We’ve got I think the coolest GM ever. And really, to be perfectly accurate, I’d have to say my whole gaming group is probably the best ever, too. Can’t really have one without the other.

No pseudo-insightful post today. No ranting. No political, social or ideological position to champion. Just had a great day yesterday and I’m yammering about it. 

So, check it out. We’re playing Serenity RPG, which is set in the Firefly ‘verse (as in, Joss Whedon’s t.v. show “Firefly”, which you might know better from the movie “Serenity”). Essentially it’s a space western.

Now we’re coming to the tail end of the campaign and it’s looking like we’ll wrap it up next Saturday. All we had to do yesterday was fly our little spaceship back to the moon all the action originated on, set down, find out what the heck has been going on in our absence and prepare for the last session next week (in which we Big Damn Heroes put everything right and ride off/fly off into the sunset).

The thing that makes our GM the bestest (and our players too, I suppose I have to concede) is that we spent about a third of the entire gaming session finding a room for the night. Yeah, just finding a room in town to sleep for the night. And we had fun doing it. Absolutely had a blast!

Our first bit of trouble came when we tried to rent one room at one of two local hotels. They had more than one room available of course, but we wanted to horde all our cash. The whole motivation for our characters that had driven this entire campaign was saving up money to pay off…well, never you mind. We were trying to pay off something.

So we were dead set on getting one room, crashing and kicking off the last session of the campaign the next morning.

Then the hotel manager catches on that three guys and two gals were all trying to rent the same room for the night. Five minutes later he’s running us out of his place with a shotgun. Seriously, we tried to reason with the guy but when it came right down to a five-member mixed-gender party all sharing one hotel room…he just wasn’t having any of it.

Well, no problem. We’ll just head on over to the other hotel.

But, same problem. This was a rim moon (meaning one of those sparsely settled moons out on the rim of the star system) where folks don’t take kindly to that sort of behavior. Again, no dice. At least this time the manager refrained from actually running us off, even offering a discount on a second room just to get our business. So we took him up on the offer.

But the second room had only one bed. And the female characters, who’d become rather irritated with one another over the last couple of sessions, ended up fighting over who’d have the bed and who’d make themselves comfy on the rug. So the guys came over and broke it up before we (yeah, “we”, I was one of the girls tussling over who gets the bed) woke up the manager. It was pretty late after all.

So we decided at last that we’d just crash on the ship. We do have our own rooms there. Why we didn’t think of that from the beginning, I can’t say. I suppose we just got focused.

We head back to the ship but the guys decide they’ve had enough running around. It’s past midnight by now, you know. “Sheesh, we’ve already paid for the rooms!”, they say. Well, fine. We’re crashing on the ship.

Except the guys have the little electronic keys to the ship. It just so happens neither of us have one just then. So we hike back to the hotel. And we can’t get in. The manager has apparently woken up in the middle of the night and locked the place down because, well gee golly, there’s all this commotion outside. So since we already had our gear with us we figured, okay screw this. This is getting just stupid.

We yank out some warm clothes, bundle up our packs for a nice pillow and crash right there on the sidewalk outside the hotel. Done and done.

Except of course that the hotel manager was still up and around trying to see what was all that noise outside. And he finds the two girls apparently sleeping on the steps. Then he finds one of the boys has crashed in the second hotel room so he wouldn’t have to sleep on the rug in the first room (two beds per room, you see.)

We all get tossed out of the hotel. Don’t get our money back either. The manager isn’t having any part of men that make their lady-folk sleep out of doors so they can have a comfy bed. He ain’t hearing none of it neither. While he finds it all manner of noble that the women-folk are willing to take up for their fellers after being treated that way, he ain’t havin’ no part of it.

Now it’s around two or three in the morning. Late enough that it’s almost not worth worrying about anymore. Almost to the point where we might as well start a campfire, toast marshmallows and just wait for the sun to come up. But we’re stubborn. We’re gonna get a darned room in town tonight.

Again, we quickly forgot all about crashing for the rest of the night in our rooms on the ship!

We wake up a friend of ours in town (having made a bad name for ourselves at both hotels) and he puts us up for the night. No problem.

Except that guy’s thirteen year old daughter has an insane crush on the only unattached male member of our group. So she gets up in the middle of the night to go spy on him. And drops her lantern. Setting fire to the hallway.

We end up having to find a way out of the second story window (because the whole hallway outside is on fire before we realize it) without breaking our necks. Then, once outside, we find out the young girl is caught upstairs. So we have to find a way right back up there to rescue her. Again, without any mortal injuries.

Naturally, being Big Damn Heroes, we accomplish this. And find out in the meantime that it was she spying on the player character and dropping her lantern (distracted, I suppose?) that caused our friend’s house to burn to the ground at four in the morning.

So while we’re Big Damn Heroes, we’re not Especially Bright Heroes. We tell him about this.

The young lady denies it. (Denies sneaking about at night to spy on on grown men changing clothes and setting fire to the whole house? Who’d have thunk?) And her father believes her. Of course. Which means we must have caused the fire and are trying to divert blame to, of all people, a poor thirteen year old girl. What other explanation could there be for us telling such an awful lie?

Now bear in mind during all this that there is no Sheriff in town. Or rather there is but he’s off doing the thing we’re supposed to stop him from doing tomorrow (today?) And all of the folks in town are absolutely terrified of this guy. Even getting the hotel managers and the local friend to answer the door was difficult.

This whole commotion is what it takes to get a few people out of their barricaded homes and businesses and out into the street. To yell at us and tell us how awful we are. And how we’d all be charged with terrible crimes if the Sheriff weren’t a completely psycho.

At which point we remember what we came to town for in the first place, having figured out the Big Bad Guy (Gal, actually) was making her move in our absence. So now we find out there’s a psycho Sheriff to deal with as well.

We have a hard time getting any details about all this from the mob that’s come out to lynch us. But we manage it in the end. One of our characters is (thankfully!) the very diplomatic sort.

So now it’s sunup. And we’re very, very tired. Enough that our characters are all sporting two free Stun points of damage from fatigue (that’s not good) and a -1 Attribute step penalty (which is very not good). And today (next Saturday, really) is our showdown with the Big Bad Guy (Gal). And, apparently, the psycho Sheriff. And probably two or three other folks.

Our GM played us. Played us like a fiddle. Led us right down the road to a fatigue penalty. We’re such idiots.

We. Have. Rooms. On. Our. Ship.

Our own rooms. On our ship.

And here we are in the middle of the street at sunup, sporting fatigue penalties. Trying not to get lynched by townfolk who are already on edge from all the goings-on of the past week. And about to tango with the Big Damn Villains.

Man, I love my gaming group.

No, not being sarcastic. I really do love gaming with these folks. This is fun stuff!