Year In Review 2021

So 2021 has been a year with a bunch of milestones in it.

I turned 40, got this very neat sketch to commemorate the occasion by the bard in my home campaign.

I got a fair block of gaming in - it was a personal high since college era and probably would have been an absolute personal high if I had not put a halt on most gaming in October when the smallest householder turned up.

Of games played this year:
- Home campaign (3.5e) - continuing the mighty Ducal House campaign, of which much has been written in the 'menagerie world' tag on this blog. Highlights were completing the Kobolds Art Exhibition zine by Evlyn Moreau, playing out Part III - the Rescue, Part IV - the Show, Part V - the Tour, Part VI - the Chase and Part VII - the Delve and Part VIII - the Farewell. Other adventures of the party are documented in the social depth crawl at the mages soiree then later using the Aces High rules to fight a dragon and cunningly solving a terrain problem. We attempted to land a campaign finish ahead of October but in the finest tradition, instead we have a cliff-hanger with the party venturing into the mythic land of giants, the fate of the realm hanging in the balance.

Other games I played in this year:
- Out of the Abyss (5e) - a real pleasure to play with a group of hard-bitten, on-task veteran gamers. Despite some squeaky bum moments - in particular the close of the last session which had one of those deathly silent, all eyes on the dice combats - we have lived to continue our flight. I particularly like the party 'big picture' alignment on propping up as much of the local power structures, whatever their nature, to leave the maximum possible speedbumps between us and the horrors chasing us.
- Spire - with its d10 dice pool system playing Spire has been a really refreshing change. Applying stress to stats and incurring permanent consequences has been interesting - we are probably failing to utilise everything - leaning too hard into our 'expertises' as opposed to just taking some low stresses on non-expert traits too. But having said all that, us drow freedom fighters have successfully fomented a mini revolution, caused a bunch of damage, stopped a really horrible cultist, messed with powers beyond our ken and generally careened around a giant arcology trying to overthrow the high elves. Good times.
- Tyranny of Dragons (5e) - the first time I have gone 'classic heroing' in a very long time - I think since I played my summoner in ~2007. Also my first campaign I have actually played in the Forgotten Realms (excluding all the Adventurers League one-shots which ... are a bit of a mash of stuff). Early days so far, looking forward to how this all plays out.
- Adventurers League (5e) - face to face gaming at my local games society was sparse due to lockdowns, restrictions, the plague in general. What I did get to do this year was a pretty cool Ravnica mini-arc which strung together the adventure in the book, some other pieces, & a home-brew scenario then built all the way up to a Tier IV apocalypse where everyone else at the club got to bring their baddest PCs from across the multiverse. They ran interference to try and get the level ~5 local Ravnicans through to solve the final conundrum. My first setting apocalypse, got utterly vaporised but for a tuft of hair we had all swapped between ourselves after an early encounter. My minotaur got resurrected as a hobgoblin, could have been worse.
- Planescape: Splinters of Hope (5e) - sneaking in under the wire (yesterday) - I ran the first one-shot planar scavenger hunt with a crew that mixed the most recent players come to my tables (Thenya) with some of the first (Katharsis). A trek across the cogs of Mechanus featured in this first escapade with the successful retrieval of ancient wood from a lost world. Next stop - the Beastlands? Gehenna? - to be seen.

On the blogging front, I am quietly pleased that posting tempo has been sustained without gaps for the year. Monday you get your shiny links round-up, Wednesdays and Saturdays some other blog post. Over the year it has been ~ 1/8 each of Reviews and Lessons Learned/Theory, ~1/5 data posts, ~1/4 inspirations/world building, ~1/4 the weekly links posts and the rest actual plays. Monthly views have more than doubled over the course of the year from ~1600 to 3600 so something is going right. I keep the weekly links posts here only - no signal boosting on twitter, reddit or discord and they seem to bring a few dozen views each week which is my guesstimate for the background level of regular readers.

Most people get here through search engines or from reddit or twitter (which makes sense) but I would like to call out the following other blogs as those who seem to bring readers here - Lizardman Diaries, DIY & Dragons, Chaudron Chromatique, Weaver.skepti.ch, Nothics Eye, Ynas Midgard, Uncaring Cosmos, Retired Adventurer, Kelvin Green, Awesome Lies, Spot Hidden and Shuttered Room. Thanks for having me on your feeds, evidently your readers like what they read here too.

This year I also got to test out a bunch of sky combat systems with the in-house testing team - the original AD&D Spelljammer, the 3e adaptation of Spelljammer Shadow of the Spider Moon, the 5e Aces High aerial combat rules from Arcadia #3 published by MCDM and what kicked all this off - Calidar Skyship Combat Rules.

I also did some thinking on dynamic encounter tables - first with the previously mentioned social depth crawl which got the honour of being flagged by the Glatisant. I also had an idea for Hidden Depths tables - an 'unlockable' encounter table of 2-24 that can be rolled with a bunch of different dice combos from the standard set: 6d4, 4d6, 3d8, 2d12, d4+d20. The improved version with contribution from Weaver.skepti.ch can be seen here.

I got a nice run of lessons learned written up - starting with making your game flow and running large open table games. I wrote a pair of campaign retrospectives - on the games that ran and the games that flared out and closed out with two views on how to spin up campaigns: applying the OSR and using session zero.

This year was also a better year than last year financially and I went on a bit of a book shopping spree. Kudos must be paid to EvilScientist42 for consistently alerting us to Lulu discount sales, without which all this would have been... more expensive. I have been trying to get more of these reviewed and I am taking the fact that some of the reviews are ending up tagged on the product sites themselves (DCC Lankhmar for example) as a sign I am hitting the minimum standard for usefulness at least.

In the brief window where face to face gaming was possible, I was gifted my awesome new DM screen by my players. I should rework the look of this site to match - something for this vacation period.

For the coming year I want to:
- Restart Home game, Under the Dark and Spire once the smallest householder is chill enough that both myself and my partner can participate.
- Run more of my 'drop in' Planescape game to fill in the blanks until then.
- Retool the appearance of this blog to be somewhat less ultra-minimalist, possibly using the Bards art from my DM screen.
- Get more reviews pushed out the door for things that have turned up, try to get more of all this content used at tables.
- Continue to push the r/osr weekly blogrolls to try and catch all the good stuff churned out each week

Thanks for reading along, hope you find more to interest and amuse in the coming year. If you have any suggestions or requests, drop them in a comment below or ping me on twitter.