That Is No Country For Old Men

Right. So at the moment the campaign I have been working on for the past seven years is winding down. I'm not sure if I should feel relieved or sad. Honestly at this point the game is pretty much the PCs doing a victory lap around the campaign world, getting high fives and ol' fashions from good looking groupies. They're at a power level where climbing the highest mountain and punching God isn't too far out of reach.

I like Pathfinder; one might even claim I have a mild crush on Pathfinder as a system. I write its name on my algebra book in little hearts and my heart beats a little faster when it calls and says yo to me in the hallways. But let me tell you, there have been some hiccups. I've never been all that hot when it comes to high level games, and in a system as complex as Pathfinder that problem is simply aggravated, and I'm seeing that big time now.

I've always considered myself a player's DM. I like to challenge my players in different ways and give them that feeling of, "oh man. I'm hurting Sweet Chuck style" without actually wracking up a kill count. I want my players to feel involved with their characters and have them mean something. I want them to become involved in my campaign world through their characters. It's a kind of social contract I establish. You put the time and effort into making your character into something other then a set of numbers and I won't arbitrarily slaughter them. But I'm starting to wonder at my ability to challenge the players without doing overwhelming nonsense to them.

I'd like to believe I've been doing a decent enough job at it; I know Rick and Chris were making Shemp noises last night after fighting my Siviishian Slayers. But I still feel there is a fair amount of work I need to do on my part to master the system and learn proper encounter staging. I don't know if my next game is going to go from level 1-20. This campaign has taken way too long as it is and the idea of wrapping it up the next one the year I turn 40 makes me sad in a just watched a panda in a top hat get clubbed to death by Nazis sort of way.

So as an aside I will try to maintain this blog for the oh, let's say two to three people that will bother to read it.