Games of 2017... and 2018, too

Last night was my last RPG session of 2017. It's not exactly been a banner year for gaming, it's fair to say. Anyway, some short thoughts on the games of 2017.

Star Trek RPG: This was fun - a nice, lightweight system, and a setting that is almost ideal for one-shot games. I suspect it would need a slightly deft hand to run, since on the one hand it needs to be "Trek enough" to pass muster while at the same time too much reliance on the lore will make the game unplayable for casual fans (including myself). Still, I'd happily play this again.

Pathfinder: Somehow, 2017 was the first time I actually played Pathfinder. And I'm afraid I'm not impressed - the system started off hugely complex, and as far as I can tell has become a bit of a nightmare since then. I'll be dropping out of the Pathfinder campaign after the next session, for reasons completely unrelated to gaming, and I'm not inclined to try Pathfinder again. (I'm also likewise disinclined to buy into Starfinder at all - although the word is that it is a streamlined system, I suspect that that's only true now, because they haven't yet had chance to flesh it out yet.)

As for 2018, I expect that to be another year of very little gaming. That said, I am hoping to get at least some gaming in. And my expectation is that the next year will feature at least some association with the following games:

D&D 5e: Because D&D is never all that far from my thinking, at least as far as RPGs are concerned, and since I've now surrendered to the notion that 5e is basically 'it' as far as D&D is concerned, at least for now, I expect to give at least some thought to that edition. Plus, there's at least one book I'm planning to buy, so that's that.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: I purchased the rules for this some time back, and will at the very least give them a read at some point over the year. I'm not sure whether I'll go so far as to actually play the game, but we'll see.

Star Wars d6: I'm still minded to find an opportunity to run this game. However, perhaps more of note is the upcoming 30th Anniversary reissue of the first edition of this game, which I'm looking forward to a great deal. Indeed, this is probably my most anticipated game of 2018. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a damning indictment of current game design.

And that's my end-of-year post for The Imaginarium in 2017. See you on the flip side!