Hello world. I have been idle here for a long time - I am going to try to change that, but I promise myself that every year, so we shall have to wait and see. Lewt us look back at 2023 and forward to 2024 and games, games games games!
This has been an eventful year in the wider gaming world. Hasbro/WOTC have dominated the news, almost all for the worst. They started the year with that OGL Debacle - got smacked around hard, so backed off. Everybody won, right? Anyway, they did not stop with that. They held a "creator summit" in the spring and pissed off everyone they did not invite and then pissed off the people they did invite. Nothing much has come of that since. They sent Pinkertons after someone who accidentally received some magic cards. They published AI art in at least one book. They laid off hundreds of people across the company, both from the unprofitable Hasbro parts and the money making WOTC parts. They alienated a lot of people. There were better moments - the D&D Movie came out, made enough money to let anyone read anything they wanted into the results, but generally seemed to please the fans. Then Baldur's Gate 3 came out, was a smash success - though that was not WOTC, directly. But they will take it, I imagine. Meanwhile, they have a new version coming out - which isn't really a new version - I don't know. I don't know - that started all right, but got less interesting with every release, and after the OGL crap, I stopped caring. Does anyone care anymore? I don't see people talking about it all that much - though that may have more to do with YouTube's algorithms than whatever people are talking about. But it does not seem there is a lot of excitement for this thing.
Other things, however - maybe. Matt Colville's MCDM company has a game coming sometime, which is raking in the dough at its crowd funding site. Kobold Press has a game coming, Tales of the Valiant, which made money at Kickstarter and might show up sometime. The Critical Role people have a game coming - Daggerheart - a 2d12 game! They put another game out this year, Candela Obscura, a kind of Victorian to WWI horror game, that was not received with open arms. Paizo has been active, making up their own version of an open gaming license, then revising Pathfinder to get rid of all traces of the OGL. Can any of these actually knock D&D down a peg? None fo them will probably be able to do as much harm to WITC as WOTC can. Time will tell. But people do seem willing to try other things.
That can serve as our transition! MY year in gaming! What did I play?
The same two D&D campaigns from last year - Icewind Dale and Call of the Netherdeep. The first continues to hit its biweekly schedule, the latter continues to start and stop maddeningly. The first has occasionally become unbearable this year, though I grin and bear it; the latter is a boring campaign, but an excellent table. That is all the D&D I have touched this year, unless you could making up Tales of the Valiant characters.
At home, we have managed to get in quite a bit of Call of Cthulhu. A good run on an Egyptian tomb raider inspired game. A few sessions (mostly a haunted house) in our Ghosts of Bayport campaign. And a one shot from Nameless Horrors - which was itself a blast. The party outdid itself, setting fire to the town hall, a scientists house, a church, two cars and a couple houses near the cars, while somehow surviving (at one point, one character was in a coma, two others had 1 hp left, and they were all still trying to cross town to escape, and could not roll a stealth check to - literally - save their lives.)
We also managed to get in a couple Traveller sessions - character creations, about half of the High and Dry scenario. Not as much as we would have wanted, but we got it in.
Finally, I got to play the Alien RPG - and then got it under the Christmas tree. So more of that coming. That is a great game, I have to say - probably ideal for one shots like I played - but very cool.
And we played around with the Marvel RPG, with Tales of the Valiant and Basic Role Playing, though none of those were full sessions. Still - that's a nice haul of games.
All right. 2024 is here. I think I will wrap this up while I still have things I want to say - maybe I wil come back to say them later! And I think I am going to make some resolutions, foolish though that might be. Still - here you go.
1) Play five different RPGs. I got 4 this year - D&D, Cthulhu, Traveller and Alien; I wiull surely play D&D and Cthulhu this year; Traveller is mostly a matter of getting a scenario together; I will definitely run Alien as soon as I can. One more: what will it be? Most likely Basic Role Playing - though that strikes me as most useful as a supplement for Pulp Cthulhu, which is my preferred game. Still - I have options: I picked up a bunch: Rivers of London, Pendragon starter set, Vaesen, Righteous Blood, Rithless Blades - I have Paranoia, Blades in the Dark, Monster of the Week, Cyberpunk Red sitting there, waiting. I think I can hit this mark.
2) Play a total of five new games - thought his can be any game, and I'd be freer with what counts as "playing." Last year I hit Alien, the Marvel game, Tales of the Valiant, BRP - plus Terraforming Mars, Mysterium - that's 6 I can think of. I think I can do that this year - just making up characters in a couple of the games on the shelf, maybe buying a couple new board games - should be easy!
3) And finally - post here on this damned blog! I say this almost every year and don't do it - the last time I hit a post a month was 2015 (ouch.) The last time I almost hit it was 2018 - thanks to 5 posts in January about an upcoming campaign. Ouch. Still - I am optimistic - foolishly? We'll see. Some of this comes down to playing those other games,a nd writing about those experiences - so - put it down, and see where we get to. I have another post in my head at this very moment! will I post it this month? We shall see! Good night and have a happy new year!
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