Previous Resolutions

Amazing Flower Knight Kingdom Death mini

Last year I made some gaming resolutions. Let’s see how I did.

  1. Make a big dungeon
    Success. The Vaults of Pahvelorn still have many unmapped and unkeyed areas, but there is a big chunk of the dungeon that is complete, and I have been running it for the past 3 or more months. There are some interesting (at least, I think so) mechanical tricks too, though many of them have not been encountered.
  2. Basing and/or painting minis
    Outlook is not so good here. One of my previous players glued some of my Otherworld minis, but other than that I didn’t do anything. The good news is that I think I decided not to care. In the future, if I buy any more minis (I already have some coming from the Reaper Bones kickstarter), I’ll just buy ones that don’t require assembly. Not that I even use miniatures for anything, as pretty much all my gaming right now is over Google hangouts. Oh, and if you haven’t seen the amazing miniatures that are part of the Kingdom Death game, you should check them out (credit to Ian for posting about KD; note, mature content). I have been recently thinking again about how much miniatures can help with the shared conception of combat geometry though, even (especially?) without using formal grid rules.
  3. Classic D&D
    Total success! Running OD&D, and playing in numerous (mostly Labyrinth Lord based) other games, especially the excellent Wampus Country, HMS Apollyon, Dungeon of Signs ASE, P&P OD&D, Dwimmermount at OSRCon, and several others.
  4. Make some art
    Not so successful. I don’t think I got around to doing any art, unless you count the Pahvelorn maps. This is just not part of my routine, I guess.
  5. Wilderness map with encounter tables and everything
    Reasonably successful. Not quite as systematic as I would like, but I have a functional wilderness outside of Pahvelorn.
  6. Gaming purchases: limit to 1 per month
    Total, abject failure. I stopped counting, but I’m sure I bought more than one thing per month. The point here is not so much about saving money (though that is always nice), but rather not buying things that I don’t have time to dedicate sufficient attention to. During 2012, I was still in the process of (re)discovering tabletop RPGs, which is why I picked up so many gaming books. There is not really anything else I want now, so I imagine I’ll be better about this in 2013. I’m sure something good will come out now and then though.

7 thoughts on “Previous Resolutions

  1. DrBargle

    My only resolution for last year was, “paint twice as many miniatures as I buy”. Given that I think I might have painted a handful, it is a good job I didn’t buy any…



    … but I don’t count the Reaper Kickstarter – after all, they don’t arrive for a few more months…

    Reply
  2. LS

    6. Is a lost cause, and was from the very start. =P

    I’d be happy if I didn’t purchase more gaming books than I can read, but I’m not hopeful on that either.

    Reply
    1. Brendan

      @LS

      I would be curious to know what (notable or otherwise) products you picked up in 2012.

      I’ll probably write up a “2012 game readings” post also to go along with the fiction one sometime soon.

      Reply
  3. MonsterTV

    I’d be interested to hera your thoughts on using miniatures for old school D&D. It’s clearly an assumption in every old edition that miniatures are to be used, and yet so many people in the OSR swear by TotM style gaming.

    Reply
    1. Brendan

      @MonsterTV

      I’m not sure it was an assumption all the time, but miniatures definitely had their place, and even if they didn’t, why not use them if the benefits outweigh the negatives? More to come on this in the future. I have several ideas.

      Reply
  4. John

    I quite like this “New Years’ Gaming Resolutions” idea. May adopt it using a different year system since I’m slightly out of cycle.

    Reply

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