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.

Thought I'd be Done By Now...

The "Mists of Lamordia" campaign is now very clearly into its final quarter - the PCs have to complete their investigations into the Amber Temple, which should both open the doors to the prison and resolve the Curse of the Neverborn, and then they can proceed to deal with the exorcism of Katya Rose, and finally deal with the Darklord and conclude the campaign.

All of which is good, except that I initially thought we'd be wrapping up in 2020, then I thought we'd be done by the time Surprise! made his appearance, and now it looks like we won't be done within this calendar year. It's not that I mind any of this, but I'm very much ready both for a break and then for a change!

Suggestion: Common and Uncommon Classes

One of the things introduced in the 5e PHB is the notion of common races (human, dwarf, elf, halfling) that are assumed to be present in 'every' campaign and uncommon races that may or may not be.

My suggestion for 5e Essentials would be to do much the same for classes - assume that the Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard are found in 'every' campaign, but that other classes may or may not be. This then provides scope for other campaigns to introduce new classes of more specific utility, and indeed to replace some of the existing classes with local classes that fit better. And by encoding the split into the books, they also make it easier for the DM to sell the absences.

Addendum: Minor Spellcasting House Rule

Back in March I posted a house rule concerning "Minor Spellcasting" - where a character gains a small number of spells from their race, a feat, or other source, and where they also gain spellcasting from their class, the spellcasting ability from the minor ability is overridden by that from their class.

The addendum to that rule simply takes things a little further: the spells gained from Minor Spellcasting are simply added to the character's spells known (and considered "always prepared" in the case of prepared spellcasters such as Wizards), and slots added as appropriate.

For example, a 5th level Tiefling Sorcerer knows 5 cantrips and 6 spells. They also have 4/3/2 slots of each level. As a Tiefling, they also gain the thaumaturgy cantrip, hellish rebuke (as a 2nd level spell), and darkness (another 2nd level spell).

As a consequence of the house rule, they now know 6 cantrips and 8 spells, and have 4/5/2 spell slots of each level.

Finally, at various times the character has the ability to switch out some spells for others. This includes those spells and cantrips granted by the Minor Spellcasting trait.

It's worth noting that this does mean a small increase in flexibility, and consequently power, for such characters. But it's such a minor boost that the reduction in bookkeeping makes it worth it, at least for me.

Inspiration Still Doesn't Work For Me

I don't like Inspiration in 5e - while the rules as written seem to be broadly fine, the major issue I have is they I have to keep track of five "roleplaying" elements for each PC and remember to actually give Inspiration.

In that regard my revised Inspiration rule works better for me - each PC gets a reroll that can be used once per level. Except that that also falls short, because the rerolls become less and less valuable as time goes on and the gaps between levels increase, and because the players just don't use them.

All of which leads me to my latest 5e house-rule: just ignore Inspiration. It isn't replaced by anything; you just don't get it. Other means of gaining Advantage do, of course, apply.