New Year’s Resolutions

I have a number of these, and a few of them are about gaming. In no particular order:

  1. Create a dungeon of significant size. Maybe mega, maybe not. I’m interested in exploring the creation of dungeons that can change significantly based on PC actions. I’m inspired by some of the dungeons from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and the Tomb Raider games, particularly how they control access using flooding and other mechanical tricks.
  2. Miniatures. I am totally new to this gaming subculture. I ordered some Otherworld minis a while back, not knowing that they would require much assembly. Well, they do. Even if I don’t care about painting them artistically, they still need to be based, and some sculpts come as more than one piece and need to be glued. I also bought some old Grenadier AD&D lead-based minis (including hirelings!) from Ebay. I want to give these a coat of primer or something so that I don’t feel paranoid about exposing myself to lead. I’ve already received some great suggestions for how to do some of these things (see here, here, and here).
  3. Classic D&D. I’m enjoying running my Nalfeshnee Hack game, but I want to play some traditional D&D. I have some ideas for a house document that I would like to try out (some of which have already seen draft form on this blog), so I’m going to say that’s the ambitious version of this goal: finish the house document and start up a game. Or, less ambitious: make some time to play in one of the many ConstantCon games.
  4. Art. I used to make art. I’m really out of practice though, and I want to get back into the habit. Somewhere I came across a quote about how a beginning artist should plan to throw away their first 100 attempts (the only reference I could find is this, but I don’t think that was the source I heard it from originally). I bought a sketchbook and messed around a bit already, but my efforts so far have made me embarrassed to think they might stick around, which has resulted in a distinct lack of enthusiasm. So, my goal is to knock out at least 100 pieces on looseleaf so that I can start to feel good about putting things in the sketchbook.
  5. Wilderness map. I am working on a hexcrawl setting for a B/X game. I’ve produced a few maps, but they’re mostly just for practice so far. I want to finish something with all the moving parts (encounter tables, strongholds, special hirelings, important monsters). Not finished in the sense of a published campaign setting, but finished in the sense of enough hooks to be ready for players. And maybe put it to use with item 3?
  6. Gaming purchases. I went from owning only the three core Fourth Edition books this past summer to lots more. (When I played in the 90s, I had a shelf full of mostly Second Edition gaming books, but I sold them all when I went off to school in 1999.) Time to slow the acquisition down. I have plenty to read and use now. Something like a purchase per month from now on is probably reasonable.

Too many goals? I hope not. This year I managed to keep my Nalfeshnee game running as a continuous campaign (15 sessions so far), built my little collection of RPG books, and learned from the OSR that there are words and concepts for many of my old practices (not to mention all the new things I have learned).

3 thoughts on “New Year’s Resolutions

  1. Lasgunpacker

    If you do not have small kids, I would not worry too much about the lead, just handling the figures is not a big deal, you only need to be sure to wash your hands before doing something else. Filing or cutting them may be another issue due to the lead dust.

    Priming them is a good idea though, and you can either go rattle can spray paint, or gesso, which is my favored method for figures.

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