Take Frequent Sabbaticals

Bill Watterson is often referenced for taking frequent sabbaticals from Calvin and Hobbes. He’s cited for taking some long breaks during his cartooning years to rest and gather his creativity. Currently Apathy Games is on a one week hiatus from game development to unwind from an intense run of developing and it got me thinking about Sabbaticals.

I take sabbaticals from gaming. I love playing in games and running them but occasionally I need a break. I take a month or two off from gaming and come back ready to go at it again. For me it’s been quite a while since I took a sabbatical and since starting the blog gaming has been on my mind all day every day. While I’m passionate about my hobby and love talking about it I need to be careful not to burn myself out. Weariness is why we have multiple authors and only post four times a week (Savage Mondays writes itself, let’s be honest). Most weeks are split between Jeff and I, with the occasional post from Paul. Hillary will eventually break her vow of silence and pull herself away from her sketch pad long enough to dictate a post then disappear into the ether. We pass the podium around so none of us get weary. If you’re getting weary from GMing try a different game, pass the GM duties off to another person to run the game for a bit, or take a sabbatical. Games are supposed to be fun, right?

While I’ve been talking about endings and sabbaticals please rest assured that Apathy Games is not going anywhere. We’ll be running a guest post from Dave Martin from Tabletop Armory tomorrow but rest assured we’ll be back on Friday. We’ll have a fist of beer in one hand and dice in the other giving the one, two punch of apathetic goodness.

  • http://www.ApathyGames.com Jeff Carlsen

    An interesting note of Apathy history. The reason we tried Savage Worlds in the first place was because we were on a sabbatical from D&D, having just brought our 30 level epic campaign to a close after many years (this was a Third Edition game, so those 10 levels of epic play were some seriously out-there gaming).

    But I would say that our best sabbatical happened when I brought home Settlers of Catan. We still were able to get together and hang out, but playing board games let us do something new and exciting again. If you haven't played it, I recommend it.

  • http://www.ApathyGames.com Jeff Carlsen

    An interesting note of Apathy history. The reason we tried Savage Worlds in the first place was because we were on a sabbatical from D&D, having just brought our 30 level epic campaign to a close after many years (this was a Third Edition game, so those 10 levels of epic play were some seriously out-there gaming).

    But I would say that our best sabbatical happened when I brought home Settlers of Catan. We still were able to get together and hang out, but playing board games let us do something new and exciting again. If you haven't played it, I recommend it.