One new thing I haven't done before is write-up this a year-in-review, which is an on-going projects throughout the year, with the links, pictures, etc, only to lose it thanks to a Google Chrome snafu. I enjoy reading prior years' reports from time to time. What I do not like it typing up a review twice in the same year.
Minor kvetching aside... and away we go!
Mepacon Fall 2021 - Coming home Saturday night from Historicon, allowed me to take Maja down the road to the local Mepacon on Sunday morning. A relaxing breakfast, light shopping, catching up with friends, and a Monster of the Week game with Maja formed a near perfect gaming day.
With a few enough games were entered, Millie's team was arguably the top program in the northeast. Even with two losses to quality opponents, there strength of schedule was so far superior than the other programs, the numbers weren't even close.
The Blog:
The Top Ten Blog Posts Over the Past Twelve Months
The Top Ten Blog Posts Over the Past Twelve Months
#1 Historicon 2021 Has Finally Occurred (Conventions)
#2 Historicon 2022 I Came, I Saw, I Need a Nap (Conventions)
#3 #ZineQuest2022 - Fixers from the Floorboards (Kickstarter)
#4 Recycled Sci-Fi Buildings (Scenery/Terrain)
#5 Venusian Pond Scum (Scenery/Terrain)
#6 X4 Turrets for the Gnomish Space Marines (Painting)
#7 Terror of the Loc-Nar (Planet 28)
#8 Valley of the Peeps (Gnome Wars)
#9 Run While the Inn is Closed (Gnome Wars)
#10 For Honor and Glory - The Grand Tourney (Kickstarter)
It makes sense to have double Historicons dominate the blog. Two Gnome Wars-related posts make perfect sense, given the name of the blog, and that Planet 28 AAR and the two related painting posts enthuses me to play more games.
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| It's been a sleepy year.... |
The one big omission from the usual suspects on the Top Ten? Anything Pulp, and I'll cover that further.
#RPGaDay2022 is a continuation of the exercise I've done for the past nine years. It's rather insular, and needs a boast from some higher profile folks, but at the end of the day, I enjoy the work I put into it.
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| Seriously, any social media experiment that allows me to post this picture and relive my childhood can't be all that bad. |
#CharacterCreationChallenge is something I decided to do December 31st for the entirety of January. Nothing like taking the time to make up different characters in different game systems. I honestly forgot how hard something like this could be, much less a character with a decent backstory. I probably will NOT revisit this for January 2023, but who knows. For now, I did create an index of the characters for the whole month.
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| I also learned that games like Pew-Pew are great to stat out GI Joe characters. Maybe I don't need the new RPG. |
#ZineQuest/#ZineMonth - Kickstarter screwed the pooch and tried to move the popular #ZineQuest campaign of small, unique RPG projects, from its traditional February slot. with much complaint. Many publishers continued to launch their products in February under the #ZineMonth. Blog-wise, I mentioned a lot more cool blogs in February than in August, and personally, I supported 5 projects in February, and only one in August.
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| Historicon 2021 - A wide view of Mike Lung's Underwater Paleo Diet game. |
Triumphs
Double Historicon - COVID isn't gone, but thanks to vaccines, mutations, and a large swath of the population getting a weaker version, conventions are back and working towards being better than ever. We had great games all weekend, which a plethora of pics, a coming out party for my Mormon Navoo Legion, and the insertion into the Gnome Wars vernacular of the term "Mormon Alamo."
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| Historicon 2022 - The Don Quixote of War Elephants |
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| Historicon 2022 - Every game had a figure-versus-train moment. This picture might be my favorite all year. |
Star Wars D6 - The crew of the Pretio is most of my gaming life right now. A ship full of exotic animal broker/hunters a few years before the original Star Wars should not be this fun. We did complete and publish the side-campaign, "Bo'Nonas and Oopsa", and we've recently started prep on another side campaign involving Jedi.
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| Run While the Inn is Closed for Gnome Wars |
All About the Monkeys - I know I missed this on my first write-up that disappeared, so here's a positive from that! I ran an impromptu session of Apocalypse World due to some Monday night no-shows. Nothing was as polished as the game of Monster of the Week that Maja and I played at Mepacon, but I was able to use the classic In Media Res trope and force the players to realize they were playing medical testing monkeys who had escaped during a traffic accident, ripped from the headlines.
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| Historicon 2021 - The Mormons hunker down outside the castle. |
Burning Trogs Redux - Another project I failed to mention on my first write-up, I started my gaming year pausing the Star Wars actual plays, and completing the Hackmaster actual play from 2007-2008, which I've lumped into my Burning Trogs Redux, and eight-episode between my old Hackmaster campaign and the pipe dream of a relaunch. Any chance to use and re-tool parts of B10 - Night's Dark Terror is welcome in my book. With the exception of a few Star Wars Actual Plays from this month, every campaign I've cared about is listed on the blog.
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| Historicon 2021 |
Catastrophes
Mepacon Spring 2022 - Well, not a catastrophe, per se, rather a victim of the girls' AAU schedule. Disappointing, as I believe I've only made three of the cons when they've been a 20 minute leisurely drive from my house. They move an hour away to Bethlehem starting this November, so I'll see what we can pull off.
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| Historicon 2022: Nomepoleon on a War Elephant happened. And it was glorious. |
Pulp Alley - Season 4 of my regular Pulp campaign was meant to be a transition from Savage Showdown to Pulp Alley, with a big episode 1 extravaganza, but despite some progress, we haven't come close to launching Tomb of the Serpent, or even setting up leagues to play.
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| Historicon 2022 |
Kid's Painting - Outside of a few minor items, basketball, basketball, and a bit of real life have really stifled gaming and painting. I haven't gotten
General Muckery
Basketball - I would label Basketball for the girls to be a triumph, if it didn't affect everything we do gaming-related. Heck, it effectively cancelled a long string of Father's Day game, even if this year's game was eventually played after Father Day.
Millie's local team is pretty darn good, getting second place in the winter league, including a first-ever win against the "hated" Freeland Wolfpack. They followed up with a 3rd place in the ultra-competitive Freeland YMCA Tournament, and an impressive upset win over Freeland in the much-vaunted Back Mountain Tournament. Considering the limited practice time, and that our tall center (see first picture below) only started playing basketball five months prior, I say this is a group to watch out for in junior high.
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| Mountain Top - 2022 Back Mountain 5th Grade Champs |
Transitioning to AAU is kind of crazy, especially since the Wolfpack decided against fielding a team in the tournament circuit, and their two best girls joined the same team as Millie! Millie went from primary ball handler for local team to the possibly the 6th best point guard for AAU.
That's okay, Millie has a particular set of skills that keeps her on the court.....
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| A regular game... |
With enough experience as a parent/fan, I went a little crazy this year and started tracking tournament results throughout the Northeast to determine who exactly was playing who, and setting up a Power Index to determine who really was the best team, based on record, opponents win percentage, and even the win percentage of the other teams' opponents.
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| Playing back-up center |
There was also the invention of "Millie Rock" her AAU persona.
Maja made it to junior high ball, and got to play on the 7th, 8th, and Freshman teams.
Collectively the teams went something like 42-5 over the season, winning each of their league championships.
Her AAU team was still solid, as technically seven of her teammates joined the same AAU program (some different grade levels), and two played elsewhere. I'll almost say in passing that Maja's AAU team was only #12 in the Northeast, being one of two teams in the top ten hardest schedules with a winning record. Not national acclaim, but when they finished the Spring AAU season and went to the local rec center for a junior high league, they demolished teams much faster and even had a quality loss (20-19) against a school team that held national renown for their Spring AAU schedule.
The Georic Gazetteer - The idea to compile data from the countries in my long-running campaign world was well-intentioned, but I knew the schedule I put together was much to ambitious.. Markovia and Argivia were completed, but before I progress any further (three more are at various stages) I need to finish one vital piece to each entry: maps. More to come on that!
Project 350 - My usual pipe-dream, to get my drafts and scheduled posts under 350 combined. After letting the backlog and #RPGaDay and #ZineQuest work it's way through, I'm at 457 (293/164), way down from 482 (312/170), which was a significant decrease from the year before that.
Maja got plenty of playing time between 47-some odd games, never scored more than 10, but making everyone around her better.
The Gnomish Space Marines - Painting and gaming for the GSM took a general hit this year, but my interest has not waned. I do have an Order of Battle and other organizational charts set up for them, even if certain sections were directly pulled form Laserburn and Forces of the Imperium.
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| Kinda surprised I got as many support vehicles as I do. |
Planet 28 - Tying directly into the GSM, I did finally get figures on a table for a game or two of Planet 28. The rules work for skirmish storytelling, which is fine until I paint up all the Space Dwarves. Since it will never happen, I'll be happy with this game and the setting-neutral rules.
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| Mike's "real" Paleo Diet game |
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| More Historicon 2021 |
Kickstarter Status
KS: Attack from Space - July '22
KS: Batteries Low, Getting Dark - ARRIVED
KS: The Banshee of Billfort - Duckquest RPG Zine - ARRIVED
KS: Blackvale - July '21 - C'mon Man!
KS: Children of Uma - September '22
KS: Cthulhu and Pulp Characters - Wave 2 - July '22
KS: Cthulhu Wars Cataclysm - I still don't think this will ever show up.
KS: Delta Green: The Conspiracy - April '22
KS: Escape from Stalingrad Z - November '22
KS: For the Honor and the Glory - The Grand Tournament - ARRIVED
KS: In Soviet Russia, Spy Are You! - March '22
KS: The Last Sentinels - ARRIVED
KS: Macrocosm Sci-Fi Dwarves High Command - ARRIVED
KS: Macrocosm Chaos Space Dwarves - Wave 1 - ARRIVED
KS: Macrocosm Chaos Space Dwarves - Wave 2 - August '22
KS: Pew-Pew, A Complicated Profession - ARRIVED
KS; Planet 28, 2nd Edition - September '22 - PDF Arrived, Book in the mail from the UK.
KS: Reaper Bones 6 - April '24
KS: Star Schlock Astroguards - ARRIVED
KS: Super Tiny Giant Battles - ARRIVED
KS: Thorgrim & Company - ARRIVED
KS: Twilight 2000 Physical Rewards - ARRIVED
KS: War for the Wasteland - ARRIVED
KS: War of Orcs and Dwarves - September '22
Painting - I certainly can be upset with such lackluster performance after a phenomenal year in 2020-21, but looking back I realize I only painted four figures in the year prior to COVID.
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| Recycled Sci-Fi Buildings |
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| Venusian Pond Scum |
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| Yet Another "Blue Martian" |
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| A 15mm mouse figure, with some like-scaled paint jobs from last year. |
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| Astral Searcher from Hackmaster (via Iron Wind Metals) |
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| Mongrels from the Stuffed Fables board games |
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| Mordant - Fusilier Dragon Knights |
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| X4 Mobile Turrets FROM DOLLAR TREE! |
2022 Gaming with the Gnomies Awards
Best Kickstarter: It feels like a Lifetime Achievement Award this time, but Macrocosm Miniatures processed not one, but three Kickstarters over the last 12 months.
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| Space Dwarf High Command |
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| Chaos Space Dwarf, Wave One |
Best Game: Monkey Pants for Fun and Profit is coming out in two weeks (Episode #59), but it was the most surreal bout of comedy combat I have overseen in a long time. In certain universes within the Star Wars multiverse, Tarrie Prollek is still waiting for the light to change.
Best RPG Purchase: The Ultimate Micro-RPG Book has been a life-saver over a number of sessions where we were short essential players for the regular campaign. Heartily recommended.
Best Minis: Macrocosm's Sci-Fi Dwarves High Command. Super clean, very expressive.
Best Other Purchase: A LED magnifier which was very helpful as I was still recovering from my previous illnesses. I've put it away since I got an update eyeglass prescription, but it's nearby if and when I'll need it again.
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