Gaming in 2022

This year has been very much a mixed bag for gaming, meaning that this is also going to be a very mixed update.

The two campaigns I had running twelve months ago both came to successful ends - one the long-planned ending where the PCs confronted the Dark Lord and earned their freedom; the other a somewhat earlier end due to pressures of life. But both were satisfying ends.

Having expected those to mark the end of my gaming, I was swept up in some enthusiasm for a new campaign, "Isles of Dread". Thus far, I've actually had more enjoyment from writing the adventure than running it, but that's largely because it's early days. This campaign is also notable because we've returned to in-person gaming, which is nice.

However, this will be the last campaign I run for this group - we've slipped to a point where we just barely have a quorum, and that means that if even one person is absent it doesn't really feel right. Worse, it's very likely that one of the players will drop out reasonably soon, at which point we're below critical mass. Which is a shame, but also a nicely definitive decision.

I read a whole bunch of RPG books this year: a couple of books on GMing by Sly Flourish, a couple of adentures, a miscellaneous book on monsters, and a load of Level Up books. I'd actually recommend all of them - it's been a good haul. I've bought rather fewer books: a couple of Level Up expansions (with "The Dungeon Delver's Guide" being the outstanding purchase of the year), a small number of PDFs, and the new D&D Starter Set. But very little has caught my eye.

Looking forward, I'm not planning any purchases in 2023. I've largely sworn off WotC's material, and have virtually no scope for playing anything but D&D. So that's that. I might pick up the "Phandelver Campaign"... but I fear that may ruin a classic, so I might be better off skipping it.

And I'm very much on the fence for the 2024 update. On the one hand, it may well prove to be an improvement to the game. On the other, I'm really not liking most of the changes I'm seeing, and I'm unlikely to have a group with which to play anyway. So we'll need to see.

And that's that. As I said, a mixed bag. I expect 2023 to be a year of endings - "Isles of Dread" should hopefully come to a conclusion at some point in the year, and unless something changes that will mark my final campaign for a good long time, possibly ever. Which is sad, but it's also not a bad thing to end with.

Storm King's Thunder meets Spelljammer

I'm a big fan of the concept of "Storm King's Thunder", but was sorely disappointed by the execution. I'm also a big fan of Spelljammer, despite not at all liking anything I've heard about the new set.

Funnily enough, though, I'm inclined to think that the largely-failed SKT provides the key to what they should have done with SJ.

My proposed campaign concept casts the players as the command crew of a fairly unremarkable trading vessel - Serenity, essentially. While at one of three 'home' ports, they must deal with an attack by hostile forces from one of the big-bad empires.

Thereafter, the campaign progresses with the PCs mostly traveling around a big sandbox of locations, carrying cargo, but also engaged in various missions for one or more of the 'friendly' factions. However, wherever they go they find that forces of that big-bad empire. Over time it becomes apparent that there are multiple factions, with the PCs eventually putting together the realisation that the factions have become unbound because the central command of the (Elven? Vodoni?) empire have gone silent.

So the PCs must infiltrate the headquarters of one of those five factions to recover a key to open a portal to the locked 'home' sphere of that empire. Then they proceed to the centre of the empire where they become embroiled in the politics of the court.

That's the theory. Of course, there's a fair amount of work in there, especially in leading the PCs to the key revelations:

• There are five factions.
• Those factions are now working independently because the central command has gone silent.
• They should seek to restore that central command!
• Here's how to get to central command.

So, for the time being it's nothing more than a theoretical campaign. But I'm rather liking the fairly epic scope the whole thing, so maybe...

Isles of Dread at Year's End 2022

The session of "Isles of Dread" planned for today was cancelled at the last minute, meaning that we actually finished up for the year a week ago.

Thus far, the campaign is running smoothly, following one near-TPK that we did more or less recover from. The party have now completed part one, and begun digging into part two and thus the main plot of the campaign. I'm happy with this, and very happy with the structure that was established. It turns out the narrow-wide-narrow structure is extremely strong - who knew?

The hope is that 2023 will see the campaign resume and progress through part two fairly quickly. Part three is then much wider again and hopefully has the meat of the campaign.

So that's that - disappointing to lose the final session, but a positive start to the campaign.

Adventures in Zeitgeist

When I backed the Kickstarter for "The Dungeon Delver's Guide", I also took the opportunity to pick up the setting book for Zeitgeist. This was used in an Adventure Path that I have neither run nor read - it is well-regarded, but I didn't have an immediate use and so I skipped it.

Zeitgeist posits a semi-industrial world, with firearms and steam trains, printing presses and even photography. Some of this is magical, some technological. In that regard, it was somewhat reminiscent of Eberron, and indeed much of the sensibility of the world was similar, which is no bad thing.

The material was presented well, and covered all the subjects that might be expected - peoples, nations, history, running the campaign, and so on and so forth. And it was interesting enough. Except...

As I read the book, I did find myself thinking this was all nice, but what should we do with it? And while that was somewhat solved when I got to the final chapter (dealing with campaign styles), I did find myself left with more questions than answers. Which is a shame - this is a setting I could see myself really enjoying, but no campaign ideas leapt out at me.

That said, there's a whole bunch of material in there that I do fully intend to extract for my own use, notably the rules for firearms, and some of the new mechanical options. So that's good - certainly, I don't feel that I wasted my money.

So, can I recommend? Honestly, I'm not sure. I liked the style, but...

Make of that what you will.

Completed: Larder of the Sea Elves

The "Isles of Dread" campaign actually managed two weekly sessions in a row, with the consequence that the party managed to complete Part One of the adventure. They have now emerged from the Sea Elf larder and find themselves on the shore of Desolation Island, ready to begin part two.

My intention is to run two more sessions before bringing the game to a halt for Christmas (skipping the week of the 22nd), though it's always possible that that will turn into one, or even none.

I'm pretty happy with how this part of the campaign has gone. Some of the challenges would need a little bit of tuning up if I were to publish the thing formally, but as the truth is that I never will that's not a problem.

What is potentially a problem is that I could really do with completing the writing of the fourth part and, perhaps more urgently, getting the maps and handouts put together before I need to use them. That's something I'll want to do over the Christmas holidays, if not before.

The Christmas Ghost Story

I won't be running a Christmas Game this year - that tradition is now fairly definitiely ended, and besides I don't really have a group to gather. Which is rather unfortunate, since a few years ago I realised that the obvious use for that game was to tell a ghost story, in the tradition of olden times before Dickens changed things (with "A Christmas Carol").

Of course, I don't have an immediate ghost story in mind. It's more a sort of theoretical ghost story. But it's something nice to mull over.