I keep track of my RPG and miniature purchases as I go each year and I have done this for more than a decade. I was updating my list for this year and it occurred to me I ought to go look at what I was buying and what I was playing and compare it to now plus mix in some hindsight.
What I was playing:
- The year started off with some Marvel Heroic
- Most of it was spent running my Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous campaign into the ground
- Lots of talk about the new Savage Worlds Rifts books that were getting Kickstarted back then. Lots of Savage Worlds talk in general from cards to using it with different settings.
- Managed to work in some Deadlands and some d6 Star Wars
- Later we managed to work in some FFG Star Wars
- Holiday time meant it was time for the Time of Crisis in Mutants & Masterminds!
It's funny that it took me ten years to finally finish Time of Crisis - at least it was with a couple of those same players! Otherwise this year it's been playing DCC and then hopefully in a bit it will be back to some Savage Worlds. I do have some consistency I guess even a decade later.
Miniatures-wise it was Eldar ... so much Eldar. This was the year I built what is still the core of my Eldar army.
What I was picking up:
- Perhaps not surprisingly it was a lot of Savage Worlds stuff
- There was also quite a bit of Pathfinder
- A fair amount of d6 Star Wars
- A little FFG Star Wars - they were still putting out new material then
- Some Mutants & Masterminds books
- Some DCC books and dice
- A few 5th edition items
It is good to see that most of what I was adding was being driven by what I was playing or thinking about playing. This year was effectively the end of that Pathfinder campaign as it just ran out of gas after 3 + years. I officially ended it in January 0f 2017. Both Star Wars games and M&M and Deadlands remained intermittent occasional games for years.
For 2026 so far it's been a few DCC books, catching up on some 5.5 D&D books, and then weirdly picking up some old GURPS books. I don't know exactly what bit me there other than some long talks with Blaster about old school non-D&D grittier systems where I mentioned GURPS as a very different flavor of fantasy campaign compared to modern D&D. I then went to look for it on my shelf and at some point, maybe in a move, I lost half of my old GURPS books - I didn't even have an old 3rd edition core book anymore. So I went on a tear for a bit here recently filling in some of that stuff - you know Magic, The Grimoire, High Tech, Ultra Tech, Supers, a core book or two. They are not particularly pricey especially if you can find several of them in a lot and I wanted them back on the shelf.
Considering how much of what I am doing now is similar to (or the same damn thing) I was doing then I guess I can claim a "consistency" medal. Some might whisper "stuck in a rut"* but I prefer to think of it as being at a point in my life where I know what I like and I prefer to spend my time there. I still do a little exploring now and then. We try new games via one-shots or short limited campaigns, get a consensus on them, and then either put them aside or consider them for a bigger campaign down the road. I see people online struggling to find people and places to play - well, I have time, a place, and a group of friends that are interested so let's spend most of that time playing stuff we like. It makes sense to me, anyway.
* Considering the number of games I've run and played over the last few years it's a pretty wide rut.
An interesting idea for a post. It seems like what you're playing and what you're buying are largely the same, which is what one might expect I guess.
ReplyDeleteI've played a lot of things this past year that other people have purchased and I've run a mix of items I've picked up within the last year or two and games I've own forever. Some of what I've picked up has been free material (such as some of my Japanese games).
To compare this to 2016, hmm, that would be difficult. I feel like with very few exceptions I wasn't picking up anything too new. I was mostly running older games but I will have to go back and verify that with my old blog posts.
DeleteThanks BA - I suppose I ought to amend this with what I have been picking up and playing this year to complete the concept - let me do that!
ReplyDeleteThe tracking started off as more of a budget thing - how much am I actually spending on this stuff every year? - but over time it's turned into more of a "what am I spending it on?" ongoing research project and then it hit that next stage of "... and how much are you playing these things that you picked up?"
ReplyDeleteI don't mind spending some money on things I actually use so it's gratifying to go back and make those connections. Hopefully it means my instincts are mostly right : )