From my January post this year, we can see the tabletop roleplaying games I’ve been running in 2024. The last four entries were still tentative at last update in August.
- D&D Candlekeep
- Alien: Chariot Of The Gods
- Monsterhearts 2
- DIE
- Alice Is Missing
- Eat The Reich
- Blade Runner: Fiery Angels
- Call Of Cthulhu
- Heavy Gear
So how’d we do? We played all of those, with the exception of Heavy Gear, and the second run of Blade Runner: Fiery Angels. Both are in the 2025 plan.
D&D campaign fail
It was a really good year of RPGs for me. My only sour taste in this is that I burned out on Dungeons & Dragons again, right when the new books, which are inspirational in many ways, were released. I suspect I’ll be back to D&D one day, but I probably won’t be returning to Candlekeep. The adventure quality varied a lot, and the structure didn’t work for me, as it was too difficult to both advance the all over the place plots and build character drama. There’s something off in the implied world of D&D and Forgotten Realms in particular that I’m not currently meshing with. Overall too much magic, too many weird powers, and not enough weight to make any of it matter to me.
I am looking at the Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse box on my shelf with interest, but am really wary of running it with the current D&D rules. I’ve thought about going back to AD&D 2nd edition, or any of the fantasy games I like, and it’s lead me to tinker with a fantasy heartbreaker design of my own, focused on campaign structure and character arcs. We’ll see what happens, but I don’t expect to dive into Planescape next year. I’m reading Kill Six Billion Demons to keep the multiverse concept turning in my head in the meantime.
Rare delights
DIE was a highlight. I want to next dive into something from the second scenario book, Love is a Battlefield, although the children’s summer camp scenario in Bizarre Love Triangles is intriguing, too… I still want to one day run the DIE mega campaign, but now is not the time.
The Monsterhearts campaign was wonderful, and we’d love to do a season two. That’s considered for next year. The pacing felt like a rare achievement – we got so much done in the short game, and we ended it with a lot of open questions before it started to repeat itself. I do worry if we’d be able to replicate that in a season two.
Masks of Nyarlathotep, the Call of Cthulhu mega campaign, was kicked off in December. We’re only one game in, and I am delighted to be back running this type of game – very slow, very immersive, with a focus on mood. I hope I can keep it together to completion. Post incoming once we’re through the prologue.
That’s nine discrete games in a year, all but two of them longer than a single session. I hope to maintain a similar pace next year, roughly a game every other week.
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