A Year: Past & Future

Goodbye 2018, Hello 2019
In many ways 2018 has been a good year for me and the tabletop gaming hobby. I attended both Origins and Gencon and hung out for extended periods with good friends who I only see at conventions. I played what seems like a good many games, both at the convention and with my home groups. I got to travel south and spend an extended visit with my oldest and dearest gamer buddies. The hobby saw the publication of many really top shelf products, both board games and TTRPGs. The online streaming and vlog community put out some informative commentary on the game and some entertaining gameplay video. Yes, it has been a good year.
As with many good things, however, the year 2018 has produced some darker events. The hobby continues to lose members of the old guard, those who were present for the beginning and who have shepherded the hobby along these many decades. I will especially miss Greg Stafford at Gencon 2019. Mr. Stafford founded The Chaosium to publish White Bear and Red Moon introducing the hobby to his world of Glorantha which has been the setting for several games including RuneQuest and HeroQuest. We also said good-bye to Eric V. Clark this year. Eric was a driving force behind the Legends of the Shining Jewel living campaign and ran the biweekly Pathfinder game in which I frequently played over the last decade and he was a good friend.
Looking forward into 2019 I am excited about several things. The Castles & Crusades campaign run by a good friend is starting up again and we are already a couple sessions into that. I have not got to play enough Gloomhaven yet and am hoping that game is again in my 2019 future. Scythe is another board game I was introduced to last year that I would like to play more of. I have enjoyed Legacy of Dragonholt as both a cooperative group experience and in solo play this past year and hope to finish it in 2019. FFG's Lord of the Rings LCG continues to provide thrills as well.
Tabletop role-play games I hope to run this coming year include a one-shot of Rolemaster set in 4th Age M.E. which I started working on this year. Rolemaster is an older system which I think does a nice job at the table if the referee knows the game well and has prepared the charts. I will use pregens for a couple reasons - it gives me more control of PC abilities so the session can feel like M.E. and frankly creating and leveling up PCs can be a chore in RM (more on that project in a future post).
I picked up the Mongoose Traveller 2e this past year and have a mini campaign setting in mind I hope to run in 2019. Conan 2d20 is still on my short list, so I hope to see it at the table in 2019 (as referee or player). I watched Kevin Madison run the new Legends of the Five Rings on his Youtube channel Dungeon Musings and as a result I recently purchased that game, despite it using a variant of FFG's Narrative Dice System. I like the way Kevin Madison ran the game and I think I may be able to live with the FFG funky dice/narrative mechanic as long as I am the one running it. (I'll say more on that thought in a future post.)
My love for the White Box and the OSR remains as strong as ever and I will be jumping at every chance I get to run old school games again in 2019. I have been with that system for over four decades and still enjoy it. It seems my homebrew sandbox gets bigger each year and I have had several thoughts I added this past year that can be developed into Dreadmoor game sessions fairly quickly.
Under the renewed leadership of Greg Stafford, Rick Meints, Sandy Petersen and friends Chaosium is once again turning out the quality products I learned to expect from Chaosium back in the day. Call of Cthulhu 7e is my favorite edition of a favorite game going back to 1981 and the supporting game aids being released for 7e today are nothing short of awesome. I just added the beautiful Masks of Nyarlathotep 7e slipcase edition to my collection and I may bring it (or some other CoC module) to the table in 2019. RuneQuest is back with Chaosium thanks to Mr. Stafford and the new RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha book is awesome in appearance and content. If I don't run RQ:G, I will be looking to play in a session or three. I believe one of the last things Mr. Stafford accomplished in this life was to bring his King Arthur Pendragon RPG back under the Chaosium tent. Pendragon has been on my favorite game list since I grabbed the 1st edition box set off the shelf and played it later that same day. Mr. Stafford sold me a copy of the beautiful new 5.2 edition this past Gencon.
I ran three sessions of the Pathfinder 2e Playtest beta this past year and my players seem to have enjoyed the changes from PF 1e. If the interest is there, I will be happy to referee more of that system in 2019. The Playtest beta is limited enough in options at present to make it a manageable affair for me and I do like some of the innovations - the 3 action combat economy for starters. I own several rules-lite FRPGs that I believe are a good choice for one-off sessions and I would like to experiment a bit with them in the coming year. Tiny Dungeon immediately jumps to mind.
OSR setting material I acquired in 2018 includes some real gems. Midderlands is a unique take on the English midlands from a creative fantasy perspective and an absolutely beautiful product I highly recommend. Hubris is a setting for DCCRPG and in keeping with the spirit of that system is full of weirdly entertaining and frightful material I can borrow for use in Dreadmoor if I don't decide to set a campaign in the land of Hubris. Finally I have to mention Hot Springs Island, a generic self contained setting in two beautiful volumes that begs to be inserted into any campaign. There is so much good stuff contained in these products that any one of them could form the basis of a lifetime of adventure gaming.
As for anticipating products for 2019... I am hoping to shortly get my hands on the Black Hack 2e. The Black Hack is one of those rules-lite games in the spirit of White Box that has seen some popularity in the last year or so and which I supported through Kickstarter. Steve Jackson Games acquired the rights to The Fantasy Trip last year and ran a Kickstarter for a new edition of Melee, Wizard and a whole lot more in that line. I backed it and am hoping to have my game(s) this coming spring. The Fantasy Trip was one of my favorite systems during the 1980's and has an elegance never quite equaled by GURPS in my eyes. I am also in for the Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea player handbook Kickstarter and a couple of cooperative RPG in a box type board games (Set A Watch and Dark Domains) expected to deliver in 2019.
Cubicle 7 released Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e late this year and thereby complicated my life. WFRP 4e is an awesome and beautiful book, but I was just working my way up to conning my friends into some Zweihander by Grim & Perilous Studios when I received 4e. Zweihander won the ENie's GOLD Award for 2019's Best Game and Product of the Year, so you know it's awesome (for me it's beyond awesome!). Having read through WFRP 4e it is awesome too! Both are fresh takes on the original grim and perilous WFRP game by Games Workshop, but while Zweihander sticks closer to the original, offering fixes for the 1e's troublesome bits and adding a host of supplemental and original new material, all grand, and frees us from Ye Olde World setting (owned and monkeyed with by GW) so that we can use a fresh setting of our own wonderful creation, hence 4e is an awesome game too (the combat mechanic using success levels is brilliant imo). The changes 4e makes excite me in a way few modern games have. The folks at Cubicle 7 have a Best Game/Product of the Year contender for 2019. Unfortunately, I don't have a player group primed for either. Grim & Perilous adventure is right up my dark alley, but many gamers I know seek a more "heroic" experience. Although we play them, it often seems that White Box and Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG may be pushing their limits.
Thinking ahead, I am as excited about this hobby as ever, which is not bad medicine for a gamer turning sixty. Here's hoping you too have lots to look forward to in the coming year.