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.
This year, I threw a bunch of stuff against the wall to see if anything would stick. On occasion, some of it actually stuck.
The Blog:
The Top Ten Blog Posts Over the Past Twelve Months
The Top Ten Blog Posts Over the Past Twelve Months
- (Review) The Games Keep - West Chester
- Historicon 2024: Most Excellent and Most Triumphant (Conventions)
- Fall-In 2023 AAR (Conventions)
- Vote for Eric Jacobson for HMGS Board of Directors (HMGS)
- (Gamma World) #29 - Dr Helianthus
- Attack of the Inflatable Zombie Pirates (Fistful of Lead)
- Cold Wars Has Risen... and Descended Into Hell (HMGS)
- Popular Old Posts from History (General Blogging)
- Historicon 2024 PEL Event List is Up (Conventions)
- #RPGaDay - Day 23 - Peerless Player
I don't have the full details, but the review of the Games Keep in West Chester has consistently gotten hits, and not a random flurry of hits from Singapore, either.
And the Cold Wars post, put up the last week of the gaming year, struck a nerve with some people.
The Gamma World episode is actually the "dream sequence" of the Fistful of Lead Wasteland Warriors game Mike Lung runs at HMGS cons with the De Facto Explorers as a playable war party. *Spoilers* there's another "dream sequence" coming up sometime in the next year.
One Million Views! - Sure, there were a lot of bots along the ways (specific shoutouts to Italy, Singapore, and the Ukraine), but hitting a million hits on the blog is an easily recognizable event. Here's hoping the next million involve fewer AI, but I doubt it.
#RPGaDay2024 - The uptick in traffic was heartening, as well as my realization that older #RPGaDay posts were seeing natural (non-bot) traffic as well. I nicknamed this year's prompts as the "Martin Luther #RPGaDay" because so many of them were leaving me asking, "What does this mean?" In the end I found some new friends, read a few new blogs, and gained some new followers. I don't do it for the clicks, or least I shouldn't expect an upswing in traffic. Surprisingly, in the last 11 years of doing this community engagement, only two of the 350+ posts have ever cracked my top 20 posts for any year. This year two made it in the Top 20, one of those in the Top 10!,
#RPGBlogCarnival: After being intrigued by the Blog Carnival at the end of the last gaming year, and still getting my article out two weeks past the end of month due date, the topics for the last 12 months have been uninspiring to me. Chalk it up to me not being the demographic.
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| Planet 28 - "Immovable Force" |
Project 350: Despite using up a lot of stock gnome art, things still crept up, but not as bad as the 514 (323/191) from 472 (314/158) might demonstrate. *Spoilers* I have most of January 2025's Character Creation Challenge already outlined for each day, and 13 of them are already in scheduled to post.
TRIUMPHS:
Curbing the Spending Spree: I was at maximum capacity to start this past year, and I did pledge to reduce purchases, or at least purge. Well, the purge didn't happen (except with Magic cards), and by large, the additions I acquired were largely dirt cheap, if not free
Kicking the Kickstarter Habit: I have more notes under my usual Kickstarter review, but I went from seven Kickstarters with physical rewards to two (TMNT and d6 2nd Edition), and I may have kicked my habit of crowdsourced PDFs. The aforementioned image sharing issue, as well as its continued evolution into products that aren't in my wheelhouse has also helped things.
PELAs are awesome/Screw the PELAs: Both at Fall-In! and Historicon, my daughter Maja and I both had the honor of being judges for the HMGS PELA (Pour Encourager Les Autres) Awards. Judging multiple sessions has exposed us to some old stereotypes, some innovative games, and the realization that, most of the time, the judges do get it right.
The being said, my situation of "always the bridesmaid, never the bride" stung considerably more this past year, as the only Stout Gnome to not earn a PELA, I ran some of my best games this past year, and saw the judges walk by... once.
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| Fistful of Lead/Gnome Wars: Dire Wolves |
CATASTROPHES:
The Unproductive Long Vacation: I was let go of my job in the middle of 2023. Between PTO I never used and a quite attractive severance, I got to relax and be the Uber for my kids they needed. By winter, though, looking for a job was imperative and it took FOREVER. Even if people aren't moving around positions like post-COVID, they are passively looking in the job market, flooding positions they have tepid interest in. When I did get interviews, important pieces of information had been omitted from the job posting, like part-time, or $12/hour for work that regularly paid $18-20. I was about to break down and do long-shift overnight warehouse work when an intriguing job offer came up. For the first time in two decades, I'm out of insurance and learning a new industry and it is fun.
All through that time, however, I got minimal gaming done. Seriously, even with the prospect of solo games and a twenty foot move from gaming shelves to tables, the backlog of figures I want to paint, and games I want to run is real.
No Cold Wars!: First COVID, then the lack of Convention Directors, then the abortive move to Ocean City left Cold Wars in limbo. It was allegedly back... in Gettysburg... in February of 2025, but then the organizers realized that nothing had change to the con site since we left in 2004.
Gnome and Away: I may have been a bit soon(er) to create a Gnome War scenario based on the Oklahoma land rush. There was limited game material to be inspired by/outright steal, and those that I did find created an outright boring game.
Reaper "One Piece at a Time" - The concept of grabbing the lowest number SKU for Reaper Bones at my FLGS, painting it up, and moving on to the next highest was created as something fun to do and support my FLGS. Two packs in and a set of skeletons later, it lost all its luster. I may bring back a version of it with all the Bones figures I picked up at the fleas market at Historicon, but we shall see.
Pulp Season 4/Gulluvia/GSM: Most of the projects saw zero headway.
GENERAL MUCKERY:
Basketball: A new Varsity head coach had a good honeymoon year. Maja's spot on the depth chart guaranteed her infinite playing time... at JV... as the center. Millie's running the Freshman team as a 7th grader and looks to dominate again this year.
There is one last basketball rant for the year, and it's huge, but I'm letting that one possibly evolve.... It's BIG, but for now, it's the midst of volleyball season, and the girls are enjoying the change of pace.
Historicon 2024! - The best Historicon in a long time, even with the absence of Jim "the Gnome King" Stanton. I ran the traditional Gnome Wars games and the Joust in his place, played in a great Fistful of Lead scenario, and got lots of time to hang out with Maja, who may become a permanent awards judge, the way things are looking.
FALL-IN! - Fall-In started on a sour note, with needing to attend a memorial service for one of the other parents with the AAU team, but I did manage to kidnap Maja for the weekend. The high point of the weekend was 30+ local homeschooled kids from the Lancaster area descending upon HMGS Next Gen for a morning of gnomes, medieval sieges, squig hopping, and more! Maja and I learned how to be PELA judges and I took home a decent haul (Half of which I've either played with or starting painting!) More can be read about that here.
MEPACON - I made it to Mepcaon Fall 2023, got to connect with some folks, made witty banter in the back of the room while the game auction generate positively ludicrous bids for items, and enjoyed another con in the Lehigh Valley. I didn't make the spring con, but HMGS made an appearance. Their November con doesn't interfere with basketball or Fall-In! this year, so here's hoping...
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| Historicon with "True Historical Gnomes" |
Magic Arena - I will admit that I was happy I was no longer investing in MtG Pauper when I downloaded Magic: Arena and started playing. Despite limited communication, there were plenty on anonymous players that, due to play style, I could picture as the neckbeard, unwashed, drooping sweatpants masses. I'm pretty certain I have no desire to play face-to-face Magic ever again, but I also can barely tolerate those who play online. Online calculations allow for crazy, effect/counter/token resolution bookkeeping that I only want to scratch the surface of. To put it into Magic Grognard terms, the modern version of Control/Stasis/Millstone seems to require balance and skill, and a little luck. White Weenie, however, when growing creatures and ridiculous life gain, is more annoying than a deck full of Lightning Bolts and Plague Rats.
I will admit my Electrostatic Infantry/Venerated Rotpriest/Rotisserie Elemental Red/Green Deck brought back some memories of my Type I Kird Ape Deck, with a lot more variants.
Kickstarter Status: I'll be honest, the reign of Kickstarter is over, and my wallet is happy for it. As companies divest themselves from the Kickstarter crowdsourcing product, I'm simply not following them to the new platform they wish to use. I'm sure it's financially wiser to avoid Kickstarter's fees, but as a slightly rabid casual user, I feel no need to switch when it works for me.
KS: Caves of Refuge - ARRIVED!
KS: Cthulhu Wars Cataclysm - I still don't think this will ever show up.
KS: d6 System, 2nd Edition - February 2025 - PDF only
KS: Macrocosm Chaos Space Dwarves - Wave 3 - ARRIVED!
KS: Mote of Madness - ARRIVED!
KS: New Dark Age: Death of Magic - ARRIVED!
KS: People In Prison - ARRIVED!
KS: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness RPG - Spring 2025
KS: Trouble with Gnolls - I think this link got lost in the ether...
KS: Village of Omelette - I haven't gotten a link for the second time from this company. Never again.
The pettiest thing which confirmed the end of the Age of Kickstarter for me was a reformatting of their pages this year. Historically, I love to write up posts about the Kickstarters which catch my eye, or perhaps a company/designer I've had a good experience for. Instead of filling up my pic storage with screenshots from the campaign, I tended to link the url to the image directly from the campaign.
Sometime in May, Kickstarter reformatted all the addresses, so that that all the urls I currently have are coming up null/no image. Given that most of my 832 posts over 15 years the have "Kickstarter" as a tag are formatted like that, I have no desire to correct them all. If I'm going to be slighted in life, it might as well be over something as petty as this...
Painting - Not only did I paint more figures this year than in the past two, I touched up/refurbished almost 200 existing figures, mainly gnomes.
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| 77001 Skeletal Spearmen from my Reaper Bones "One Piece at a Time" |
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| My party of Inflatable Zombie Pirates |
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| RAFM Deep Ones, or the "Boloto Rusalki" |
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| An Old Couch |
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| Discount Bunker |
2023-24 Gaming with the Gnomies Awards
Best Kickstarter: Macrocosm Chaos Space Dwarves - Wave 3
Worst Kickstarter: Cthulhu Wars Cataclysm - I'm retiring this one from consideration. After over a decade of Kickstarters, this might be the first one I've pledged for physical rewards and they haven't arrived.
Best Game: HMGS Next Gen - Homeschool Gnomes from Fall-In!
Best RPG Purchase: Game Master's Book of Random Encounters
Best Minis: Star Wars d6 West End Bulk Lot from Wally's Basement
Best Other Purchase: For the Queen
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