On running games
Ducal House (3.5e) - got in another 22 sessions, tailing off toward the end of year. This fifth year began with nailing down the altered ducal succession that had nominally been the campaign goal since session zero, a considerable amount of politics after a lot of time saving the realm and then further venturing forth to thwart a foe/potential allies plot. A venture onto the astral finally levelled everyone up to 11. The bard became heir apparent to the realm, unsought. The sorcerer has become fascinated with the potential of lichdom and the cleric continues to restrain them, in person or as the voice of conscience.
Bay of Princes (Brancalonia, 5e) - 19 sessions of open table gaming at my local games society regular Friday nights. Have run through this on a recent retrospective; half of this year was finishing out the Brancalonia published adventures, the other half was a mix of zines and adventure generator content. Lots of good times and hi-jinks, seemed to be a good fit to the open-table set up.
Spelljammer Academy: Season 2 (5e) - 7 sessions of episodic campaign, serving as the new 'welcome wagon' for the Friday night open tables. Less ludicrous hi-jinks as this has been running through the opener of Storm Kings Thunder intercut with the Starlight Arcana campaign. This is having good sessions and bad sessions, enough sessions that are going clunk that I think the framework is not working for newbie players; I am going to tinker with this and see if I can make it work but if not this is going to be stopped and replaced.
Spelljammer: Light of Xaryxis remix (5e) - finished out the last four sessions of this - retrospective here - and more of less hung up my spurs as a virtual DM for now. The hassle factor of prepping the VTT to run a game sandboxy enough to keep my interest was much harder than I want to be dealing with. This was my first fully completed official campaign and I am glad I did it but it may be a while before I venture this way again. I talked through how I remixed it from railroad to sandbox in part one, part two and part three.
Night of the Rolling Dice 3 (5e) - I organised this with the Meetup group and as an experiment in how little hands on work was needed to make the event happen. It ran well on the night, the after action report is here but there was no great interest from members of the game group to pick this up and do another one, so it looks like this is going to be shelved until needed again. I ran Spelljammer Academy: Trial By Fire again, it ran smoothly.
Star Trek: Klingon (2d20) - was my first dabble with running a really new system in a while - I did this in one of the usual bars, was astonished to get a table of players who were geek enough to be part of a 'forever DMs support group' but yet only one among four had any idea what klingons were. Everyone caught on quickly enough and good fun was had stomping around and then fighting for glory at the end. I like the 2d20 system, I think it has plenty of potential.
On games played during the year Rime of the Frostmaiden (5e) - continuing with the same crack group of adventurers, some of whom I've gamed with since 1993, 8 sessions saw us progress to level seven as we finally stumbled upon a villains plot and had to put ourselves on the line to try and stop a dragon - which only lead to my being ressurected, everyone else was fine. The DM assures us we are about half-way there, which is us getting very good mileage out of the campaign given we are two years in.
Sagadarium (FKR) - epic fantasy politics game - I have been shepherding my goose-dragons through calumny and affront, past an attempted wipe out, the death of our chaotic patron, conquering the afterlife to rescue half our fellows and the digging out of the underdark. Still grinding along in an intriguing manner.
Grand Planar Adventures (5e) - got in a few sessions before I just have not been able to afford a regular day-time weekend slot. This had some serious highlights of 3D printing supported combats and incredible multi-faction high-level chaos as well as a chance to roam the planes meeting legends but I just cannot cram in a regular campaign like this anymore.
Royal Blood - a fun tarot based game, another one for the forever-DM support group, wrote this up here.
Feather, Beak and Bone - tested this out when smallest householder was uncooperative about going to sleep on a games night - a fun city generating game, I would definitely use this next time I am kicking off an urban campaign. More detailed review here.
For the Queen - another game tested when we could not pull off a Ducal House session - very different to what we usually do, but an interesting one. Not sure this would go on my stack of games to reach for immediately but I would certainly play it again if someone set it up.
Review of gaming goals
Some good gaming done - Jan, Feb, April, May, August and September were highest or second highest gaming frequency compared to that month over the past seven years.
Looking back at goals for 2024, much went to plan, ambitious 'go further' stuff did not.
"Continue Ducal House" and "Run more Brancalonia at the Friday night drop in games." both worked; see above.
"run out Spelljammer LoX - see what to replace that with afterward (Planescape Turn of Fortunes Wheel?)" - partial - LoX completed successfully but smallest householders sleep patterns going to hell lead to the idea of this getting replaced with a regular weeknight game never happening
"Run an event" - Night of the Rolling Dice 3 went really well - and then never happened again.
"see about doing some DM'ing 101 to get more new folk happy to try and DM their first game."
"Play more Rime, Planescape and perhaps Scarlet Heroes." partial - Rime has continued, but neither Planescape nor Scarlet Heroes have been doable.
"Should things massively break my way timewise I have a notion of some sort of silk-roads campaign." vast amounts of time did not, in fact, appear.
Gaming goals for 2025
- Continue Ducal House - year six!
- Continue Spelljammer Academy at the Friday night drop in games - or pull the plug and try something else by end first quarter.
- If a new Friday night drop in game is required, maybe something using Ultraviolet Grasslands?
- Run more DM'ing 101 to get more new folk happy to try and DM their first game.
- Play more Rime, try and organise more DM Supergroup.
All in all, a good year for gaming - and reasons to be optimistic that 2025 will be another!
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