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

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.

Top Ten Anticipated RPGs for 2025

 

EN World does this every year and I usually try to comment on them. I'm running a little late but I thought it was worth bringing up. The list and discussion is here.

10 - Starfinder 2E: Well I own a PDF of 1E but that's it and I've never run or played it so while I'm very aware of it I am not feeling a ton of anticipation. The straight up fantasy-in-space thing just has never really been my thing despite a love for Rifts and 40K and the occasional D&D/Gamma World crossover back when. I'm not sure why but I think a lot of it is the setting - expanding outward from their fantasy planet while leaving a big gap in recorded history as far as what happened to the place just does nothing for me. Maybe it's topo generic-feeling. So many other interesting settings out there that mix magic and tech - this one just never clicked for me.

9 - Alien Evolved: Another new edition of a game I haven't played.  We don't do a lot of horror here and if we did I'd probably lean more towards something like Mothership but I haven't done anything with that one either so ... no real anticipation here either.

8 -13th Age Second Edition: Well I did the Kickstarter for this one so yeah, I'm interested. Some genres just click with you and D&D-style fantasy will always be one of those for me. I liked 13th Age when it came out but I never ran it. I will make room to at least give it a tryout this time as I like what I see in the previews. It's just different enough to make it interesting. So yes, "anticipated" for sure.

7 - Coriolis The Great Dark: Well if you either haven't heard of it or weren't paying attention to it ... at all ... it's hard to say you were anticipating it. I've heard the name over the years and after perusing the Kickstarter page it looks interesting. I'm getting Expanse vibes from it and that's not a bad thing. I'm just not sure my players would choose it for "dark exploratory sci-fi game" over say 40K Wrath and Glory. It was not "anticipated" but I'll keep an eye on it.

6 - Dolmenwood: I did the Kickstarter here too so yes, it's definitely anticipated. It's another OSR thing but it has what looks to be an interesting setting and a lot of support material. I think it's a sandboxy campaign one could finish, to some degree, and not just another generic fantasy world. It's a big forest with specific inhabitants and an English folklore-y background and that approach and the art really pulled me in - all of the art on this post is from Dolmenwood.

5 - Discworld: I love the Discworld series of books and I've been reading them since the 80's but I've never felt compelled to make it an RPG setting. Even when the GURPS version came out I didn't really feel the need to get it, run it, or play it, and that is still true today. I don't think anyone could run it the way Pratchett wrote it and it's just not going to feel right in my opinion. Humor is a huge part of these books and running a comedy RPG that everyone at the table finds funny is damn near impossible in  my experience. I've been very aware of this new edition as a big time Kickstarter but I have no interest in it as a game.

4 - Draw Steel (the MCDM RPG): I became aware of this one only after the Kickstarter had run and I will say I am interested in seeing how it comes out as a lot of the descriptions of the rules look really interesting. For something that originated with D&D it looks like it's dumping or changing a lot of the core D&D concepts and I do wonder how that will go over with people who came in with 5E. I'd say it's "anticipated" here now.

3 - Daggerheart: Never heard of it, don't know anything about it. Looking at the web page doesn't tell me enough about how it works, what it aims to do, or how it's different from the endless supply of other fantasy RPGs to make me want to dig into it beyond that. So no, not anticipated.

2 - Cosmere: I am certainly aware of this one after the Kickstarter hype but I haven't read enough  Brandon Sanderson to care. I can't see much about the mechanics but it looks like it uses standard RPG dice. Yet another fantasy RPG ... I don't have any attachment to the books so I'm going to give this one a pass. Not anticipated here.

1 - Legend in the Mist: I know City of Mist has had gained some attention  - lord knows I see enough ads for it online - but I haven't played or run it, don't own it, and the modern urban fantasy thing is just not my genre. It looks fairly FATE-y or Apocalypse World-y and that's fine but this new version says it's a rustic fantasy using a similar system and ... just not my thing man. I would probably play it if I encountered someone excited about running it but this is not a game I'm going to drive with my players. So no, not anticipated here. 

Things not on this list that I am anticipating:

• d6 System Second Edition
• Ashes Without Number
• Deadlands: Abominable Northwest
• Savage Rifts: Europe

Among others. There are definitely games to look forward to this year and if tastes vary as to which ones well, hey, that's part of the fun of this hobby. 

Wrapping up 2023 and Looking Forward to the New Year

 

It was a good year. I read more books and played more games than I did the year before. The family is good and the apprentices are operating on their own. The animals are thriving and the house and yard are in good shape so a lot is going right here. 

One new wrinkle is that since the wife tracks her books read over the course of the year I started doing that too and hit 50-something for the year. I figure over 1/week is a pretty good baseline but now I have to see if I can go higher. painting mini's, running games, and computer time all cut into this effort of course so balance is the key.

Kind of obligatory here

I only played a few games of 40K this year, one of my lower-effort years in a very long time, but I did get a lot of painting done. Maybe I can get more playing time in this year. Much of this year's painting effort will be going into the Tyranids and then probably my Imperial Guard as we delve into the mysteries of Speedpaint 2.0 and airbrushes.

Blaster and I did manage to finish up our eternal ongoing tour of Command and Colors Ancients finished. I have now played every scenario in that initial set at least twice - once from each side. Now on to the next of 5 expansions ... we probably need to pick up the pace here if we are going to finish while I am still alive.

RPG's I ran this year:

• Star Wars (FFG)
• The new Marvel RPG
• The Sentinels of the Multiverse RPG
• ICONS 
• Warhammer Fantasy RPG (2nd Edition)
• Savage Worlds Deadlands - lots of this one. 

I didn't really play much as the GM-ing seems to be my normal role these days but maybe this year that will change up some.

Going into this year we have -no- commitments. with the main campaign completed we could go in any direction and that's a good feeling for the start of a new year. I have some ideas for some smaller games and for at least one big one but right now I'm sorting through them and figuring out what order top present them in and thinking through some details on how to make them work. More to come on those for sure. 

Other-games-wise we played some Battletech, King of Tokyo, and Scrabble - of all things! As it turns out the wife is a very good Scrabble player and I have lost more games of that this year than I can remember. A new goal for '24 is to beat her at least once now.

So - things are going well here, I feel good about 2023 and I am really looking forward to 2024. Happy new year!

Top Ten Anticipated RPGs for 2023

 

ENWorld's Most-Anticipated RPGs list is out and is a little more interesting to me than last year at least. Let me give them some individual comments:

10 - The Monty Python RPG - this seems incredibly pointless. If it came out in the 80's maybe it would be something but I get MP quotes in damn near every session I run. It permeates players ... at least players of a certain age. I just don't see the point of a medieval fantasy RPG dedicated to it. Maybe one about trying to run a show business troupe, heck even a medieval performing troupe, might be interesting but as-presented this just seems like stuff someone gets because it's a cool book, not because it's a game you're going to play.

9 - Old Gods of Appalachia - What is with Appalachian RPGs lately?" With this and that Savage Worlds take on it that is two more games on it than I can recall seeing before. I lived in Upper East Tennessee for a while and I don't get the attraction as an RPG setting really. I suppose this particular one from Monte Cook is sort of a hillbilly Cthulhu and if you're looking for that, well, here you go. 

8 - Warhammer 40K Imperium Maledictum - I mean they already have Wrath and Glory but this apparently is a game where you do not play Space Marines or Inquisitors but you play normal people in the 40K universe. OK. This should have a PC casualty level somewhere between Call of Cthulhu and a Dungeon Crawl Classics 0-level funnel but honestly I'd rather be playing a character with a gun ... or a chainsword. Apparently this is to W&G as WFRP is to Soulbound - the "gritty normal" game vs. the Big Heroic Action game. That's fine but "most anticipated"? I guess we will see. 

7 - The Walking Dead Universe RPG - Um, sure, OK. A licensed zombie apocalypse game after the show has dropped way off of the pop culture radar and I'm not sure if the comics are still going either. What's the draw here? There are many zombie apoc games out there already and  this one will likely die when the license inevitably expires. What's the attraction here? I watched the show for a few seasons and I don't think there's anything unique about it compared to pretty much any other zombie setting that would make for a more compelling game.  People do seem to like Free league's system so maybe that's the draw here. 

6 - Shadow of the Weird Wizard - this is an adaptation to a new, more family-friendly setting of Shadow of the Demon Lord. It's probably fine. The system is decent but we don't know much about the setting yet beyond some basic fantasy stuff. I suppose this is a new entry in the "if you want to play a D&D type game without actually playing D&D" family of RPGs. 

5 - Mothership - this has been around a while and won new game awards in 2019 but they ran a Kickstarter for a new version so I guess that makes it a new game again? I like the idea of "Aliens" for an adventure but I'm not sure how excited I would be for it as a campaign. Look at the body count for those movies ... are we rolling up a new character for each new adventure? Again the DCC 0-level character funnel comes to mind. What's the pitch: "well you managed to survive that horrific and violent encounter - how about another one?" What does character advancement look like? Getting a better artificial limb to replace the on the aliens gnawed off in the last adventure?  I'm sure there are people who will eat it up but it seems really limited in scope to me. Interesting, but limited. 

4 - Household - Yeah this one is pretty niche. It sounds like an interesting concept at first but then I think of how my players probably do not care about playing tiny faeries in an old house with an 1800s political structure and I'm out. That said I know there are people who will eat this up.

3 - 13th Age 2nd Edition - Ah, the next entry in the "if you want to play a D&D type game without actually playing D&D" family of RPGs. I thought the original had some interesting ideas but we've played exactly zero sessions of it in my GMing time. Ten years is certainly enough time between new editions so no issues there. I get this one being at #3.

2 - Dragonbane - another Free League entry and yet another entry in the "if you want to play a D&D type game without actually playing D&D" family of RPGs. I'm sure it's fine too as it has a pretty extensive history but I'm just not that big a fan of Free League's system and have no lack of D&D type RPGs so I'll be passing on this one. 

1 - Pendragon 6th Edition - yeah ... yeah, this one is completely worthy. It's an amazing game and while fantasy it is definitely not like D&D. I do question how much they would change from prior versions of Pendragon, but getting a new version in print is good. 

So there is this year's list. No must-haves on there for me but its more interesting than last year. Things I might pick up: Mothership, 13th Age 2E, Pendragon. The others I could be talked into playing by an enthusiastic GM - like most games, really - but right now are not jumping out at me. 

The New Year's Eve Post for 2022

 

Well the end of '22 finds me in a very different place then the end of '21 ... literally. Somewhere along the way I decided to see how much change I could pack into one year and the answer is "a whole lot".

• All of the Apprentices are now out on their own. It's a massive change for all of us but it's part of the deal and how things are supposed to go. 
• I changed jobs, leaving a place I had been for more than a decade for something new. It was time and it has certainly been worth it so far. 
• As that was developing I also ended up moving from a house I had been in for ten years to a new (old) house with more room more land and more interesting terrain. There was the whole looking part, the getting-ready-to-move part, then the actual-moving part, then the unpacking-after-the-move part and trying to get the new routine figured out. It's been challenging but so far so good. One of the reasons for the move was ...
• I made things official and permanent with The Relationship and getting back into the groove of "couple" rather than "individual" has been a big part of this year too. She's amazing and it's very cool to have a smart, capable, person right *there* as we go through life.

So, yeah, had a lot going on this year - mostly positive and mostly self-chosen (or self-inflicted) but still a lot. Next year should be a lot quieter and should involve a lot of building on what we did this year. 

Fred the Yard Panther on patrol

Looking back at this time last year I can safely say I was not planning all of this. I figured it was probably the last "everyone at home" holiday season but beyond that ... no. 

RPG-wise I mostly ran Deadlands. I ran one session of D&D as a sendoff to the game room at the old house and then one session of d6 Star Wars here after other plans fell through. I usually have a more diverse array of games over the course of a year but with everything else going on it just did not happen in 2022. 

In saying farewell to the old place I thought about the number of hours spent in that room with friends and family and it is eye-opening. If you figure two 4-hour sessions a week. 50 weeks a year for ten years (that's a rough guess between RPGs, miniatures, and boardgames)  it means I spent 4000 hours in that room around a table. That's probably on the light side and it doesn't count the time spent building and painting miniatures in an adjoining room which would add at least a couple thousand more hours on to that. It's one way I spend time both with friends and family and also in solo concentration attempting to accomplish various goals. It's a significant chunk of my time and that's probably why I spend time pondering things here. 

I also mentioned 40K last year and while I have yet to play a game in the new place I have started building and painting again. I clear-coated some of those Necrons earlier today and will do some more tomorrow. I also decided to dive back into Age of Sigmar as I unpacked things and I'll talk about that more here next year. 

As far as the next historical game, well, the rules for Victory at Sea arrived today and I'll start reading them a bit later and over the rest of the holiday weekend. No I did nothing really with Flames of War this year. or Kings of War, or Bolt Action, or Armada, but with the new place and a more regular schedule I have hopes of touching at least some of these next year.

Blaster and I did manage to play another round of C&C Ancients this year and we are just about to wrap up the first campaign of Rome vs. Carthage which we started, um, as described in this post. Yeah it's been awhile. To celebrate I picked up the Revolutionary War version of the game to go along with the other 5 or 6 expansions for the Ancient version. Hopefully we can finish it before he starts bringing me grandkids.

One other thing that did hold over from last year is Battletech - yes Battletech! We played multiple games earlier in the year at the old house and we have played multiple sessions at the new place as well. It's been fun dragging old friends into playing it with many comments along the lines of "I haven't played this in 20 years". I expect this will continue at its intermittent pace next year as well as several of them have now bought the current boxed set and started painting mini's. I'm still calling that a win.

So for now my gaming year wraps up with a session of d6 Star Wars that kicked off a campaign, the next-to-last scenario in the C&C Ancients book, and building & painting my Necrons, Chaos Warriors, and Fyreslayers with a pile of rulebooks and settings waiting to be read into the new year. Moving means going through your stuff and for me it reminded me about some things I had let go dormant and rekindled interest in some old options while inspiring some looks at some new ones.

It's been another good year. More to come.

Looking ahead for '22

 

It's a little strange -  I haven't done one of these new year type posts in a few years and I think my approach has shifted.  I don't feel any real urgency with the goals this year as far as must-do or must-have type things. I'm fairly happy with where a lot of things are right now and I'm guessing that has a lot to do with it. 

For example EN World has a Most-Anticipated RPG list every year and there are usually a few entries that have my attention but this year ... man there is nothing there that grabs me. Partly because of subjects, partly because of systems, and also because for some of them I can think of how I could run them in existing games without much trouble. D&D 5th is still rolling along as is PF2. Star Wars and Star Trek both have well-supported games. Superheroes are well-covered too. That new Marvel game scheduled for March is really the only thing on the horizon I am sort of excited about but even there it's very much a wait and see kind of feeling rather than thinking up a new campaign.

RPG-wise I expect to keep running Deadlands for the near future, hopefully to the conclusion of this particular campaign. I like the system and the setting, my players seem to as well, and for a published campaign it's pretty open and flexible. Pinnacle's plot point approach works pretty well for me. 

When that eventually wraps up we will have some decisions to make. I usually like to change things up and I've been talking up ToEE for 5th edition as our next game but you never know. I'd say Savage Rifts is a strong candidate as well. I'd still like to do at least a short run with some version of Star Wars but we will see. The ever-burning hope of an ongoing supers campaign is still around but I suspect some of these options will have to wait until I feel like I can run a second game alongside a main campaign. I've done it before but this past year or two has worked best with one campaign going that everyone can plan around. FOCUS! Do not split the player-party!

I haven't played an RPG in a while and that's something I miss. Paladin Steve's years-long Pathfinder  campaign ended in late 2019 and Variable Dave's 50 Fathoms campaign was blocked by quarantine in 2020. he eventually started running it online but I just do not like the online option and they eventually wrapped it up last summer. There has been talk of starting up something new but nothing has happened yet. Maybe this year will see a re-kindling.

Battletech was a surprise end of year option and we have one kiddo at least very much interested so that might become a thing this year. I'm not sure if it will stay a board/minis option or if it might erupt into the RPG side too but it would be fun after this long to actually spend some time with it. It's not like I really need to buy or build or paint anything for it so it's an easy option. 

On the miniatures front 40K will stay the big dog. First goal is to finish the Necrons, then the Blood Angels and then we will see. Maybe Eldar, maybe Chaos ... plus there is always power armor work to do too. Not sure I will do a new army this year.  The robots were a unique situation being in the starter sets and all. The Tyranids are the only other army I don't have that really tempt me these days but I don't feel they're a must-have yet. The other likely candidate is the Custodes because hey, you only need about 20 models to make an army. 

Besides 40K I'd -like- to paint up and play my Flames of War ... and my Kings of War ... and some Sigmar ... and maybe try Legions.  Legions is pretty likely at this point to be the "new game failure" for me in 2022. More to come there for sure. 

That's right - Total War Warhammer III is coming soon too - that'll be fun.

I've had a weird urge lately to go retro. We know there's a reborn old-school Warhammer coming some day and I'm tempted to start building an old-school army to go with it. I still have my Chaos Warriors but all that stuff sitting half-done for Kings of War would look good on individual bases. Dwarves are also an inclination as I've never built a fantasy dwarf army in any game ... also Empire and all their crazy variety ... and Dark Elves for some reason. Not sure where this will go. It's not an urgent feeling but more of a "hey I could get a unit here and a unit there and have something ready to go whenever the new rules arrive."

So yes, this year feels way more casual than many in the past - laid back if you will. No hard schedule or agenda, just knowing what I'm doing now with a rough outline for later. The last couple of years have shown me that hard plans for 6+ months are likely to be disrupted so keep them loose. Worry about the now thing and maybe the next thing and leave the rest flexible.

More to come. 

 

The New Year's Eve Post for 2021

2021 was not a bad year here. Personal and family stuff was good and that's about all you can ask for these days. Hobby-wise ...

• I ran a fair amount of 5th edition D&D earlier in the year. One of these days maybe I will write those sessions up. That campaign was paused but I suspect we will come back to it down the road. It gave me a reason to spruce up the monster miniature collection and clean up the storage for it too. 
• The campaign that closed out the year was a new Deadlands campaign I discussed here. One of the goals for the new year is to put up some session summaries here and then keep up with it going forward. it's been a long time since we've had a sustained western type campaign and I do like the Savage Worlds rules quite a bit so it's been nothing but good. It's been on hold for the holidays and my convention crew but we will pick it back up in Jan/Feb. 

Looking back I don't think I ran any other RPGs this year, even one-shots. That's pretty light for me. I suppose I should look at it as maintaining focus at a higher level than usual but it still feels a little weird. I certainly added enough new ones to the pile and of course there are ideas for way too many campaigns buzzing around my head but my players are happy with what we are doing so I feel like I'm doing something right. 

Miniatures-wise we played a reasonable level of 40K and I got a -lot- of painting done so that feels like a total win too. Close to wrapping up the Necrons and I am very happy with that. Simple paint scheme, as terminator-ish a look as I can give them. It's pretty much silver/chrome, red eyes and gun parts, and desert type basing. I won't quite finish them by the end of the year ... errr ... tonight ... but some of that is due to weather as you can't spray that final clearcoat if it's too cold, or too wet, or too windy and we will cover all 3 of those this week. 

• The Blood Angels were also a big focus later in the year and I do now have a couple of Sanguinary Guard squads and enough Death Company to field a squad or two. This also pulled me into working on the BA dreadnoughts I've had laying around, the assault terminator squads half-built for a couple of years, some old unfinished tac squads and dev squads, and also finally figuring out the rhino & razorback situation I've had with them as not everything can have a jump pack or be dropped out of a Stormraven. It feels good to have these guys rounding into shape as my other major marine army

• I added some stuff to my Crimson Fists - a landspeeder with two more almost done, a pair of stormtalons that have been "almost done" for a few years now - now they are "really done" - and I finished up some leader types - rebased, decaled where applicable, touched up, and clear-coated. There is more to do ... I suspect there will always be a backlog with these guys because they are my "normal" marine army and there is always new stuff coming out for marines, but they are in a good place for now. 

• I played my Grey Knights early on but I haven't played them with the new book yet.  I have some units to build and tweaks to make and I need to focus on them for a while to do it - that will happen after the current wave is handled. 

• I played the Imperial Guard early on as well and my force needs some tweaks (and a more experienced commander). All I really added was some more demolisher cannon turrets  - hopefully they stay good - and the lascannon gunship (Vulture? Vendeta? I don't know but it seems nasty) because I could and I'd like a flying tank destroyer to help protect my own tanks. I'm really kind of waiting for a new Guard codex to dive back into this army and tune it up.

• I played my Orks in a Crusade campaign before the new codex came out and it is a really fun way to play the game. I got hammered pretty hard by Blaster's Ultramarines primaris gunline force but my warboss managed to wreck his redemptor dread regularly and to crunch his captain a few times too so it was not completely one-sided. With the new book I have added some bikes and since I mostly run Goffs I have the new Ghazghkull in the painting queue now too. I need to take a month next year and just play my orks only through a few games and I'll get them done. Also: The Great Re-Basing will happen as I have the base expanders sitting on my workbench to bump all the old boyz up to 32mm. not super exciting but it's a chance to change up how I base these guys and considering a lot of my army dates back to 2nd & 3rd edition I'm looking forward to it.

I did dive into Flames of War early in the year as this year's "miniatures game I will dive into hard and end up not playing" ... which is exactly what happened. At some point you might think I would learn but hope springs eternal. A few years ago it was Bolt Action, then it was Star Wars Armada (though we did play a few games of both) then Age of Sigmar ... I have played enough Kings of War that I don't count it as a non-starter but it was quiet this year too. Check in tomorrow for next year's candidates!

I did work on building an Undead army for Kings of War ... and also for Sigmar as that book came out while I was feeling it and so progress was made but not completed on both. I held off on 3rd edition AoS as we haven't played since 1st and I'm trying to be better about throwing resources at rulebooks I may not use. Armies - sure. We can play a few games with the old rules if we can get some armies together and make sure it's something we want to expand. 

Overall the miniatures situation is better then last year. I got a lot done and I also took the time to reorganize my work space  - cleaned out the workbench completely, picked up some new drawer/organizer things, and went through a bunch of paints and tools and supplies and got rid of a lot of clutter. I've enjoyed it more the last few months than I have in quite a while so I'm calling that a win. 

Then, last week of the year, the big surprise - we ended up playing Battletech of all things. We haven't played BT since the boys got interested years ago so I decided to go back to the original source and we played with the original BT boxed set, mechs, and map. This all came about because Paladin Steve's oldest son was asking about the 40K miniatures again when he was over for our boardgame night and rather than try to explain all that we started talking about how if he want to have giant robots moving around and punching and shooting each other Battletech was a better bet than 40k. It's also cheaper to get into if he really liked it. Paladin Steve hadn't played in 20 years but he was interested in dusting it off - so that's what we did. One mech apiece ... 3025 tech ... one original map board and we ran for several hours. It was a lot more fun than I expected - even when my Wolverine went down to a punch in the face that crushed my cockpit. 

Going through all of that old material hit me with a pretty heavy nostalgia wave. All those custom mech sheets, some sheets that still have damaged marked on them from battles 25 years ago, and even re-discovering old Mechwarrior character sheets ... we spent a LOT of time playing Battletech in the 80's and 90's. I have a ton of painted BT miniatures some of which I painted back in the 80's and it always feels good to put those on the table again. 

It was a ton of fun and Apprentice Boom Gun was already asking when we could play again before we finished the first game. That's a good sign. It was a nice way to wrap up the gaming year. 

Beginning Year 10 of the Tower

I started writing here in 2009 as an outlet for my game related-thoughts and that's continued every year since. Last year was a terrible year and posting fell way down, but as I climb out of the hole I intend to keep the blog here as a part of my online life. I'm still running games, I'm still playing games,  so I should have some things worth sharing. I figure 2-3 posts a week will put me back where I'd like this to be so that's the goal for this year.

Currently I'm mainly running 5th Edition on a regular basis finishing up a retro-run of Keep on the Borderlands. We could have gone in several directions but this is what my players wanted to play! It actually started in 2017 then had a long dry spell and picked up again this year and has become the main game - we've even managed something approaching a regular every-two-weeks schedule! As we wrap this up we do have plans to move into the next chapter of the 5E retro tour ...

Besides D&D, in the last six months I've run sessions of ICONS (first run in years - yes!), the Sentinels of the Multiverse RPG (Starter kit - looking forward to the full game), and Labyrinth Lord (Barrowmaze - lots of fun).

For the future I'm hoping to keep the D&D game going and work in a once a month Supers game somehow too. We will see. I'm sure the plans will change - they always do!

I'm still playing in Paladin Steve's Kingmaker campaign. After 4 years we are 10th level with only one character death! It's still fun and all of the original players are still playing.

I'm also playing Variable Dave's new 50 Fathoms campaign! I say new - it started in November and has run consistently since then. I have to say it is a lot of fun finally playing Savage Worlds - not just running it.

Miniatures-wise I've pretty much let Age of Sigmar, Kings of War, Frostgrave, Bolt Action, X-Wing, Attack Wing, and Armada fall by the wayside. The focus is on 40K, both playing it and getting some of those armies perpetually "under construction" finished - at least to the point of having a painted, playable, 2000 point army. I'll post more about that on Friday. I do hope to work some of those other games back in to some kind of rotation throughout the year but for now it's all about the GrimDark Far Future.

Boardgames-wise I've played more Smash-Up this past year than anything else. It's a good game, especially with kids.

Online I take occasional dips into Star Trek Online but I'm mostly playing World of Warships. It scratches a historical itch and is a lot of fun to play, especially when I have a group of friends playing it too.

Anyway there's the state of things as the year begins. I'm looking forward to getting back into the blog and everything else that goes with it.

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

2017 was an interesting year - the year I ran more different games and less of any one game. It was also a year I filled in a lot of boardgame "gaps" that I had been feeling for a long time. It was also the year 40K was reborn and became even more our Number One miniatures game.

• I ran a few sessions of Mutants and Masterminds and then it just fizzled as my players were unable to gather at the same time and other games moved into the space this created.
• I ran a few sessions of our very leisurely d6 Star Wars campaign earlier in the year.
• I ran one session of Runequest. Hey, "one" is better than "zero"!
• I was determined to get in more experience with the FFG Star Wars game and for a while I did - I ran 4-5 sessions of it this year and feel cautiously optimistic about it.  
• I have been trying to get back to having a regular Savage Worlds game on the schedule and I briefly achieved this while running a few sessions of our Deadlands campaign but then it too sputtered to a stop as Player Schedule Incompatibility Syndrome reared it's head again.
• I ran 4-5 sessions of 5th edition D&D using "Keep on the Borderlands" to kick off our experiment with the current big thing in RPGs.
• I ended up running 4-5 more in a  second, separate 5E campaign using "Storm King's Thunder" for more of the typical schedule issues. 

The single biggest issue (and I know I'm not alone here) is schedules: I have college kids with their work and school schedules, I have adults with work and family schedules, and it's a real challenge to get those to sync up regularly. It gets an order of magnitude more difficult when trying to keep the same group of players together for a particular campaign! Now about a year ago I outlined my approach to managing this and that's pretty much what we have done and it works - with some considerations I will describe in a future post. 

In spite of the challenges I am still getting to run a lot so some things are going well. 

Looking back to last year's kick-off post, well ...

• I was noting that 5E had not replaced Pathfinder and seemed unlikely to do so - weeeell...
• One goal was to rejuvenate or kill the Pathfinder campaign I was running. I did accomplish this at least. 
• I was trying to make a Supers game a regular ongoing thing. That briefly appeared to be working, then it fizzled. My players all seem interested but it never really seems to be the top priority. I may have to resign myself to it just being that way here and keeping some things ready as a fill-in option.
• I also resolved to do more Star Wars - I did!
• I didn't run any more DCC, Shadowrun, or Gamma World but I did manage to squeeze in more Savage Worlds and a session of Runequest so partial success there. 

Enough rear-view mirror - what does 2018 look like?

Well 5th is here to stay for us for now. I expect to finish SKT and probably move on to Tomb of Annihilation in that campaign. I expect to finish the Keep and move on to the next thing in that campaign. I halfway expect us to end up with a third campaign in it as well - why not? 

We're regrouping on the FFG Star Wars and I expect we will at least finish Beyond the Rim early this year. After that I am not sure. I'd like to do some more with it but it will depend on the players. I expect the d6 game to continue.

The third main game will be Savage Worlds but right now it looks like it will be in the form of Rifts. Rifts! I'm set to run a kick-off session this Saturday so we will see how that goes. Assuming we have fun with it I could see it becoming the "other" game we play on a somewhat regular schedule. If it fades out then Deadlands will likely make a comeback. 

Anyway it's shaping up to be a good year - I have a clear course, a decent plan, some backup plans, and interested players!

The Old Year and the New Year

Game-wise 2016 was good and bad. Thoughts on it, practical talk, and hopes for 2017 below.

My "main" campaign, Pathfinder's Wrath of the Righteous, staggered through the year with all of six sessions played. That's less than Paladin Steve's once-a-month Kingmaker campaign! We're supposed to be playing every other week but we're averaging every other month! We're a session or two away from finishing Book 3 which put us approximately halfway through the campaign. We started in September of 2013 and we've managed 37 total sessions in the 39 months since. Call it once a month. I like the campaign but I'm not sure I want to spend 3 more years trying to finish it.

This has me questioning if these long term epic campaigns are a thing we can really do. Some of it is the system as Pathfinder is not nearly as quick in play as Savage Worlds, Star Wars d6, or even M&M. I have 3 or 4 more of these things I'd like to run but at this pace I'm not sure I could live long enough to do them all! Maybe after we retire ...

I admit, the concept of "finishing" a campaign isn't one I've always been attached to. To me you make characters, start playing, and that's a campaign - not a specific plot but the players and the characters and the setting.

Regardless of my long term doubts I needed to take some immediate action as I'm not sacrificing more weekends to "somebody can't make it so we're going to have to cancel" as we have a hard enough time making room on the schedule in the first place. With multiple active teenagers in the house and full time jobs this is a thing we have to plan ahead most of the time. So for 2017 I am going with the plan I discussed earlier on the blog:

• 1st weekend of the month: Superheroes, mainly Mutants and Masterminds
• 3rd weekend of the month: Wrath of the Righteous
• Otherwise: whatever we manage to fit in without interfering with other commitments

I'm also changing my "all of us or no game" policy I've been sticking to with the Pathfinder game. That's killed us, even with only 3 players. I'm willing to flip between Fridays and Saturdays when I can to accommodate schedules but I'm going to have to go with two available = game just to try and keep the thing moving.

Now other than this it was a pretty interesting year. I ran 5 sessions of a d6 Star Wars campaign that just kind of popped up. It's not on a regular schedule - the schedule is "whenever I have all 3 boys here and we have a couple of hours free". I also ran 2 sessions of FFG Star Wars. That means I ran more Star Wars than Pathfinder, more Star Wars than any other single game. I'm pretty sure that's the first time that universe has been at the top of that particular list for me, but I'm pretty happy with it. Combine that with persistent flare-ups of X-Wing, regular visits to The Old Republic, and here at the end of the year the acquisition of Armada and it was more the Year of Star Wars when it comes to my personal game time than anything else. The Apprentices are loving the d6 campaign, even with the irregular schedule so I expect it to continue through next year. I think the ongoing greatness of Rebels and the awesomeness of Rogue One helped show them that the Rebellion Era can be cool too. Of course Rebels also showed that there are more than 3 or 4 force users left in the universe and that didn't hurt either.

Other RPG's that I ran this year: Couple sessions of Marvel Heroic (a game we all still love), a few sessions of Deadlands (which I would like to run more), Mutants and Masterminds (getting into a regular groove perhaps), and ... Dungeon Crawl Classics! That one squeaked in Friday night with 4 players, a bunch of zero level characters and a roughly 40% casualty rate through about the first third of the adventure. We had a bunch of fun with it though picking names, arguing over miniatures, and "unlearning what we had learned" about combat from Pathfinder.

Miniatures: 40K, with visits to X-Wing, Kings of War, and Dropzone Commander, pretty much in that order. I picked up Armada this week so it's on deck for 2017.

Boardgames: I won't claim we have a regular rotation but if we did it would include King of Tokyo, Sentinels of the Multiverse, Munchkin (mainly Marvel this year), and Pandemic. Apprentice Blaster and I still work in Command and Colors Ancients when we can.  I did play my first game of Axis and Allies in at least 15 years this year. It's amazing how much comes rushing back after all that time. The boys liked it so maybe it will become a thing.

Games that fell off the radar this year:

• Star Trek - I brought up the old game early on as an option then brought up the new playtest rules here towards the end of the year and ... no one was interested. It's not like that's a new thing but it means I'm not going to worry about it too much for now. I'll probably pick up the book whenever they publish it but that's more for me to read and think than any real hope of running it. Honestly with an active Star Wars game I'm not all that upset about it. Attack Wing is also pretty much dead here and no one her is playing Star Trek Online anymore either. Even Federation Commander is dormant for us for now.
• 40K Roleplaying & Boardgames - we've had a few of the RPG books floating around the house but no one cares. Even some of the more ornate boardgames associated with it generate an "if we have time to do that we could just play real 40K instead" and I tend to agree. 
• D&D 5th Edition - I'm still interested in giving it more of a chance but Pathfinder is the main fantasy RPG for us and with a friend running it and two boys running PF campaigns of their own  I just don't see that changing.
• FATE - I like it in concept but I don't know that I will ever talk the group into running it. 

Enough about last year!

Goals for 2017

RPG Stuff:

1. Recover the Pathfinder campaign enough to feel like it's a living thing again - or call it, kill it and move on. Nine sessions in 2015 followed by six in 2016 is not a trend I care to continue. One of my players has already told me he has a conflict with the third weekend in February so it's not looking all that promising on just day 1 of the year! Having what feels like a failing campaign is a drain on things so either outcome will improve our situation.
2. Make a supers campaign a regular, ongoing thing. The first-weekend-of-the-month Freedom City game is it! I have interested players, a great system, and a plan - now we just need to execute! This one is looking pretty good. I hope next year's summary has a bunch to say about this, and maybe Atomic City and Emerald City as well. Our every-once-in-a-while Marvel Heroic and our equally intermittent ICONS campaign will be Plans B and C here. 
3. Ride the Star Wars wave with one or more RPG campaigns. The current d6 campaign is for me and the boys but if the opportunity opens up to run something for my friends I will, either with that system or the FFG system. Everyone seems more interested in it now so I'm going to strike while the iron is hot.

Having regular, ongoing options with these 3 games makes me a pretty happy guy. Everything beyond this is a bonus.

• Run some more DCC, at least finish the adventure we started. It doesn't have to be a regular, scheduled campaign. I'd just like to run a complete adventure as it was a ton of fun. 
• Run some Runequest - all of this fun with other games like DCC has me optimistic.  
• Run some more Savage Worlds: Rifts, Deadlands, Slipstream, 50 Fathoms, Hell on Earth, or another flavor of Star Wars. I like the system too much to let it lie for another year. 
• Sneak in some Shadowrun. Maybe a one-off, but I want the kids to experience it and I suspect I could round up enough players to make it fun
• Set up a Gamma World one-shot. It's too cool to ignore completely and it also helps set up a potential Mutant Crawl Classics experiment later in the year,

If I could pull off all of these over the next 12 months I'd be ecstatic. Most likely some of them will happen, some will not, and something completely unexpected will show up too - but this is the plan/priority/hope for now. I am having a lot of fun running my own material so I'm less interested in getting in to another giant campaign arc in a premade setting and more interested in doing our own thing.

Miniatures:

1. 40K: This is our standard and I do not expect that to change. We averaged about a battle a month this year but they tend to be clustered around time off with multiple fights over a week and then a month or two of nothing. I'd like to smooth that out. Right now the sub-goals are:
• Play with those Eldar I painted up
• Get the Blood Angels painted up and into  a field-able force
• Get the Dark Angels painted up and field-ready as well
2. Star Wars is a big player here too. We already like X-Wing and Xmas bumped up our selection of bigger ships like the Falcon, Slave 1, the YT-2400, and the Ghost. It will continue to be a thing here. Armada is new and I hope it turns into a big player, maybe even #2 behind 40K. Imperial Assault is the only option here that has really not impressed us - it takes too much effort to play when we could either play the RPG or go play 40K depending on what we're in the mood to do. 
3. Fantasy now means Kings of War for us. We will probably get in a fantasy mood and play a few more games. I don't expect to be buying new armies for it but the ones we have should see some action this year. Maybe we'll even paint them.
4. World War 2: Bolt Action - there's a new second edition of the rules and I am ready to go with a 28mm army option. It may be a few months before we get anywhere but we will probably play it more than we did in 2016. I'm really interested in some Pacific battles but that new starter set looks pretty nice. We may start there. Flames of War is just a non-starter for us, plus there's another new edition coming out which means "wait and see" at best. 
5. Dropzone Commander - I got one starter set and built some of it but we never played a real game of it. I'd like to do that. it doesn't have to replace 40K or the Star Wars games, I'd just like to play something more like the old Epic scale games.  

Mantic is constantly bringing out new games and GW is bringing back some old favorites but I just don't have the bandwidth to research them, buy them, build them, paint them, and play them. The door's not completely shut but something new is going to have to really bowl me over to get any real attention at all.

All that said I had a pretty good 2016 and I am looking forward to a 2017 that is at least as good.