End of the Campaign Blues

Ramblings

Last night marked the end of this “season” of my Serenity RPG campaign. I have decidedly mixed feelings about the campaign in general and the end of it.

One the one hand, the PCs accomplished their goals and the Big Bad is dead, never to haunt them again (at least, not personally). The players seemed to enjoy it and there was a sense of closure, but with enough of an open end to allow us to return to these characters for a “season two”. On the other hand, as a GM, I feel that I wasn’t as well prepared as I could have been and that maybe it wasn’t as much of the “slam-bang” adventure that it should have been. I can be overly critical of myself, but it is nevertheless the truth. I let myself get overwhelmed more than I should have.

As far as the overall campaign, I think it was, for the most part, a success. Folks really got into their characters and seemed to enjoy playing their them. We learned a good, new game system that I think everyone liked. We got to play in a universe we all know and love. Everyone seemed to enjoy it enough that they didn’t want it to end and they want to come back to it sometime. So mission accomplished there. As a GM, I made a lot of mistakes along the way but I think folks were willing enough to roll with them. I actually managed to have a modern/futuristic campaign (i.e. not medieval fantasy) that didn’t bog down in minutiae nor did it turn into a “Monty Haul” campaign either (which had been my two experiences with running “space” campaigns before now).  So, overall, I think a highly successful campaign–despite my lack of GMing prowess.

But it needed to end. I’m ready to move on to another system for a while and let this one stew. Before this, I had a fantasy campaign last a decade in real time, which was awesome and very cool, but it risked burning me out as a GM. I started to feel a little trapped in that world and don’t want that to happen again. So, we stopped this one on a positive note, can come back to it when we’re all ready. I think it’s a good plan.