The Quest For Memory at Year's End 2021

Last night we had out final session of "The Quest for Memory" for the year. It went well - after so long away it took a bit of time to get back into it, but by the end things were running smoothly.

This is a campaign that has had its difficulties over the year. As lockdown eased and various things resumed, it became increasingly difficult to get the party together, and that really started to take a toll both on the quality of the campaign and also the enthusiasm to continue. It also didn't help that the party got stuck in the 'crucible' for months on end, even after that section of the game had done its job.

It will be interesting to see whether, and for how long, this campaign continues in the new year. My fear is that it will fizzle out over the next few months, but we'll see - perhaps 2022 will see a new lease of life for it?

The Mists of Lamordia at Year's End 2021

Earlier we had our final session of "The Mists of Lamordia" for the year. This saw the party complete their confrontation with the Dark Powers in the Amber Temple, ending the Curse of the Neverborn, and thus completing the second act of the campaign. All of which is great.

The campaign continues to be run online, and continues to work pretty well, which is nice.

I expect the campaign to complete by Easter - in fact, for various reasons I have decided to set myself a hard stop for the campaign by the end of April. My expectation is that that will be very doable - there are three mini-adventures remaining in the campaign before it comes to its end.

And that is essentially all there is to say about that - it has been a successful year for the campaign, and it looks to be coming to a successful end.

Gaming in 2021

In many ways, 2021 was a disastrous year for gaming. As the year progressed, I felt increasingly disenchanted with it, to the extent that I have now fairly thoroughly fallen out of love with the whole thing. I think the two ongoing campaigns are now fairly definitively my last campaigns.

Throughout 2021 I have had two campaigns in progress, both of them online. The Work Game, "The Mists of Lamordia" has continued apace, completing the first two acts of the campaign and entering the third act at the end of the year - more on that it another post. The second game, "A Quest for Memory" started really brightly, but got bogged down in the first crucible and then bogged down again by scheduling issues. It hasn't really recovered - again, there will be another post on the topic. I expect the first of these to conclude by Easter, and am not sure about the second.

There has been no opportunity to play, nor to run anything other than D&D, in 2021. I don't expect that to change, nor am I looking for opportunities. Likewise, the tradition of the Christmas Game is now over - the last one was in 2015, and "Memoirs of a Companion" was as good a send off for that event as could be hoped.

I only read four RPG books this year, and made two other purchases. Sadly, the report card is not great: "Tasha's Cauldron of Everything" persuaded me not to touch WotC's rules-based supplements for 5e, and "Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft" persuaded me not to touch their settings (and with "Storm King's Thunder" largely doing the same for adventures, that's basically it). "Tome of Beasts 2" was a solid book, but one I only really purchased because I needed a Christmas gift. I don't regret it, but I really don't need any more monsters. That leaves "Exploring Eberron", which was a solid work, but again leaves me feeling sated for Eberron material. The only other purchase was "Level Up", which I've downloaded but haven't started to read. Oh, and I bought "Monster Manual Expanded III", which was another solid work... but I still don't need any more monsters.

So, what went wrong?

Unfortunately, RPGs seem to be a key front in the ongoing Culture War that is wracking our society, and I really hate that. Because it seems that you have to buy into one side of the argument entirely or be forever branded a heretic... and there's one side that seems really quite awful, and the other that is mostly okay but with some fringe elements that I simply can't support. All of which just leaves me feeling unwelcome, dismayed and, quite frankly, unclean.

Couple that with the loss of physical gaming, huge disappointment at the recent products, and the loss of any regular touchstone (such as Dragon magazine), and I think I'm just done.

In 2022 I expect to bring one of my campaigns to its end, I expect the other to come to a halt one way or another... and then I'm probably hanging up the dice bag.