As 2025 comes to a close, and it looks like I've played my last game of the year, here's a summary of my roleplaying adventures. Overall, I played eight less games than last year, mainly driven by the fact that my own campaign finished recently and I've not got back into a second game since Eternal Lies finished.
I played 50 sessions, 26 of which were face-to-face at conventions. I attended an extra convention this year (Airecon) which was fun, and I hope to go again in 2026. The Garricons remain in good health, although it continues to be a challenge to get enough GMs for the smaller conventions. Furnace's twentieth anniversary was a delight, and it was nice to open up a different space at the hotel.
The big change for me this year was the return of Traveller as dominant game with 20 sessions in total. This was a combination of the one-shot Far Horizon game in the Orbital 2100 setting, then several games run at TravCon and North Star, followed by The Jägermeister Adventure, which was great fun but needed me to think on my feet as the players frequently got ahead of me. I intend to continue with Traveller as a big part of my gaming in 2026, probably offering the Singularity campaign once it's finalised and I've read it properly.
The start of the year saw my Shadows of Atlantis game for Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 finish. Overall, it was a great World War 2 daring pulp romp, but I've had no urge to go near anything using the 2d20 game engine since. I think I may have played too much of the Modiphius engine over the last few years and the inconsistencies in it are harder for me to deal with than the changes in Fria Ligan's Year Zero Engine.
One of my longer term campaigns finished this year and I miss it sorely. This was Eternal Lies for Trail of Cthulhu (8 sessions). We've spent multiple years and a lot of time on this game and it is probably the best Lovecraftian game I have ever played. Of course this was helped by the quality of both my fellow player, Dr Mitch, and Rich, our Keeper, who runs a superb game. The ending was poignant and challenging and emotional.
I played a full weekend (equivalent of 6 sessions) of The One Ring at LongCon, with Graham running a fantastic Tolkien based game running through the Tales from the Lone Lands campaign; his deep knowledge of the lore was clear, but it was never suffocating, and I felt completely immersed. A shout out to my other players who also made this an unforgettable game.
The final system with multiple game sessions was City of Mist, a perennial favourite of mine. I ran this at Airecon and Revelation. It's a favourite and I have no doubt that I will play again.
Powered by the Apocalypse remained a strong part of the games I've played, but no Forged in the Dark for me this year.
I've used Roll20 as my preferred VTT most of the year, mainly as Traveller is well implemented, and I ported my Achtung! Cthulhu game there when Role temporarily lost AV. It's worth noting that Roll20 has come on in leaps and bounds over the last two years, but AV remains its Achilles Heel. Towards the end of Jägermeister we were doing audio over Discord to ensure we had a stable connection. I'm intending to experiment with Role and Owlbear Rodeo next year. Of course, our Eternal Lies game was run over zoom, with character sheets on Google Docs and dice rolled physically, so it does show that you don't need all the bells and whistles!
Outside of the usual running and playing, I have continued to enjoy helping organise the Garricons and that is something which will hopefully continue going forward.
Part of my return to Traveller was creating a one off Double Adventure for BITS using two of the scenarios I wrote that have been out of print for a very long time. That was really satisfying, and I have already prepped them to be released, but we're currently wrangling with the request by Mongoose to release via the community TAS programme which doesn't support publishers doing this. Hopefully they'll be released in the New Year. This won't be my final project like this; I'm also finalising off another adventure that I'd hoped to get out this year, but it will slip into 2026.
I managed to get the BITS website up and running again, which was nice. It turns out that there was a server side issue that was blocking redirections. Now that's sorted the site is live. I would like to give it a full refresh, but that's a way off.
Overall, it's been a fun gaming year, and I'm hoping that next year will be as good!
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