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| Final Doughnut of the year |
I don’t think that I’m going to have any more game sessions this year (as the Mausrítter one that the kids had been planning has fallen through, and it looks like I won’t get enough players for the Cepheus Orbital 2100 game I’ve pitched for the holidays), so here’s the update on the year.
I played 48 sessions (slightly down from 2022), 13 of which I was GM for and 11 of which were face-to-face. The big change was the drop in my GMing; it’s almost a complete reversal of the previous year’s numbers and that’s driven by the end of the Curse of Strahd campaign.
The most played game I for me this year was Trail of Cthulhu, as we returned to the Eternal Lies campaign that we started back in 2021. Currently in Malta, this is proving to be epic and scary, with the irony being that all of us involved have read the campaign at some point. We briefly went from two players to three, but have since dropped back to a duo as Nigel couldn’t make it for medical reasons. I’m hoping he returns but then again the intensity of having two players is great. Rich runs a great game.
The second most played game was Conan 2d20, ably run by Graham as we went through the Shadow of the Sorceror campaign. This captured the feel of the books really well, and had such a strong flavour that it influenced the Achtung! Cthulhu game that I have started to run by making me choose to run a different campaign to the one that I originally planned.
Those systems have been the story of my game year; Gumshoe and 2d20 have dominated. I’ve played and run both, with 16 games of each. This has been the 2d20 breakout year for me. I ran Star Trek Adventures at North Star (in an incredibly fun interlinked game with Dr Mitch) and have started running Shadows of Atlantis since. After years of playing Gumshoe, I ran my first ever game at Furnace using Swords of the Serpentine and it was great fun. It was a bit disappointing that we didn’t manage to restart the Yellow King campaign, but hopefully that will happen at the start of the 2024.
Graham ran a short playtest campaign of Heroic Fantasy 2e, which was fun, but I eventually had to drop out of.
Worth noting that City of Mist and D&D5e are the only other games with more than one session. City of Mist is becoming a perennial for me and will be one of my offerings at Revelation 2024. Great setting and system.
Standout games for me this year as a GM have been The Zone (at Furnace) and Echoes (STA) at North Star, plus the climax of Curse of Strahd, which hit me hard emotionally. I almost didn’t run the campaign closure due to friction in our Discord group chat as we prepared it souring things for me, but I’m so glad I did. I know that I need to post the final write up for that, which is half written.
Overall a good year, but I’m glad I’ve got Achtung! Cthulhu running as I was missing GMing. I think I may also try and get something else started, depending on the games I’m playing in.
VTTs in play have been Role (less of that in 2024), Roll20 (more of that in 2024), Foundry (still leaves me cold as a platform) with Discord and Zoom filling most of the gaps.
Convention attendance was limited to the Garricons (Revelation, North Star & Furnace). I think I’m done with Dragonmeet (too expensive and too much phaff for the payback) and Continuum continues to fall across family commitments. Hoping we can get TravCon 2024 up and running, as Traveller is a game I’ve missed running and playing.
Thanks to all the GMs who ran for me and the players who’ve played with me.
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