Looking Forward to 2016

A little late but better now than never ...

Gaming-wise in general, my take on 2016 is "try to keep what I have going, improve it, and work in something new when I can."

When it comes to RPG's the main game is Pathfinder and I expect that to continue. We can do a lot better than the number of times we met in 2015 and that's the main goal. I have a good group, we have a pair of good campaigns - let's play them more!

Beyond that I would still like to do more Savage Worlds and lord knows I have enough stuff for it. Everyone loves it when we play it, but it never seems to gather quite enough momentum to take hold as a "main game". I'd say Deadlands is at the top of the list, with Slipstream as a possible dark horse candidate and various homebrew adaptations of things potentially in the mix as well. I love Necessary Evil but I'd like to spend more time at the "normal" level of Savage Worlds before going to Epic again with superpowered heroes or villains.

Superheroes will be in the mix somewhere, whether we continue with Marvel Heroic or continue with Mutants and Masterminds. Both are a lot of fun with even a small group of players and I've come up with campaign material that can be played out in short chapters that fit into a night's typical playing time for us. They make for good fill-in games when some of us have time but the whole Pathfinder party is not available.

Goal for the year: Run something in FATE, at least one session. I have some nifty books, some cool dice, and I like a lot of the concepts with the system.

Ever-optimistic hope for the year: At least two players say "Can we play some Star Wars/Star Trek" - there are usually one or two who might be up for it but not often at the same time. Given that word of a new Star Wars movie this last year and next this year and a new Trek movie this year completely failed to generate interest in an RPG or miniatures or boardgames I expect this will take a while. Regardless, I have systems. I have ideas. One of these days I will run a sustained campaign of one or even both but I suspect it will have to be a sudden development and not something planned months in advance. Or I will have to go online and play with people I do not actually know. Fingers crossed!

Miniatures-wise I expect this to be the year of the Eldar as Apprentice Red rediscovered his Necrons causing Blaster and I got serious about building and painting and playing our Eldar armies in December. More on that in another post. I expect 40K to dominate our miniatures time and I am fine with that - I like the current edition and we will be playing it for quite a while.

Beyond that I'd like to find time and money for Bolt Action, and I will probably dust off Epic at some point to work in another round of city-scale mayhem. As much as I like X-Wing and Attack Wing I'm not going to put much into them until the Apprentices show more interest.

Optional Victory Condition: Dropship Commander is close enough to Epic though that I might finally take the plunge sometime this year.

Boardgames and card games come and go with us - if it catches fire we play it a bunch for a month or two then it drops off for a while. The most fun is when the whole family gets interested but that's fairly rare. I don't have any big plans here but hopefully we will play some more of what we already have. A rule I've stumbled into the last few years in this area is to stop buying expansions for games we don't play - either sit tight or at most go buy a new game and see if it takes off instead.

Future Stuff

• Still no third-party license for D&D 5th edition ... maybe this year?
• Still no Freedom City for M&M 3rd Edition ... surely this year?
• My interest in the upcoming Pathfinder Adventure paths is dwindling. I'll probably stay with it through the "evil" campaign just out of curiosity but it's going to have to have more than just that to really interest me. The one after that is the Cthulu AP and I'm probably out at that point until something I like shows up in the coming attractions file. 
• Rifts for Savage Worlds is still probably at the top of my radar. Hopefully it's really good.
• There's a Sentinels of the Multiverse RPG supposed to be Kickstarting sometime in 2016 -  I'm always interested in a Superhero RPG and there are some good people involved in this one so I'll be keeping a hopeful eye on it.