Looking back at 2012

Apocalypse Prediction FAIL!
Also, Shadowrun: where are my elves and dragons?

I've been enjoying time away from the keyboard during the holiday off-time but I'm trying to get back in the swing of things now. Let's start with something easy - the year-end wrapup!

2012 in Books

I read a lot of crap. I read less of it this year. That alone is an improvement. The 40k books I read were decent and I read far fewer D&D novels. Next year I plan to dig into the Horus Heresy books for 40K and the Dresden Files books because people keep telling me they're good. I also pretty much ignored new comics in 2012, though that is likely to change in 2013 as well.

The movie I had been waiting for since I was 6

2012 in Movies

For me I would say it was Avengers - Dark Knight Rises - Hobbit for the top. That's a pretty strong year in the "stuff I like" category and the fact that they all did really well makes it even better. We live in the golden age of superhero movies. Sure, we had Superman in the 70's - 80's and Batman in the 90's, but beginning in 2000 with the first X-Men movie we have had a series of amazing superhero movies, pretty much at least one every year, and the majority of them do not suck! They even seem to be getting better! Kids today have it so good ... how awesome would it be to be about 6-9 right now and have all of this going on?

Next year? It already looks ridiculous, from Man of Steel, Star Trek New 2, Iron Man 3 - heck, even Lone Ranger looks interesting. Also: Pacific Rim - wow! It's going to be another good year.

Not exactly the Avengers, but OK

2012 in TV 

Unlike my out-there movie tastes our big show of 2012 was Mad Men - all 5 seasons of it. Who knew a show about work and family could be so great? A close second was Walking Dead which has a more interesting/exotic premise but far less interesting characters. We covered all 3 seasons of this one this year too. Game of Thrones was good, True Blood was good, Boardwalk Empire was good. Most of these don;t have much crossover with my gaming tastes but Lady Blacksteel is constantly amazed/annoyed by my strong opinions on the actions of the Walking Dead crew - look, I've played Twilight 2000 and Gamma World for a long time, I KNOW when people are making bad decisions in a post-apocalyptic environment, and they make a lot of bad decisions on that show. 

For next year, well, we've just started watching Homeland during this break and we're liking it so far. More of that and more of the shows we really like.

Been a long time since I spent money on cards

2012 in Board & Card Games

We didn't hit a lot of new ground here - a few sessions of Munchkin, Memoir 44, Command and Colors, held over from last year. We did play more Battletech and the boys got pretty interested so I expect we will play more. Heroscape was a big player this year as the boys all like it and even though the game is out of production now they still somehow get expansion sets every Xmas. The other thing that made a strong finish was Magic - Apprentice Red has been interested for a few years now but he got into it this year and dragged Blaster with him. The opening of a new LGS near us and a shiny new drivers license meant that they could go play with buddies at a store whenever they wanted for the last couple of months and they have done exactly that. I'm sure we will see more MtG next year too.

Look! - More Expensive books for 40k!

2012 in Miniatures

I added some D&D mini's here and there (thanks Garage Sale Jeremy!) but it really centers around one game: Warhammer 40,000 6th edition. After letting it lie for a lot of 2011, the anticipation and the release of the new edition fired things back up for us and it's right up there with D&D as far as time spent planning, if not quite as much with time spent playing. Red and Blaster each started on a second army, having a fair amount of paint on their first armies, and Who started making noise about wanting his own army. We played enough to keep the interest up and I am planning to try a once-a-month in-house campaign for 2013 - more on that later.

MHR is easily my favorite new RPG of 2012

2012 in RPG's

I ran around 25 sessions of D&D 4E this year - not bad, though it was split between two groups. I ran about 5 sessions of ICONS. I ran a few sessions of Mutants and Masterminds, Star Wars Saga, new Marvel, a session or two of D&D Next,, and Savage Worlds, and a session of Warhammer FRP. Our move in August really killed things for a solid month plus, and ICONS really suffered there. With D&D I started up a new main campaign while continuing the Apprentice game we started in 2011.

My goal for 2013 is to have less single-session gaming and try to have a short arc/dungeon planned out for any new game we start up so that we can play a complete "run" even if we let it go after that. Even the typical starter adventures found in the backs of core rulebooks would suffice. I just need to plan it better. The outline is pretty much 1) D&D, 2) Supers, 3)Whatever else I can fit in