My overarching ambition is to continue making time for games. It’s difficult, with the day job, marriage, one kid in high school, the other in middle school, the day job, and all of the activities that go along with them. We’ve got Boy Scouts, marching band, softball, baseball, Seeing Eye Puppy Raising … it’s a lot, and it often threatens to overwhelm gaming. Defending against that can be exhausting, but it’s well worth it.
Thinking more about specifics, there’s a lot I’d like to do. We’ll see how much of it gets done.
- Restart my lunchtime D&D campaign: It’s been too long since the Gamer Working Group gathered together to throw dice over lunch. I’m looking to restart the lunchtime campaign in September when Wizards of the Coast releases Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (Amazon). My hope is that running a canned adventure, plus leveraging Roll20 as a battle mat, will keep prep times low.
- Complete the “Mourningvale” arc of Obsidian Frontier: The fading land of Necros threatens to overwhelm the Pomarj. Can our heroes prevent an army of undead from invading their reality? We’ll find out in the next story arc for my ongoing Dungeons & Dragons campaign. I’m looking forward to throwing some undead weirdness at the heroes and then perhaps tagging in one of our group’s other DMs to run an arc or two.
- Play a D&D 5th Edition Barbarian: I’ve got a powerful itch to run a barbarian for 5th Edition. I think it stems from a real-world desire to smash bureaucracy while hack’n’slashing my way through the world’s problems. Also: beer.
- Attend a large convention: I enjoy MEPACon, our local game convention, but I’d like to go to a larger convention again. My lead contenders are Origins and GaryCon, with a slight preference for GaryCon because it’s held in March and the smaller of the two conventions.
- Hold a Nuke(m)Con: Nuke(m)Con is my gaming group’s annual homegrown convention in which we invite all of the members of our campaigns, plus friends of the group, to a weekend of gaming. It’s a good time, but difficult to pull off because of schedules.
- Play new games: There are a couple of new games I’d like to play. The first is Tales from Loop (website), a role-playing game of kids on bikes investigating mysteries in a 1980s that never was. The second is the new Star Trek game (website) by Modiphius. I’ve never played a Star Trek game and I could use some wide-eyed futuristic optimism in my life. Finally, there’s Delta Green (website) – I got the core rulebooks as part of the Kickstarter earlier this summer and I’m eager to try out the game as a player or GM.
- Spellcrash: I’ve been slowly picking away at my Spelljammer-meets-Planet Hulk campaign setting; I’d like to make a major push this fall to get that content online.
- Help my son start a role-playing game campaign: My son wants to play more Dungeons & Dragons; the obvious solution is to teach him how to run a game and stand up a gaming group of his own.
- Run a D&D parents night: I have a number of friends who aren’t gamers (or are lapsed gamers) and are interested in Dungeons & Dragons. I’d like to run a game for them.
- Paint RPG miniatures: I love the idea of painting RPG miniatures, but making the time to do it has been difficult. Still, a geek’s gotta dream.