2010 New Year's Resolutions in Review

The end of another year means, among other things, it's time to look back at last year's New Year's resolutions.

Go to GenCon
Success! I posted the first and second parts of my GenCon review back in August, so I won't go into too much detail here. Needless to say -- fun. Getting it set up was, at times, frustrating, but I managed to rescue it from real life relationship drama and see the thing through. Some of the best four days of my life to this point.

Read 15 Fantasy Novels
Failure! I did read the Kushiel series and loved it, and I'm partway through A Princess of Mars, but that was about it. I've got The Lies of Locke Lamora and The Forever War sitting on the shelf (or, actually, in a box with all the other stuff I brought home from college for break) but I never got around to getting through them. This was partly because this summer was much busier than the one that preceded it -- four to five nights of gaming a week, plus a full time internship -- but that's not an entirely satisfactory excuse.

Blog About Every Game I'm In
Failure! I did write about every campaign I've been in but I didn't post much about Trollsmyth's games for great whacks of time, and I'm not even sure I mentioned when I dropped the group game. Or when the 7th Sea game ended, for that matter.

Let Someone Else Run the Summer Game
Success! Someone else in the group almost did run a game, but it ended up not happening, partly because I complained about it. Which was, in retrospect, probably uncalled for. But then, so was my trying to play d20 again.

Finish, Run, and Publish my Social RPG
Failure! Well, kinda. Basically what happened is that I decided that this turned into an entirely different project. It's not likely to see publication, largely because I've picked up a couple of other, better opportunities to get something published over the past year -- more interesting projects, and more rewarding publication avenues.

All in all, not too bad a year. Two unqualified successes, two unqualified failures, and two kinda sorta's puts me somewhat behind where I found myself in the last New Year's review, but on the other hand -- This year has been weirder, busier, and less RPG-focused than last, and none of those are entirely bad things.

2010 New Year's Resolutions

There's not as many this year as last, but honestly, I'm trying to be a little less hyper and spastic than I was when I made that last batch. I got a lot of things done this past year, including a lot of gaming, but much of that gaming turned out to be different lessons in what I don't like. Which is good, and I gave a lot more thought to my play style and what exactly I like about and in gaming this year than I have in years past, but in 2010 I want to narrow down a little bit and really get involved with those things I've identified now as Stuff I Like.

Go to GenCon
This one should be pretty simple, but it's something I've been meaning to do for the past two years now without ever quite putting in the effort to make it happen. I've already got two members of my road trip posse confirmed, money tucked away, and arrangements made to borrow a car, so that's in progress. I also have a couple extra goals for once I'm actually at GenCon; while the list will no doubt grow over the next seven months, it currently includes bringing a revamped megadungeon binder ready for play, and in no way mentions getting revenge for all the horrible things Trollsmyth has done to my character.

Read 15 Fantasy Novels
Another easy one. I got a few read over last summer (the first two Pern trilogies, to be precise) but if I can get started before August then I should have no problem beating that number. At the moment I've got my eye on the Kushiel series, and the rest of the list is mostly romantic fantasy, since I missed that all during my teenage years, but I'm also going to see about getting a little pulp fantasy and sword and sorcery in there. (And to that end, a book of short stories officially counts as a novel.)

This is really two resolutions in one. First, I just want to read more, period. But I also spent pretty much all of high school reading science fiction -- and mostly Golden Age and hard SF at that. It's time to move on.

Blog About Every Game I'm In
This year I'm going to make a point of writing about the games I'm running, playing in, and planning. I do a fair amount of that on the blog already, but this year I'm want to do it more consistently and organize it better. The other day I was going through the archives and thought to myself that it would be cool to have a better record of the gaming that I'd done last year, so that's what I'm going to do for this year.

I won't be doing a write up of every session that I play, if only because there's no way I'm going to start doing that for the solo game, and Erin's 7th Sea game doesn't have sessions per se, being play by post. But at least a monthly check-in should be reasonable for all the games I'm in right now, just to talk about what we're doing, why it's cool, what it's got me thinking about, and what's working or not working.

Let Someone Else Run This Year's Summer Game
This one may be tough, because I'm a compulsive planner of campaigns and I've got at least three ideas right now that part of me is dying to work up and run this summer. That's when the high school crowd gets back together for our annual three or four month mini-campaign, and I've run both of the ones we've had so far. This year, I'm going to leave the field open for someone else. I haven't ruled out encouraging someone to run something, but I'm not going to do it myself.

I've got a couple of reasons for this. The big one is just that I've got a longer-term online game in the works and I don't want to take my eye off of that. It's also been a while since I played regularly at the table, and partly I just want to give someone else a turn. I'm a little worried that if I don't run something, no one will, since as I mentioned I'm the compulsive game-planner in the group, but even if that's how things work out I've still got Doom & Tea Parties and the brand-new 7th Sea Wave game to fall back on.

Finish, Run, and Publish my Social RPG
I haven't written about this much yet becaue I'm superstitious that if I write about it too much before it gets done, it won't. Essentially, I'm solving the problem of what system to use for my next campaign by building a neo-classical RPG about social interactions. The "publish" part may be a bit of a stretch, but as far as I know there's nothing out there quite like what I'm working on, and it's not a bad spot to shoot for even if I'm not quite sure I'll make it.

2009 New Year's Resolutions in Review

I posted my original list of New Year's gaming resolutions towards the end of last year. Now, we get to see how I did, both for my own edification and as a part of this month's RPG Blog Carnival.

8. Pick up a copy (or two) of Fight On!
Success! I've got 1-4 now, in fact. I don't have plans to pick up the rest that are out yet, but that's mainly because I don't have any old school D&D campaigns currently in the works. Next time I run a dungeon or similar, I'll see about picking up the next batch.

7. Post a little more regularly
Failure! No matter how you measure it, I posted less this year than I did last year. Which, honestly, I'm fine with. The blog does what I want it to.

6. Train a new GM
Success! At least by the specific wording of the original resolution: I got boytoy to run a couple sessions of Swords & Wizardry. He hasn't run much since the bat incident, but we keep talking about trying Mutant Future sometime.

5. Read a few Conan stories
Failure! In the specific wording of the resolution, anyhow. I read no Conan stories this year. I did, however, read a bunch of Solomon Kane stories, and the first two original Pern series. Which is really what I wanted, just to read some more fantasy.

4. Write up a megadungeon through 3 levels
Failure! But, again, only by the specific wording. See, what happened was, I filled out level one and got a start on the maps for level two and I said to myself, I said, "Gee, I bet I could run this thing now for the gang." Which I did, with excellent success: a few solo sessions for the boyfriend, another for part of the Traveller group, and then again a couple times over the summer. I never did get around to finishing up all three levels, but I accomplished the spirit of what I set out to do.

3. Finish my Traveller Subsector
Failure! Unless by "finish my Traveller Subsector" you mean "run a Traveller campaign," in which case, again, my performance was perfectly adequate. The dang thing still isn't finished, per se, and probably won't ever be. But I scratched the Traveller itch.

2. Play in a campaign
Success! In a way I absolutely could not have imagined back when I wrote these down. Less than a week after the original post went up, Trollsmyth started recruiting for his Labyrinth Lord game, talked me into playing in it, and, well, now I play in two pretty fantastic weekly games of Labyrinth Lord, and I've just finished a character for a soon-to-start game of 7th Sea on Wave. It's awesome.

1. Run a campaign
Success! I knocked this one out with two campaigns and a couple extra one-shot sessions here and there. I ended up being less than pleased with the results of those campaigns, but I learned a fair amount, and I've got a much better idea now of what kinds of games I want to run and how to run them well.

All in all, not a bad year. Four definite successes and another three satisfactory failures sounds pretty good, from where I'm standing. Enough so, in fact, that I've been putting some thought to what I'd write on a list for this year. Stay tuned.