Time to call it a day

Some personal stuff happened this week that made me realize that I don't want to be a GM any more.  For some thirty years or so it has been something I both enjoyed and hated.  I liked world building and leading players on adventures, and at the same time I could come to outright hate some of the people I called friends because they drove me batshit insane.  It was my love of storytelling that outweighed my frustration with my players, which is why I would come back to it.  And it is why I was able to successfully run my Vindicators PBEM for twelve years.

Twelve years.  That's quite an accomplishment, I think.  And a large part of it was due to the players I managed to recruit, great guys who gave me good reason to keep the ball rolling.  But, well, these past few months just felt like I was lurching from one crisis to another in an attempt to keep the game afloat.  Players quitting, others giving me trouble.  The game felt sort of like a television series that had lasted one season too long.  It was the Alias of PBEMs.

So after I had experienced some frustration with a couple of my players I came to realize I was just not having fun any more.  And this blog was not fun for me to write any more, either.  Granted, I felt as if I was running out of things to talk about but I figured after a few weeks something would come to mind. I was enjoying writing that series of super villain articles and it was going to lead up to me talking about this guy:

Scorpius is one of my favorite villains, due in large part to him having a wonderful story arc.  This was a guy who started out as Farscape's big bad, introduced late in season one.  And as the series progressed he became the heroes' reluctant ally because as bad as he was, the Scarrons were actually worse.  That was one of the great things about Farscape; there was no Federation like Star Trek.  Often it felt like you were stuck in a world where your only choices were Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany or Stalinist Soviet Union.

But every time I sat down to write the Scorpius article I got, I don't know, bored.  And I felt at least I had to refresh my memory regarding the Farscape series and I could not finish season four.  It's not a very good season, in my opinion.  There are filler episodes, or the guys are doing things we've already seen them do before.  And the writers' attempts to keep John and Aeryn apart just feel forced.  I know there is an awesome final story arc but wading through mediocrity is wearing.

So between me not wanting to be a GM and me not knowing what to write here any more, I am shutting down GM's Revenge.  Looking back over the three years I've been writing this...

Jesus Christ.  Three years?  That long?  Wow.  Anyway, I enjoyed writing this and I hope that, somehow, some time, somewhere, I may have helped a GM come up with an idea or two.  For those of you who followed the blog, thanks!

Tom