on the same weekend. Dawn of Defiance, the Star Wars campaign, has been fun, although way, way too combat-heavy for my liking. I’ve been playing a noble, who is far outgunned by everyone else in the party. Oh, for some good 4e-style balance in the class! Leaders got done pretty effectively in D&D 4e, but Saga, for all its advances, still lags behind in some areas. Still, I have Miles, my Noble 11/Officer 9 leading the group into their last session. I think it’ll involve a lot of space combat, which will actually be better for my character (who can pilot spaceships) than Greg, whose Cat Jedi really can’t.

Even with the problems I have with the Star Wars Saga system, it remains a much, much better system than the abortion that is the Serenity RPG. The character generation system for Serenity is pretty good. Unfortunately, the resolution system is complete bunk. Sarah has noted how little I use it. We rolled more dice last session than we normally do, but it was really to give the players something to do with their hands – the resolutions were mostly in the hand of DM fiat and their excellent roleplaying. One thing the Serenity game has given me is a group of really, really good role-players.

After Serenity, Sarah will be starting up a Werewolf campaign. I’ve indicated to her I probably won’t be playing, pleading exhaustion. This is a pity, since I enjoy playing games with Sarah, and it’d be fun to have her GMing me again, but the Sunday evenings have proven too wearing and I need a break.

My two major D&D campaigns are about to go on hiatus as well. Nathaniel’s off to Thailand (or Canada, as he insists on calling it), and without him it’s pretty hard to run the games: he’s so important for the Greyhawk game, and a major part of the Sunday game. So instead, I’ll run something else on Friday, and probably let the Sunday game go for the time being. 

The something else looks like being Call of Cthulhu. I’ve never run CoC, despite having played it at conventions a few times. It’s going to be interesting to see how it goes. I don’t think there are that many rules to remember – let’s see if I can get the atmosphere right.