Super Saturday: Time of Crisis Session 1

 

Well it wasn't exactly a first session of Time of Crisis specifically but the campaign is underway!

Starting off a superhero campaign means a little more character examination and discussion - for me anyway - than say, a D&D type game. So we spent a little time pre-game discussing characters but I didn't get names, concepts, or Hero Lab files for most of them until the night before the game so we did a lot of it after everyone arrived. This ended up being a lot of "Ok what are you thinking here?" type discussions about each character. I have 6 players so 6 characters so ... 

U.S. Patriot conferring with allies

• Paladin Steve is playing "U.S. Patriot", a Superman-with-a-touch-of-Captain-America character whose origin is tied in with Centurion, Freedom City's Superman analogue. This character has shown up in almost every roll-your-own superhero game I've run for the last 20 years and is also his City of Heroes main so I have a pretty good idea of who he is and what he does as does the player. In many ways this is the easiest of the bunch because I know this guy. This character has been around in-game for about two years so is somewhat known as a hero. His big coming out party was The Battle on the Bay Bridge.
• Shootist Will is playing "Red Phoenix", a fire guy with the expected flying/blasting/damage aura/make fire stuff type powers ala Human Torch. It's a little funny because the first super Will made in one of my games was around 20 years ago for a Necessary Evil campaign and was a fire guy ... who died in the first session (the prison breakout) after using all of his bennies for offense. This is a lesson that is revisited every time we start a new Savage Worlds game. Hopefully this fire blaster lives a little longer. He has a secret identity, is independently wealthy, and is new in town.
• Variable Dave is playing "White Out", a frost/ice guy that's somewhere between Frozone and older Bobby Drake. He has the expected ice slide/create/control/blast/armor type powers. He also has a rivalry with Phoenix that is already developing on their first meeting. This is a new character for Dave so it will be fun to see how he shapes up and he is also new in-game and not really known to anyone.
• Battletech Terry is playing  "Onryo" an anime-style Battlesuit with strength, armor, life support, flight, blasting, and a bunch of sensory and comm systems. His character looks a lot like the battlesuit archetype with a few tweaks mechanics-wise but he's going for a more anime-style theme and look. There is the obligatory complicated backstory though she is effectively a new hero in-game and the character is originally from Japan.
• Blaster is playing "Heavy Metal", a traditional Iron Man style battlesuit with protection/flight/strength but his two main weapons are a set of retractable speakers that can blast non-lethal sonic attacks over a wide area and then a set of missile launchers for more lethal situations. He is the son of a rock star who went into engineering and ended up working on a battlesuit project. This was the same project Onryo was working on but it ended up going badly at one point and she was blamed for a disaster that was really caused by a rival company. They ended up making different suits from the same base technologies but neither knows that the other one did that ... which could get interesting later. 
• Grognard Mike is playing "Providence", a witch/wizard/mystic type character is tied in to a lot of modern mythology. She knows some basic magic but has discovered a knack for tapping in to talismans for specific powers. She has flight and protection abilities and then a whole bunch of attacks and senses and a nullify and invisibility and  ... you get the picture. Mike knows the system better than any other player and ends to make characters that don't fit into an easy categorization and has done exactly that here. I can already tell this is going to be boundary-pushing line-stepping challenge of the game. Most of her powers are built into an array where each talisman is one line item in the array and while the cap is about 25 points based on what's there now you can do a ton with a wide set of 25 point powers that you pay 1 point each to have available. I haven't had a character start with quite this much of an array before  - there are about ten powers in it now - and I can see it becoming a problem but I'm going to trust in the system and see how it goes for a while before I declare it one.

Those are my six heroes for this campaign. Let's see if everyone makes it ...

There was a lot of rust to shake off. We've played M&M 3E many times over the years but it has been years since we last played so we all needed a refresher. So we started with a normal spring day in Freedom City ... when a call goes out over police radio about a disturbance at the First National Bank of Freedom City. I had my players start discussing what they would be doing on a typical work day and how they would hear about problems in the city. Soon enough six figures are flying (or ice-sliding) towards the trouble spot.

Inside, a huge humanoid figure is bellowing orders as a pair of costumed types and some normal-looking people with guns herd workers and customers towards the back. "I AM OGRE! I AM STRONGEST! NOW PUT MONEY IN BAGS!" 

 Red Phoenix is first on the scene and he flies through the doors and blasts one of the caped types while scanning the rest of the scene. The caped guy with the star on his chest recovers from the shot and blasts back with his own fiery attack which does little to nothing to phoenix. Soon Patriot zooms in and goes straight for Ogre. White Out doubles up with Phoenix to take out the other fire guy (Starburst). Heavy Metal moves in behind the teller counter and blasts some of the thugs with his sonic attack. Onryo starts zapping thugs while Providence teleports into the bank and begins herding hostages through her portal to safety. 

The fight continues for a bit with the main result being a ton of property damage to the bank as fire and ice blasts, gunshots, and blaster bolts shoot all over the place. The civilians are mostly safe, the thugs are mostly down, and there are various levels of bruises/stuns/dazes to the heroes and villains when everything goes black and our heroes feel very very strange ... which is where we will pick up next week! 

GM Notes

I always like to start off a supers campaign with a bank robbery. It's a classic timeless scenario with a limited scope, a limited physical space, good starting hero dilemmas with the potential for hostage-taking, negotiations, police involvement, confusion between heroes and villains, and a chance for major property damage. You can mix in some normal thugs to let the PC's show off alongside some villains to give them a challenge. Every city has banks so it's not some exotic location and everyone has been inside one so players have some idea what they look like and the general features, layout, and vibe. I've found it to be a great intro session for a game like this.

This particular crew is a nod to the old Champions intro with Ogre robbing a bank. In that example, Starburst and Crusader are new heroes trying to stop him. For this I just made them bad guys and tweaked the energy projector and crime fighter archetypes and went with that. Most of my players had no idea of the connection but it made me happy so it worked for me.

I had 3 villains, 6 thugs, 6 heroes, and a placeholder for hostages so there were a lot of actors in this one. I was using HeroLab to manage the combat and it was just as useful as I remembered - once I started remembering how to use it. You can put the initiative order and some basic stats out into a separate window which helps the players see who is going when. It also tracks conditions so I can see that Starburst is Dazed and has two bruises and I can also hove over "Dazed" to see what it means in game terms. With the amount of powers and conditions flying around in this kind of game I find it useful to have this kind of thing on-hand. I do not normally run my games with a laptop at the table but for a few games I do and this is one of them and the availability and utility of this tool is why.

I also tried a new trick with drawing the scene this time. I am a dyed in the wool battlemat and markers guy but I picked up a projector while we were off for December and I spent some time figuring out how to make it work - and then spent more time pre-game on Saturday fine-tuning it with Blaster. The result was that I used that map graphic up top for our bank map for this session. I had it projecting on to a battlemat so we could draw in AoE's and things  - Phoenix is already walling people off with fire walls - but that's the only drawing we did. I think a modern supers game is a great place to try this out as I don't have to worry about light sources and fog of war too much - I can just show the whole map and it's not a big deal. This was a very basic attempt showing a static image of a common well-known location and it was a little clunky making it all work but I will be playing around with my options as we go forward with the campaign and hopefully getting much smoother with it.

This isn't mine but you get the idea of what you could do

So anyway there was a big learning curve this session, partly self-inflicted, but we had a good time. Everyone seems happy with their character and with each other so it's a good way to start the year and the campaign. I have a ton of homework to do  - like reading a bunch of rulebooks. I felt so slow! I need to work on both Hero Lab and the projector options now that I have tried them in the heat of battle. I also need to think through the table setup more now that I know all the things we will be using. Hell, I don't even have a real name for this campaign yet so I'll be overthinking that too. It's a busy week.

Campaign kickoff accomplished and more to come! Session 2 is tonight!

40K Friday: The Praetorian Adventure Begins

  

Last week I was a little tired of building Tyranids and I was sitting there in my hobby room and I just decided there was no reason not to go ahead and start building my new Imperial Guard army. Sure, there's some splitting of effort n that case but I've been hitting the 'nids pretty hard and I don't want to burn out on them. Plus I want to make sure that my concept is going to work and that it looks good so I needed to see some examples built. So I did ...

Those are modern/current guard infantry models with head swaps to the Wargames Atlantic "Bulldogs" pith helmet heads.  I built a full squad to see how it would all fit together.

Now imagine them with red jackets, white helmets ... like those guys up above.

I was worried that the heads might not look right but after putting a squad together I think they look just fine - the helmets stick up more so they do have a different profile but that's kind of the point, right? I love that they come with backpacks right there in the kit now for everyone but the sergeant as that does add something to the look. I think these new troopers fit the Praetorian look even better than the older plastic Cadians. 

And yes, this is not a new thing for 40K. People have been making custom guard regiments by mixing and matching parts for years, especially head swaps. Hell those original versions up above are just head-swapped Mordian Iron Guard, albeit done at the pre-casting stage. These guys have had a surge of interest in recent years with many options coming out for pith-helmeted-Victorian-looking space troopers. That boxed set and the huge "Battle of Big Toof River" thing back in the late 90's really stuck with some of us. The Wargames Atlantic ones are the ones I like most right now as each sprue comes with multiple head options so I can use the piths for this army and with the rest of this kit I can build some very Mordian looking troopers as well! Circle of life right? 

So my thinking here is a mostly infantry & artillery based gunline army for the core of the force. I have some sentinels and some rough riders to add in for some mobility. I also have 3 ogryn squads I'm leaning towards putting into some custom chimeras just to mix things up as well - and yes, I do have ogre-sized pith helmets for them. I want to get more built before I really start locking in to a certain force org but that's the pencil sketch concept for now.

There will also be tanks...

I have a Leman Russ company + set aside to team up with this army going with the desert-ish paint scheme. I like my red-coated infantry but I like my tanks too and the guard have a lot of cool ones. I'm actually ahead on getting those done - mostly because they're easier to get to this stage. I like the idea of being able to go mostly infantry with some tank support or mostly tanks with some infantry support - it should be fun. 

One thing I had to accept early on is that this army will be very much not a Warhammer store-friendly force. Lots of 3rd party bits, kitbashes, and 3D printed vehicles and bits as well. Now this is not really something I care about a great deal as I don't play in their stores or go to their tournaments but it was a little bit of a weird feeling as it already will have more custom work than even my orks at this stage. I have a lot of old stuff in my orks but most of it is GW - or at least it's made from GW parts. This army is just straight up whatever fits the very specific look I want. 

For now I'm thinking slow and steady progress. 10th edition guard (and presumably later) can deploy as a combined unit of two 10-man squads plus a 5-man command squad plus a leader officer of some type so I'm going to try and get the rest of one of those done this month alongside more tyranids and see how quickly I can get some kind of playable force. I'm not worried about points at all yet, just getting the parts into shape.

More to come!

Online Research for the M&M Campaign

 

So I've been poking around online looking for discussions, inspiration, useful items or documents for M&M this week and it is ... weirdly sparse in my opinion. The Facebook group has been slow for years, Reddit sees a post or two a day typically. RPG.net has some talk but not much in-depth about M&M specifically. The current version of the Atomic Think Tank is just strange - like Discord in some ways - mostly the negative ones. The old Think Tank was amazing for years - campaign ideas, rules discussions and debates, character write-ups ... the new one is just not in the same league. Echoes of the Multiverse is a non-official forum that is the closest thing remaining to the old ATT forums. 

Seeing a lot less than I was hoping for I went to the next level of resources. 

There is some limited activity on YouTube - these two channels have at least been recently active: Weeknight Hero and Power Level 10 but there is a lot of focus on explaining the mechanics more than anything which is cool but not exactly what I'm looking for. Still happy to see some activity though. 

There are a few blogs out there but not one focusing heavily on M&M and many of those not been touched in years. Many of the results are more news-type blogs - again not really what I'm looking for. Heck, this blog is coming up pretty regularly in the first page or two of results which is a little disappointing as I haven' really focused much on the game myself recently.   

Podcasts are not super common either. There were a bunch of actual-plays done in the first 5-10 years or so of 3E but it has really tapered off since then. Maybe it's not new enough anymore, I don't know. 

I also went over to Obsidian Portal to see what kinds of M&M campaigns were happening there and the answer is "not many" - there were 4 that were updated in the last month, 6 in the last year. There are a whole bunch listed, going back most of 20 years, but a high percentage of them never made it to ten sessions, fizzling out in the single digits. This has me wondering if "single digits" is where the majority of RPG campaigns end, not just superheroes and not just on OP, but games that people start in general. I may have a separate post on that coming up now but here, for this particular inquiry, I found some inspiration in some interesting campaign ideas but not much else. 

So what's going on here? Why is it so thin? Is there just not that much to talk about when a game has been out for 15+ years? Rules debates, maybe so, but how about campaigns? Surely people are out there running some games? Where is that chatter? I know it's not D&D but sheesh, it looks really light. Especially heading into a new edition this year!

Well, I'm spinning up the machine here, such as it is. I'll be posting about it a fair amount, both how the campaign goes and how the system and game line are working for us as well. I already know I like the game but it's been a while since we really put it to the test and I am looking forward to doing that. 

Also, if anyone has a good resource that I have missed, please feel free to share it!

Super Saturday: Kicking off the Freedom City campaign with Time of Crisis

 

Tonight I am starting off our first extended superhero run in years. I should have 6 players which means we should be resilient enough attendance-wise that we will run every week, barring GM incapacitation (or GM wife demands). It's been a long time coming, so I thought I would note down how I settled on these options.

The System:

I like M&M 3E. Yes it's crunchy. Yes it has a lot of its own systemic quirks. Also yes it plays pretty fast once your characters are built and yes it is one of the most ridiculously well-supported games out there. The combat plays out a lot like Savage Worlds in my opinion as it's not about an extended hit point beat down but about overcoming a toughness threshold and inflicting conditions and it can seem like it's going to be a long fight and then suddenly it's over! It's sometimes hard for people to grasp coming over from a d20/D&D type game when so much of the rest of the system looks familiar but it's worth that learning curve! It should feel different and it does. This is a feature, not a bug.

I did consider different systems - I'm looking at this as a longer commitment than just the one adventure run. I've been reading back through a lot of Champions books and I still love that game. I thought about doing Necessary Evil - using the aforementioned Savage Worlds. Every time I look at the Sentinels of the Multiverse RPG I get ideas on how that could go. But considering how low-mileage M&M is with us, and for this group of players in particular, and with a new edition coming, it just felt right to make this year a re-introduction to M&M and a farewell tour to 3rd Edition and then potentially after a year of campaigning, a transition to 4th edition.

No, not that crisis!

The Adventure:

As I've mentioned before I really don't like most published superhero adventures But Time of Crisis is one that I really do. It hits on so many comic book tropes in one run that it just feels right and as it's mostly set outside of your normal campaign framework it's easy to drop in to mark say, an edition change, or a major campaign change, or ... to start one off and not worry about continuity with what has gone before. While I feel most supers campaigns benefit from having adventures tied to your particular PC's - probably a throwback to the days of Hunteds and DNPCs in Champions - this one  just that good and there is plenty of room to improvise along the way to add in things like that. 

The potential for changing up the campaign in the aftermath of this event is not going to be super useful here since I am using it to start things off but I still like it as a clean slate opportunity. Some of the PC's have been in my various prior M&M efforts over the years and this will let us clean up our own "continuity" into one ongoing timeline. It may not matter to some of my players but it helps me keep things straight in my head. The action during the crisis event is also a good excuse for character tweaks as everyone figures out how the game works again and might want to make some adjustments as we go. 

The structure also lends itself nicely to an ongoing campaign. There are 5 major chapters: An intro in the existing campaign, 3 different parallel earths, and then a big finale back on your own world. Hopefully everyone can make it for the beginning and the climax but they can come and go in between and it shouldn't break anything. I have some ideas for another parallel world if I need it - i.e. if they screw up badly - but they are pretty smart so hopefully we won't need it.

The Setting:

I have liked Freedom City since it came out as a setting for 1st Edition M&M. I think it is the definitive super city setting for an RPG campaign. I have used it in the past going back to second edition before this blog ever started. 

The downside of using something like this is that there is a lot of material in that book - more with every edition - and it can look overwhelming. There are elements of it that I don't or don't find particularly compelling for the kind of campaign that I want to run despite my appreciation for it overall. There are a lot of arguments to be made for using your own homebrew super city and it's not like I don't have some of those. Not using my own place feels like a missed opportunity in some ways.

The thing to keep in mind with a work like this is that overkill is kind of the point! The trick is to pick out the pieces that you do really like and put those front and center and don't worry too much about the rest. If I'm not planning to run a school-based campaign then I don't need tons of detail on Claremont Academy but if someone wants to use that kind of thing in their background, well, I have names and places and dates for them to work with. 

The upside is that there a lot of cool, excellent elements of the city that I do like and want to use and I should, finally, be able to do that. For having played around with it over so many years we've never really had a long steady run with it to let us get our hands dirty with the place. If someone does want to tie in to some team or organization or even a particular hero I have a ready reference for them and as random as players can be I think it's handy to have details ready on the fly.

The support factor is also important. There is an Atlas of Earth Prime that describes the rest of the world - handy if needed. There is a Cosmic book for space threats/allies/adventure. The neat thing is that I can decide how much of the stuff in those is true and again focus on the parts I think are cool and ignore the parts I don't. Plus it's the main M&M setting - I need to get in there and punch it up a bit and see how much I really like it in the heat of actual play.

So there is the thinking behind the decisions for this one. I'm still working out some of what I want to focus on but since it will be a few sessions before we are actually in Freedom City I have time to think. Some of it will be driven by my players and what they want to do and I wont have a good feel for the group direction until after this first session at least. I don't have a name for it yet but I will try to do session summaries as we go this time instead of letting them stack up. 

I do love this pre-game planning and speculation so I am pretty happy right now and looking forward to starting it up.

40K Friday: Early January

 

Off to a good start here for the new year and the main focus is still the 'Nids! As I mentioned in my end of the year post I'm trying to get some of the boxed armies into playable shape and this one is the focus for now. That's 12 warriors, a pair of carnifexes, and some gargoyles all ready for the spray. With these built I have around 90 more tyranids to build between the various gaunts and Von Ryan's leapers and such. That might sound high but building them in groups of 10 at a couple of groups per night a few times a week and it actually looks achievable. Certainly by the end of the month, hopefully sooner. 

Now I'm not fooling myself - it will take me a long time to get these all painted and finished. That said though it's a tremendous improvement when they are all built and basecoated and playable, even if not completely "completed". 

Finishing the build on these will open up the question of what to build next, even as I work on painting the bugs. Right now I'm leaning towards Guard, even if it's just a squad, to make sure I can make them the way I want and that I'm not missing anything, or whether I need to do more than headswaps to make them convincingly Praetorian, and whether the various decals I am procuring will fit correctly. Answering those questions will just turn it into a matter of production and then - eventually -  painting.

I do have lingering side-quests of possibly finishing the necrons and tuning up the Orks but I'm trying to stay focused until I get the nid work completed to the next stage.

Anyway, more to come ...

NYE 2025 - Looking Forward to 2026

 

It's been a bit since I did one of these so I don't have one from 2024 to look back on but things are a little calmer this year and this kind of post helps me collect my thoughts for the future, so here goes ...

I ran 32 sessions of Tales of the Valiant in 2025, wrapping up in mid-November. My plan in 2026 is to run zero. Not because it's bad or we don't like it but because that particular campaign is done for now and it's time to do something else. 

The main focus for '26 is going to be Mutants and Masterminds. I plan to start with the oft-started Time of Crisis adventure and finally finish it this time, this year. It should only take 5-6 session at the most. Then I plan to roll into an ongoing supers campaign with it and run that as far as my players are interested. The main theme there will be "comic book type stuff that I like and that I think my players will enjoy" which is all I really need right now. 

I haven't done a real ongoing superhero game with this group of players so it's time. I've been reading a lot of Champions stuff lately as far as rulebooks go and it's tempting to use that for a campaign but they are more familiar with M&M and with a new edition on the way I want to get some good time in with it anyway. There are a lot of other good supers RPGs out now - with even more on the way - but I want some crunch and some easy supporting material and M&M has both. I would like to run it in my own city setting but today I am leaning towards using Freedom City and just tweaking and focusing on the arts I like - I'm not set in stone just yet on this.

I considered a few others - I really thought about  Necessary Evil as another campaign that has a beginning/middle/end but I'm going to hold off on that for now and stay with M&M.

I'm sure a few other games will work their way in at some point during the year as one-shots or tryouts with a starter set but this will be the main game. I may end up running DCC (a zero level funnel) this weekend as not everyone may be available for the M&M kickoff and I'd like them to be. Just have to see how that goes. 

I'm sure I will have no need of this ...

Beyond the new campaign I have also acquired a projector and so we will start trying out that whole projecting-the-map-onto-the-table thing. If I'm going to have a laptop at the table anyway for HeroLab, why not try some other new approaches? More on this as it develops.

That's also a lead-in to another potential change in how I run things as Blaster may be relocating for Career Opportunities this year which -if he does-  will be a good reason to run an online game for the first time ever. I figures I might as well start getting familiar with some digital map tools so we will go projector for now and then see about the rest later. 

So while 2025 was pretty stable I'm not sure 2026 will be but we will roll with it one way or another

40K Friday: End of the Year Edition for 2025

 

Well I did get in some games this year so that was nice. Not a lot ... probably not enough to justify the amount of money, space, and time it takes up ... but it's not going to go away any time soon. I managed to paint some more miniatures too. The Blood Angels, Orks, and World Eaters all got some things actually finished and a whole bunch more got base coated, if not finished, but there is plenty of work to be done ...

I also kept my "mini-moratorium" going to the end - no new miniatures acquired. I bought some parts to help finish some up, I bought some bases (though I mostly 3D print those now), and I bought plenty of paint and glue but no new boxes of plastic joy. I won't keep that at 100% for next year but I will try to limit it to "armies I am working on right now" and not "armies I might want to theoretically work on someday" or even "completely new armies I could start without making any real progress". 

The state of the forces report for this year:

Marines - for the various marine armies progress was decent but slow. Lots of building, lots of base coating, lots of "almost finished" but not enough "actually finished." There are plenty of dreadnaughts and vehicles in this state too, not just infantry. The focus is still Crimson Fists and Blood Angels as far as finishing new units, with the Black Templars still sitting in a pile of sprues and boxes. I agonized over my Dark Angels once again, possibly pulling them back from OPR-land to make a Ravenwing/Deathwing force. Still not sure if I'm going to commit to that. The other chapters remain unchanged.

Imperial Guard - I finally settled in on a rough structure for my long-developing Praetorian Guard army. I had been picking up options for a new guard force all through 2024 but I finally went through and worked out which of the new stuff fit and what could be used as what and which units could be reallocated from the main guard force and have something I like - now I just need to paint it, including 100+ guard infantry! And this is of course separate from the generic guard army - generic gray-painted Cadian tank force -  I have built up over the last ten years which has a lot of painted vehicles ... but in the wrong scheme for Praetorians ... which means I built up a second tank force to go with the new infantry force because I like tanks ... 

I'll have more about this in future posts but you would think I would be better at this by now and not build redundant army types ... but I am not. The one bright spot is that the tank force is largely built and base coated so it is actually usable in a game. It is on my mind that this should be a top-3 priority for next year but we will see.

Other Imperials - I made no changes to the Grey Knights, Custodes, or Imperial Knights this year. I didn't even get the codexes for some of these. 

Chaos - I mainly played and worked on the World Eaters this year and I have a few more things to work on for them. It's a nicely focused army and I don't really feel like I need to add much of anything to it. The rest:

• For the Iron Warriors I base coated some Venomcrawlers and a Defiler (just in time for a new defiler, according to rumors - of course). There are things I could work on here but I have a solid army already done. It's really just adding seasoning here until I decide to start rolling in the new, larger marines. With rumors of them getting a primarch model in 40K they might get some attention in the near future.
• For the Death Guard I painted some units - plague marines, bloat drones, helbrutes, etc. but I didn't finish anything but one bloat drone so I have a lot of things in that familiar middle ground of "kinda painted but not finished" that I really need to start avoiding. I had to rediscover my plague marine paint scheme and then re-locate the paints I used for it which I did manage to do! Knocking out a few more units would at least give me a core force that was finished. 
• Daemons - I didn't really do much with these this year.  I just sorted through them, gave each of the 4 powers their own shelf so I can easier see what I have and what I don't. The only real change I've considered here is moving some of the old ones back to square baes to use in Old World but I'm not taking that plunge yet.
• Knights - I have a lot of finished knights with a lot of unfinished magnetized gun options. This was true at the end of 2024 and it remains true at the end of 2025. Maybe 2026 will change that.

Xenos

• The Tyranids got a lot of attention this year as I realized I had plenty of stuff - I just needed to get them built. I had been paralyzed by trying to nail down a color scheme. It's a big deal to me when starting a force from scratch as I don't want to have another Guard-type situation where I have either a split force or have to repaint some painted models. So I had to get that settled to be able to move past the "building" stage and I did finally get there earlier this year. so now I have built and base coated:
• The Swarmlord
• 2xHive Tyrants
• 3xFlying Hive Tyrants
• 3xTyrannofexes with the big gun + 1 with the big flamer
• 1xTervigon
• 1xHaruspex
• 10xGargoyles
• 30xGenestealers (I like genestealers)
• 3xBroodlords
  
  So that's plenty for doing a "big bugs" army right now (+ genestealers) but I still have almost all of the Leviathan sets to get to this state and that means a lot of little bugs to build and spray to get everything to this level. This is my current project - my warriors are on the workbench now - so I hope to have it all "playable" in the very near future, ideally in January.

• Necrons - I did very little with this force in 2025 and I'm kicking myself because this is probably my best bang for the buck option time-wise here. They don't take long to paint, I have just about everything I could need for the army and the only things that are not built and sprayed are one old monolith and the Kill Team sprue which I'm not sure what I want to do with yet. I really should get these finished up so I can take them off of the to-do list completely. 
• Eldar - My Eldar did get used in a game earlier this year by one of my new players and I do like them still but with around 8000 points painted and another 2000+ floating around the house I don't feel a lot of urgency to work on them. My old metal dark reapers work just as well as the new plastic dark reapers so I don't really feel a need to replace or update them. The one area I want to work on is the jetbike contingent, which, while not being very on-theme for Iyanden, is still a very Eldar thing and with Blaster out of the house I'm not stepping on his toes by building a bike force. With the wraith units and aspect units largely handled this is the one area that's thin for my army and I picked up a bunch of them in late 2024 that are still sitting there a year later, including some Shining Spears I'd like to inflict on someone else. We will see how quick I get to them.
  
  Honorable Mention: Harlequins - they did get folded back into the Eldar book this edition, but I have a bunch of old metal ones from the RT days and I could add a few skimmers and bikes to that to have an interesting side force with these guys. Something to think about. 

• Dark Eldar - I've had some form of dark eldar kicking around since the 3rd edition starter box but I've never really prioritized them as an army either to build or to play. When they were redone for 5th I started picking up a unit here and a unit there every year and I've played them a few times but they've always been "extra" - now it's 10+ years later and those units are starting to be replaced and I really should have done more with these guys. Looking at the ridiculous amount of units I have for an army I rarely play and has always been kind of third string I am almost embarrassed. I do like the lore and the style - it might be time for a concentrated "get them all built and basecoated" program here like I did with the necrons and am working on with the 'Nids. It would be a little bit down the road but it would certainly be doable. 
• Tau - I decided last year to make a Tau army. I picked up a bunch of stuff including a lot of 3D printed battlesuits and vehicles just to have something different. Since then I have done zero with it - the entire force is still on sprue or in boxes or bags on a shelf in the closet waiting to be brought to life. It's dumb - don't do it this way kids.

• Orks - ah one of my favorite armies and supposedly one of the poster armies for 11th edition coming next summer! I have a -lot- of orks, and quite a few of them are painted - but so many are not! Or at least not finished! But so many are on the verge of being finished! Just finishing up a unit here and then another there, just going one unit at a time, would add so much to the finished pile. It's not even really the boyz at this point as so many of them are in good shape - it's more the bikes and buggies and 'nauts and vehicles in general. These are definitely a priority for this year. 

Almost forgot - terrain! I finally got the 4 Imperial Bastions and the Landing Pad to built and basecoated status which I feel pretty good about. Now on to the ruins!

So for 40K, after writing this up, I'd say my Top 3 for 2026 are Tyranids, Orks, and Imperial Guard. get those to a minimum "built and basecoated" standard and then see what targets of opportunity I can get to "finished". Necrons are probably a top target for that and then Dark Eldar are probably #4 for the B&B effort. 

Another Weird Little Thing After Playing These Games for Decades

 

I'm reading some reviews of an RPG and someone says something like "I've been playing RPGs for over 15 years so I know a good game when I see it" and all I can think is "15 years? My kids have been playing longer than that!"

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Most-Anticipated RPG of 2026

 

EN World is doing their annual most-anticipated poll right now and I figured I would post some thoughts about some of the entries. Many of them I have no real opinion on but there are a few worth mentioning. It's a long list so let's just go alphabetically ...

• 7th Sea 3rd Edition - I always wanted to like this game but I've bounced off of it hard every time I've tried it. I owned 1st edition for a while but it's one of the few RPG's I've sold off after realizing it was just never going to work for me and my crew. I know 2E had a disastrous crowdfunding situation that hurt it badly from the start - maybe this one will set things right. I think my biggest problem is that the setting is super close to history, but pushes itself just far enough away to make it weird for a history buff (that would be me) but doesn't add enough fantastic elements to make it feel truly different. Something closer to, say, "Warhammer Pirates" for a setting would grab my attention, or strongly historical pirates, like Pirates of the Spanish Main for Savage Worlds, is viable. Right no I probably would just use Savage Worlds for something like this. I wish them luck on it though and I'll keep my eyes on it. This is easily the most I have ever written on 7th Sea on this blog so I have to watch it now.
• Apocalypse World Burned Over or "3rd Edition" - I have been interested in this game since I first heard about it and I have played -briefly- some other PBtA games but I'm curious to see what the originators of the system do with it now. It's definitely one of the most influential systems of the past 20 years so I want to check it out. I backed the Kickstarter- one of my few in 2025 - so we will see how it goes.
• Dark Conspiracy - I really liked the 90's version of this game, especially once they went with a d20 over the original d10 approach - but I'm not sure I really liked Mongoose's multi-era approach so this is another wait and see for me. Could be a lot of fun with an updated approach using new/old Traveller mechanics, could just be an excuse to dust off the original version.
• Diablo - Is there really that much demand out there for a tabletop Diablo RPG? Aren't there a dozen other systems out there that could do this without a licensing fee? 
• Discworld - love my Pratchett books but I've never felt the need to run it as an RPG. I suspect most of these will be shelf-dwellers for Discworld fans but hey, if someone can pull it off more power to them. I just don't see how one could capture the energy of the books short of having Robin Williams GM your game and, well, that's not happening anytime soon. 
• Dungeon Dwellers - yeah this is that one from the Kickstarter I backed in 2023. I have the PDFs. No I'm not particularly "looking forward to it" at this point.
• Heroes of Might & Magic RPG - I love the early versions of the computer game but I never really felt it was all that compelling of a setting on its own, especially for a tabletop RPG. There were very take-able ideas in them - monsters, etc.- but so much of it came from D&D that I don't know what it adds as a standalone RPG. Maybe if it emphasizes building/running/defending a kingdom as its main differentiator it could stand out but short of that ... I don't know. 
• Horus Heresy RPG - I'm a huge fan of 40K but I don't know what they're going to do with a HH RPG game line. The era certainly has potential but I'd say it needs to be designed as a war story from the very beginning and that could be tricky. I'll watch it but I'm probably not a day 1 guy here.
• Indominant - this is a superhero RPG that might be below a lot of peoples radar but it does look interesting.  I do tend to pick these up as I am a sucker for a new superhero game. They do seem to think they are doing something really new and different but ... we will see. 
• Invincible Superhero Roleplaying - well I like the show.  I've not read the comic to avoid spoilers for the show. There's really nothing in the show that would make me want to run an extended RPG campaign in the setting as it all seems to fit in pretty easily with any superhero system. I'm also not sure Free League's system is one I would have picked for a supers game but I should probably play around with it more to get a better feel for it. The weird thing here is that in interviews the people working on it keep referencing TSR's Marvel Super Heroes. Now I love my MSH but a lot has happened with superhero RPGs in the last 40 years so I wonder if that's really their primary reference point? Anyway it could be interesting so I'll be watching it.
• Justice League Unlimited  - yes, three superhero RPGs in a row! This is an odd one as there is not a ton out there about it yet and I suspect a lot of that is because it's being developed by a Brazilian company. I'm not sure it's even going to be translated to English or sold in the U.S. but I hope it does come here at some point. The other oddity here is that despite the name it's not based on the animation - it's tied to some kind of crisis event in the DCU and then the game picks up after that. I want to see where it goes but I don't read Portuguese so I'm going to have to rely on others to keep up with this one.
• Oath Hammer might be an interesting take on the Fantasy RPG using dice pools and it also sounds fairly Warhammer-ish so it could be fun but it's another fantasy RPG when I am feeling overladed with fantasy RPGs so I'm not going to make this one a priority.
• OSE Updated and OSRIC 3E - It's weird that these things start out wanting to be a reorganization or re-presentation of an older D&D rulebook but they just cannot resist the temptation to start modifying said rules. I don't get it but it keeps happening - Labyrinth Lord just came back from years of silence and is doing the same damn thing too. Not my cup of tea at this point and I have my originals if I want to go retro.
• Pioneer - It's Expanse-level Traveller, early tech, single solar system. I'm sure someone could make a really good game with this ... but it won't be me. I'm curious about how it will do though.
• Storypath Ultra - well I did the Kickstarter on this one in September 2024 because I like the modern Trinity system and figured I should keep up with a revised version. Not sure I still feel that way but one of these days it will show up and I'll take a look at it.
• WFRP 5th Edition - I played a lot of 1st, own almost all of 2nd, skipped 3rd, and held off on 4th as I just wasn't feeling it, but I have brushed up against this RPG multiple times in the last few years so I am interested in this one. I will probably end up with it and with The Old World in spite of the likelihood being that only one of them will get played but that happens sometimes. Actively watching this one.

One thing that struck me going through this list is how many of them are crowdfunded - it looks like most of them. Given my recent experiences with Kickstarters and Backerkits and the like that does not thrill me. I know it's just how a lot of this works now but it's still disheartening in some ways. There will be a lot more "wait and see" here for this kind of thing.

The other thing I realized is that no one nominated Mutants and Masterminds 4th edition! No one! Not even me! I'm on this site pretty regularly and anyone can nominate but it just never occurred to me. Maybe because I already had the playtest document? Not sure but that's a huge miss for a lot of us as this is my most-interested-and-anticipated RPG release for 2026! 

Anyway there is my take on the list! Here is last year's top ten list if you want to compare.

Wrapping up the Year

 

Note - I will get back to posting the rest of the Temple campaign soon - it takes a while to sort those out and edit them and with a week off for the holidays I wasn't going to burn all of that time doing it. At one point I had a plan to get it all posted up by the end of the year but that will probably shift to "End of January" now. 

2025 was a good year here. I wrapped up a great campaign, worked in some other game time here and there, got some mini's painted along the way, read some good books, and watched some decent shows. What more can you ask for? I also spent real time with the wife, the kids, and the grandkids, along with most of my friends.  

Most of my gaming hobby time was spent on the ToEE in ToV campaign which was a lot of fun all the way through. There is always another game though, so I'm happy to be prepping for the next thing. More on that later. I think the only other game I ran this year was a Cyberpunk Red try-out game and that's unusual for me - I usually manage to work in multiple one-shots or some short side treks into something but this year was all about completing the temple so it was pretty focused. I need to think about that when planning the new year's objectives.

I will end the year having read about 60 books this year, about the same as last year, but only ten of them were RPG rulebooks which is low for me and roughly half of what I did in '24. Maybe it matters less when you have a set campaign going the whole year. 

Over the course of the year various Kickstarters came in so I added Adventurer-Conqueror-King 2E, Dolmenwood, and 13th Age 2E to the "need-to-read" shelf - which is a  pretty huge pile of D&D-ish fantasy RPG stuff, probably more than I needed to have coming in all at once. I do pick up smaller games on DTRPG pretty regularly and I did get Lancer, though I have yet to read it. I should probably talk about those more here but my preference has always been that I'd rather talk about a game after I have run it, at least for a session, as herding some players through character creation and then through an introductory scenario of some kind will tell you a thousand times more about a game than just reading it. Sometimes that takes a while though so maybe I should at least write something up about the read through and then refer back to it when I do run the thing. Sounds like a good policy for '26!

There were other RPG acquisitions - more for the 40K RPG, more Marvel, I'm catching up on Pathfinder 2E rulebooks, and I should probably fill in the rest of the 2024 D&D 5.5 books though my enthusiasm for it is at an all-time low. Not RPGs in general - just D&D. I liked Tales of the Valliant's take on an updated 5E so I'm not really feeling the need for another version of it which is why I haven't felt the need to dive into the other alternate takes on "updated 5th". If I run anything fantasy next year I'd say the odds are it will be 13th Age's new edition or the aforementioned PF2E, or possibly The Old World RPG. Odds are better though that I won't be running anything fantasy, at least as the main campaign. More about that later.

So so-long to 2025! I'll have some thoughts about the year in miniatures here tomorrow and then a look at plans for the year ahead as well.