All Good Things...

Graduation is only about a month and a half out, and most of us are headed out into Real Life shortly thereafter.  This imminent "end of things as they have been" weighs on our gaming; there's no solid, reliable game running presently, and nobody wants to start anything new, so it's all one-offs.  Folks're also experimenting with new systems.  Personally, these sort of leave me cold; I used to read new systems and get very enthused, but now my reaction is mostly indifferent.  I think it's not that I'm unwilling to put effort into learning new rules, so much as that I could be spending that effort improving and mastering other parts of a "known good" game.  Likewise, one-shots (or few-shots) tend to be pretty railroady, very combat-focused, and generally lacking in player investment.  Part of this might be that we don't practice running one-shots enough, but overall I am less a fan of the short form than the long-form campaign.  But the games I seek, the long-term stable campaigns with rules that don't change over time (including addition of supplements) just don't make much sense to start or join at the moment.

Part of it too is that I'm just...  tired.  The people I game with are good friends, but we all have our flaws as gamers, and I can't help but see the same dynamics and issues over and over again.  I'm probably still a little bitter about the ACKS game falling apart, too.  As happens every couple years to me, it's time for new people, not because these ones are bad, but because I have the wanderlust.

It would be neat to run a game with these sort of themes, of "clear and imminent doom", "explosion of short-term thinking / hedonism", and "fatigued decadence," tapping into the general mood of the group.  The fall of the Eldar, Melnibone, the waning days of Byzantium or Rome, and cyberpunk USA circa 2020 all sound promising.  But instead I think we're probably just going to hang out and play board or wargames (speaking of which, I'm still on the hunt for a good mech / tank wargame that runs on hexes, with the low playing complexity of Wardogs and the low unit construction complexity of basic BattleTech.  Might have to roll my own...).