Happy new year - a couple weeks into the year, but that's all right. As I have done the last couple years, here's a kind of state of the games post to get things rolling. Hopefully not the last post of the year - but I say that every year. So - 2024:
Start with what I played. The two D&D campaigns I was in last year went all this year a well - Icewind Dale and Call of the Netherdeep. The latter, at least, wrapped up in the end - Icewind Dale is stil on, and doesn't look like it will ever end. Though to be fair - one character is dying of a Slaad bite, one has a cursed crown and in comatose, another is brand new (after the previous character went over the to Frostmaiden, and failed to save vs petrification, and the player got tired of playing an NPC) and the other two are both cursed and impatient and as likely to blow it all up as not. So there could be an end. The Netherdeep campaign did end though - that one - I found the campaign itself very underwhelming. Lots of things to gripe about, including spending the whole thing in an overt metaphor. On the other hand, it was a very good group, playing interesting characters and it built to a nice conclusion. There's a lot of good in there. But I still won't miss it - though I do miss the characters. It was a cool party. I was playing a tabaxi bladesinger - it was pretty cool.
That group is now returning to our previous Saltmarsh campaign, with a couple new characters, and the 2024 rules - on Talespire, also new. It could have some teething troubles, but again - cool characters, and a good group. It should be fun - though it has been a hard group to schedule regularly.
That is about all the D&D we've played - a few episodes with the 2024 rules, including one of the scenarios in Keys From the Golden Vault, played with 2024 rules. The rules are appealing - I don't know how they will work out in action. We will find out when we go into the Sahuagin lair in Saltmarsh. The heist scenario might not have been the best test of the new rules - most of the game, you could have played with any system, we barely had to roll at all. It definitely felt more like Call of Cthulhu than D&D. There was a bit of a fight at the end, but again, any system would have worked. That is probably a point in favor of the scenario - it's well done, and works no matter what - but didn't really give us much to do with the 2024 rules.
Other than D&D - we did get some Cthulhu in, maybe not as much as some years. Genius Loci from Doors into Darkness, a fantastic one shot. Then a couple somewhat loose Pulp adventures - I ran something in the South Seas, somewhat inspired by Tales of the Gold Monkey - complete with a forced seaplane landing in a storm, and a fight with pirates. That yielded more classic moments per game session than you could imagine. A tommy gun doing 57 points of damage to a goon; 2 of 3 PCs having to use their miraculous escape pulp ability to survive; someone rolling a crit success to wing walk in a tempest to repair the engine; and - a crit fail for the ages. A character - with only 1 or 2 hit points left - beset by a couple of those pirates, decided to throw a stick of dynamite out of the plane into their boat. He didn't need much - a good throw roll would take them out easily; a bad one was only going to do some collateral damage to the plane or the other characters. Instead, he rolled a 00. So - obviously he dropped it. Blew himself up, the plane, the boat, the pirates - total bloodbath! And a story likely to be retold through the ages. We also played a home brew thing in the Amazon, with more planes, pre-war jeep equivalents driving off cliffs, another miraculous escape (on the only character to get hit in the fight), zombies, Nazis and a dirigible. Good stuff. All of it has stalled out a bit, but Cthulhu is, at this point, pretty much the go to game - we'll be back to it. Gaslight looks like a ton of fun - we'll get there.
At the end of the year, we managed to play a bunch of Traveller - specifically, BT-SHT 365, which Seth Skorkowsky reviewed some years back. That's been fun too; we're still in the middle of it. It's a $2.00 scenario, and it shows some time - there's a lot of work necessary to make it make any sense - but it also features some really great pulp settings and situations. It's been a lot of fun - and yielded another classic crit fail. (Same player, by the way!) This time, the characters were raiding an Oghman Raider camp - they had mostly gotten themselves into position to finish the job. An NPC in a Toyota Hilux (surely, they must still exist and run 5000 years in the future) had run down a couple of the villains; now the PC got the idea of running down another one with his grav bike. Snake eyes! He and his passenger were flung across the landscape, only surviving due to some nice armor. Yeah. Good stuff.
Finally, some playing around. We ran a couple fights in Cyberpunk - we played around with Tales of the Valiant - I wish we'd gotten to more, especially Alien or Blade Runner - still, not too bad. I also got to play a number of new board games - Boss Monster, Reincarnate, Cat Ladies of Maple Street, as well as Terraforming Mars and Wingspan, from earlier int he year. All the usual suspects of course from Boggle and Racko to Catan and Ticket to Ride to Code Names and Hearts.
This year? I intend to finish up BT-SHT 365; I am not sure after that - we might go back to some of the open Cthulhu games, or play a one shot or two. We might try some other games - or even D&D if anyone commits to running it. Eventually I want to run something in Cthulhu by Gaslight - I may love the 20s and 30s as a setting more than anything else on earth - but the 1890s is going to run a close second. The inspirations - Sherlock Holmes! HG Wells! Robert Louis Stevenson! Dracula! Allen Quartermain! Steampunk! it is a rich vein and I look forward to getting to play in it.
Like last year - I hope I can fit in 5 TTRPGs (hit 4 this year - D&D, Traveller, Cthulhu and Cyberpunk - though 2 versions of D&D); 5 new games of any kind; and 10 games of any kind. Did all right last year; same principals - play the faves, and try out some new games. Should work out.
And try to blog more often. Not hard. given how little I write here. But it's a worthy aspiration and one of these years I do it.
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