Year End Gaming Roundup

So if you asked, how could things get worse in 2020 - ha! well. I have a few posts on here, not completely abandoned. Still...

So - ignoring (as much as we can) the World Outside for a moment - how did this year go for gaming?

Well - you can't ignore the world entirely. The public games moved on line, but kept opn - more on that in a bit. We shut down playing at the house for a couple months, but started up again, and have proceeded intermittently. It has not been great, though; we play sometimes, but we have a hard time maintaining any momentum, and we end up talking about the games we aren't playing more than playing. We aren't playing other games all that much either, though we've made some progress there lately. It's been bad.

I could sum up things, like I have the last couple years, but the story is the same: Tomb of Annihilation - we managed a couple sessions in the summer, but that is all - we talk about it sometimes, but nothing has happened in ages. The Waterdeep and Jungle games are right where we left them, though both were sort of at good pausing places, two years ago. Sigh. We stopped the Saltmarsh home brew to play a city adventure - and have dropped both.

The home brew Waynesburg game went well - but I don't remember if that was late 2019 or the beginning of this year. It stopped, though it is there waiting. All fo these campaigns are there waiting - given the right combination of time and inspiration they could come back. Though sometimes having this many options is worse than only having one option.

The only home success this year was the Desert Campaign. The cleric owed a favor, so they headed off across the desert and hills to find out why the Hermitage fo St. Ignatius was not communicating any more. Off they went, fighting monsters and throwing boulders and gathering biuts of rumors until they arrived. A  village where everyone was paranoid; a missing baron, bandits and such; and something Bad at the old monastery. So they snuck in through the tunnels beneath the place, fighting various creatures, and getting into some big fights with drow int he cellars. Then that stalled out, a couple months ago. But it is there, and once it starts upwill flow pretty well. It is more combat oriented than I thought it was going to be - I thought there would be more intrigue leading up to some fine boss battles, but all the interruptions have pushed it to a more combat heavy game. That's the danger. But it works.

And? Outside of home - Princes of Apocalypse is still going, we are down to the last bunch of cults - we have shed a lot of the annoyances around that game, so things are all right. Though it is dragging - we are all starting to eye Rime fo the Ice Maiden with great anticipation.

A bunch fo us also got into a playing of Hoard of the Dragon Queen. I told you how that went.  The group then picked up playing Ghosts of Saltmarsh. One character has already had to be resurrected there. Only one! Rot grubs, this time.

So there you go. I suppose I could look on the bright side: we have two steady ongoing games, and a third that was going all right for much of the year, and should be again soon. Given the circumstances, that's not half bad.

It's been odd, though. The virus has kept us out of the game stores - I have not spent hundreds of dollars in minis and maps this year, and what I did spent, has been mostly for presents - a couple books given away, lots of minis, a map, and so on. That's good, though I miss having that stuff coming in all the time.  

I spent a lot of time reading and thinking about other games, especially Call of Cthulhu, which looks very interesting - but we have not gotten around to playing it. I don't know if we will - we are all more fantasy fans than horror, so the mythos isn't all that compelling. What I love are the skill systems and the settings - 20s and 30s - we are all fans of Hammett and Chandler, not to mention the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew - and I can add a lot of 20s/30s comic strips as well. Terry and the Pirates! Wash Tubbs! I love that stuff - I would love the play a game set in that era, which Call of Cthulhu is. We shall see.

And so: what are my goals for 2021? 

First - play. Keep playing the outside games, get our own games going. The last year or so I have run all the games at home - I hope the rest fo the gang gets in on that action. But playing regularly is the best comfoprt.

Second - I want to develop some things. Especially short, one off type adventurers, either simple scenarios for ongoing characters on pure one offs. We talk about this - I talk about it. I want to do it. We weretalking about doing it for Christmas - that's probably the way to do it. build them around specific scenes, environments, times, events. A Christmas game - a heist game - a ship board game - somethign contained. I did one a year or so ago - The Bard's Pants - that worked very well. Do more fo that.

Third - I want to work more with physical things. Pain my minis; build some terrain. We'll see. 

Finally - I should add that I have been working on World Anvil, here and there, in spurts usually - but I do it. Getting masses of Waynesburg information piled in there this week, when I should have been working on a Christmas one shot. Yeah, that's how it goes. But it is good. Keep that up.

And try to keep this up. We are notorious for sitting around the house talking about D&D - we have to work on getting that stuff into something like a published form. Even just a blog; or a lousy video, buncha middle aged nerds whining about lack of skill guidance in D&D 5E! I don't know. I will try, though I say that every year, and you can see how well I follow up on it.