I've always tracked my gaming progress like the US Federal fiscal calendar (October through September). Don't ask why, it's always been like that, I'm not going to change now.
No matter what it feels like, we've only suffered through COVID now for 18 months. It's made the world (and gaming) a bit weird.
The Blog:
The Top Ten Blog Posts Over the Past Twelve Months
#1 Mandatory Holiday Swag Post (Blogging)*
The Top Ten Blog Posts Over the Past Twelve Months
#1 Mandatory Holiday Swag Post (Blogging)*
#2 (Star Wars d6) #10 The Great Pirate Outpost (Star Wars Campaign)
#3 (Kickstarter) Hellboy: Board Game Expansion (Kickstarter)
#4 (Savage Pulp) #3.11 The Sacrifice (Pulp)
#4 (Savage Pulp) #3.11 The Sacrifice (Pulp)
#6 Legions of Steel G1 Nightmares (Painting)
#8 (Savage Pulp) #3.10 Nils Lingonberry (Pulp)
#9 (Gnome Wars) The Tree Demon of the Lower Sierras (Gnome Wars)
Apparently, the words "Mandatory Holiday Swag" set off some alarm bells with Google's search engine. That post was the #2 result for those words. Like previous posts that got snagged on the search engine train for no reason. I killed it and replaced it with an identical post with a slightly revised title. Funny thing, even the revised titled has gotten hundreds of views.
At the end of the day, I get traffic from doing "stuff". Pulp games, painting projects, and what I'll call "General Gnome Activity" gets clicks. Most of them are also as fun as hell, so I should focus on more stuff like that.
COVID Strikes Back!
COVID has been the bane to face-to-face gaming and socialization. Of course, COVID also created some big complications. I'm much better now, but I'd like to think my, not one, but two brushes with death have gotten me to a better place, and a good reason to crack open paint more often towards the lead pile.... and the whole be a better person/husband/father thing doesn't hurt either, but painting seems to put me in my happy place for everything else a lot easier.
Triumphs!
An Online Galaxy, Far Far Away: A year and a half in, and my Star Wars campaign is still going strong. Monday nights are for, well, anybody who's willing to show up. I've used d6 material, Fantasy Flight conversions, plus Star Frontiers and Traveller module, plus the Challenge Challenge, a Starfinder module, and Shadis! We've even completed the side campaign of Bo'Non'as and Oopsa, which will post prior to Christmas.
Gnomish Space Marines: I've finished major projects before, and much faster, but constructing armies, backstories, and stats for the GSM is by far one of the more satisfying activities I've had in years.
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| The Chimneysweeps - My Favorite Picture for the Year |
With dozens upon dozens of figures to go, it's a marathon, not a sprint. One pack/squad a month has been reasonable this whole time.
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| The Actual Gnomish Space Marines, Second Favorite Picture |
The Return of Hoyce: Don't get me wrong, I love my regular Monday crew, and the addition of the Gnome King to the fold at the start of the Star Wars campaign was perfect, but the arrival of Hoyce has added that extra dynamic the game was lacking. His character is the most ridiculous, yet most competent character in the group. I now realize it has been over five years we last played together, with his memorable cameo as Habib in Masks of Nylarathotep. And over 16 since we regularly played Hackmaster. I keep dropping sledgehammer-sized invitations to the other old guard, but no bites yet.
Gnome Wars Light: With no massive gnome games to report on, I realize I need more skirmish level/role-playing gnome scenarios, like the Tree Demon of the Lower Sierras, to fill the void.
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| Savage Pulp Season Three finally had a cathartic finale |
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| The Easter Peeps Game |
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| Santa versus the Zombies? |
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| Cthulhu versus Mouslings for Fathers Day |
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| The Last Stand for Ovaltine's Men |
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| The death of Bob Njano was a sad way to end the third season of the Pulp Egypt campaign |
Challenge Challenge: The idea of using thirty-plus year old gaming magazines as a guide and inspiration for the Star Wars d6 campaign, has been a lot of fun, and an appropriate "Challenge," pun intended. Eighteen months into the campaign and we've gotten through most of the material from Challenge #25-29. We're making a bit of a u-turn and focusing on Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society issues #1-24 (the predecessor to Challenge). Those issues are chock full of material that's perfect for the odd style of play our group is doing. Using years of published material in a few hours every week is easier said than done (and not always logical).
Project 350: I love using Blogger as a repository of ideas, but I also like the idea of acting upon them. Project 350, the idea that my combined scheduled blog posts and various drafts stay around 350 has been a pipe dream for awhile. Last October, I reported 527 (354 drafts/173 scheduled). After another year of holiday memes, discovered artwork, and #RPGaDay artificially bloating the numbers for a month, as of the end of September, the blog is at 482 (312/170). Forty-plus episodes of the Star Wars weekly actual play are in the can, ready to post, plus almost a dozen more "lost" Hackmaster sessions, so that continues to elevate the scheduled number.
Catastrophes:
No Cons, not even train shows. COVID put a damper on a lot of stuff. With the world slowly reopening in May, that scrapped a lot of functions, meet-and-greets, and conventions. Hopefully with Historicon moved to Valley Forge in November, we can begin to see some level of normalcy. And no Yellowstone game re-build for another year.
Planet 28/Brutal Quest: I greatly enjoy my read-throughs of Planet 28 and its fantasy kin, Brutal Quest. I've even statted out some characters and troops for the GSM, and even got most of the old Laserburn books for further inspiration. However, I have yet to get a chance to play anything.
Kid's Painting/Gaming: Basketball and the lives of kids have made only a few forays into the topic. I fear that time is gone... for now, although out of the blue recently, Maja pulled out her Chess set, then Uno, then Pass the Pandas.
I'm not the Demographic: I'm quite certain I'm not dancing to the beat of a different drummer, I'm outright playing the bongos and the harmonica in a Country/Western/Thrash Metal Fusion Band. There's a LOT of material coming out, from RPGs to Warhammer, and all the nooks and crannies in between, that just isn't appealing to me, hence why I'm reviewing 30+ year old magazines for material.
General Muckery:
Basketball: Of course, all this COVID talk couldn't keep my kids down at all. Basketball did manage to start up in late fall, got shut down in December, and roared through with two leagues for the winter. Millie's team seemed to get it together, but Maja's team had some issues (namely the fact that she was the center on the one team by a good 3 inches. She should not be the starting center on any team in her age group.).
Basketball, the Legend Continues: Once vaccines began rolling out, and all-out fear and lockdown subsided, the AAU season kicked into gear, even ending with thousands of maskless folks in attendance, thankfully without any reported incidents. Millie's 4th grade team was crazy dominant for a young bunch, getting to the finals in each of the eight tournaments they played in, and winning four of them. Maja's team picked up two titles along the way in seven tournaments and showed a lot of promise, even against the top competition. Now onto Maja's playing school ball... and volleyball.... Did I mention Fall AAU is in full effect?
Nostalgic Actual Play - COMPLETE! Behind the scenes, all my old D&D stories of my youth that could be told, have been. While Gulluvia is still open-ended, everything is caught up, and in a bit of a surprise, a few episodes of the Burning Trogs Redux were written up months ago, and will probably appear in 2022. Now, if I can only keep up with the Star Wars game.
Georic Gazetteer: I thought I might be able to pump out of a few interesting vignettes of the World of Georic, but there are enough other projects to keep me busy. I'm not considering the project a failure, nor am I shelving it entirely. Nations of the world, as described by Riknl Kannex, can be an ongoing, but unscheduled project. Better yet, I may simply review all of my actual plays, in campaign chronological order, and document/map out the world a bit better.
Kickstarter Status:
KS: Able Company - ARRIVED
KS: Battle Valor 15mm Baggage Trains - ARRIVED THREE MONTHS EARLY
KS: Blackvale
KS: Brutal Quest - ARRIVED
KS: A Complicated Profession - ARRIVED
KS: Cthulhu Wars CATaclysm - Never going to show Up
KS: The Evolutionary Mishap - ARRIVED
KS: Gamma Zine #3 - ARRIVED
KS: Merovingian Hack - ARRIVED
KS: Pulp Alley Boxed Set
KS: Reaper Bones V - ARRIVED
KS: Sci-Fi Dwarves (Macrocosm) - ARRIVED
KS: Sci-Fi Dwarves Command Squad - ARRIVED
KS: Sci-Fi Dwarves Command Squad - ARRIVED
KS: Sci-Fi Dwarves Jr Officers - ARRIVED
KS: Space Scoundrels - ARRIVED
KS: Steve Jackson Games Coasters for the Party - ARRIVED, AND EARLY!
KS: Space Scoundrels - ARRIVED
KS: Steve Jackson Games Coasters for the Party - ARRIVED, AND EARLY!
KS: Star Schlock Astroguards
KS: Super Tiny Giant Battles
KS: Thorgrim & Company
KS: Tomb of the Bitchin' Chimera - ARRIVED
KS: Tomb of the Bitchin' Chimera - ARRIVED
KS: Triads - ARRIVED
KS: Twilight 2000 - PDF ARRIVED
KS: Twilight 2000 - PDF ARRIVED
KS: Wars of Ozz -ARRIVED
Media: Mandalorian Season 2 and Wandavision both had rapidly ascending mid-season storylines, The Mandolorian's big reveal is now literally used to describe similar events. Wandavision sort of fell flat, like there should be an extra episode or two to at least tidy up storylines that were there. Hopefully, they are just suitable teasers for the movies.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was a happy theme continuation of the Captain America series of films, delving into storylines I far preferred over Civil War and the Winter Soldier.
The Bad Batch was a healthy dose of Star Wars, although Filoni's penchant to tie every Star Wars project together is making my efforts as a GM to do the same with my own game seem quite tame. Still a good reminder as to how episodic Star Wars should work, even without the tie-ins and cameos.
Not everybody seems to like Loki, but in a world were my preferred comics stories could just be a different reality, everything is wildly amusing. Still waiting to see if the "Eth 615 - Eth 616" reference to the end of the tape in the time theatre in episode 1 is the first nod to multiple Lokis, multiple earths, or a lesser Mephisto-style trolling by Marvel to the fanbase.
What If? was far better than it should have been. If it kept up the quality of the other Disney+ properties, I'd gladly take ten episodes every six months, to not only fill in scheduling, but provide me my quota of Howard the Duck.
And yet, with all the wonders of Disney+, I sat down with Millie to watch the season premiere of Stargirl, and that blows everything out of the water. Perhaps I'm a 20th Century DC purist, but that show keeps the themes I've always appreciated, and has more storylines than the most of Marvel. The return of the Shade warms my morally ambiguous heart, I just need a throw-away line to tie-in to a goggle-wearing hipster and I will be content with Stargirl being the only watchable Arrowverse show left.
After watching the Season 2 finale of the Mandalorian, I discovered the reaction videos of YouTube. Quite simply other folks recording their own reactions while watching shows/trailers/and movies. While I enjoyed that episode of the Mandalorian, watching grown men and women lose their minds in a joyful (and many times tearful) manner was far more amusing. I've developed a few favorites, but also love watching third party made compilation videos of full episodes, or even particular scenes.
Painting: Getting over 150+ figures done in a year is a huge accomplishment.
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| Battle Valor Space Dwarf Command v/ variant color helmets for Medic or Scout |
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| ... or Buffy for that matter. |
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| Armed Jews |
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| Los Cuatro Gnomos Solitorios for Gnome Wars |
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| The Mousling Musketeer |
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| Mad Mozz and Wildchild |
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| Zygons |
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| Piggy Cart! |
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| "The Crew" from Battle Valor Games |
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| Gnomish Space Marine Snipes, Part 1 |
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| Gnome Wars Canadians |
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| Gnome Wars Russians |
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| Gnomish Space Marine Snipers, Part Two |
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| A dirty Gungan |
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| Gnomish Space Marine Lasguns |
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| Windsword Egyptian Accessories |
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| Gnoman Empire Ballista Crew from Brigade Games |
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| Blue Martians of the Holy Fern |
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| Reaper Mummy Captain |
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| GSM Special Weapon Squad |
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| The 2nd Hultr Half-Track |
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| 15mm Human Mounted Wizard (Battle Valor) |
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| Transnistrian Scientific Republic Missile Tanks |
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| Hellian Hell Hounds in 15mm (Battle Valor Games) |
2021 Gaming with the Gnomies Awards
Best Kickstarter: A Complicated Profession. Inexpensive, timely, and hopefully a sheer hoot for our Christmas game this year.
Best Kickstarter: A Complicated Profession. Inexpensive, timely, and hopefully a sheer hoot for our Christmas game this year.
Worst Kickstarter: Reaper Bones V - A definite surprise, but so many communications and it was a passing comment that the new mouslings would be gargantuan chibi-sized monstrosities? On top of that, I simply don't like the Black Bones material. I would have maintained My dollar pledge and ordered nothing else.
Best Game: A Dark Fortress isn't slated to post until April 2022 (Episode #31), but it is the first appearance of Duk'k: The Bounty Hunter in our Star Wars campaign.
Best RPG Purchase: With no cons, limited shopping, and pdfs not qualifying, it needs to go to Dungeon Master's Hex Notebook. Sad fact: I haven't really used them.
Best Minis: Not one but FOUR Hultr Half-Tracks, at 40% off. I even have two them finished!
Best Other Purchase: I was going to with a stack of Chessex Mini Cases that, like the Half-Tracks, I off eBay at significant discount, but in reality, the winner is the complete copy of Mutant Chronicles - Siege of the Citadel for five bucks. This may too end up on the pile of things we'll never play, but it was a steal for the ages.
Next: My Plans for 2021-22
