More RPGing + Board Games on the horizon?

2021 was a year of more roleplaying, 2022 looks similar but with regular board gaming hopefully on the horizon.

I came into 2021 with a reasonable expectation that unless there was a significant improvement in all things COVID, I would continue to game exclusively online.

That expectation became reality fairly quickly, with a couple of small exceptions where I had friends over to play board / card games. Although in all fairness those were more about seeing these friends for the first time since the before times, rather than being specifically board game meetups. I continued my reluctance / disinterest in playing board games online so those occasions also represent the totality of my board gaming in 2021.

RPGs continue to dominate my gaming thanks to those same D&D games I reflected on at the end of 2020.

• Homebrew D&D campaign that's been running fortnightly for 3 years / 10 levels and now starting to build towards what the characters actually have ahead of them. I think the next few sessions will help to shape how the next 12 months of that campaign will go.
• D&D Adventurers League: Avernus Rising has been going for more than 12 months and we're now on part 14 of 20, in fact I think it's possible we might finish part 14 before we get into 2022.
• D&D Adventurers League: Eberron Oracle of War game that I play in. Run by Rich for Iain, Ian, Pete, Shane and I. It's been fantastic fun and a great opportunity to spend time with great people that I would normally see once or twice a year at most. I missed a few sessions this year due to illness or power cuts but I'm looking forward to what's next.

Other than D&D, my 2021 gaming included running games of Trail of Cthulhu, Call of Cthulhu (although that was only for a playtest), ALIEN, Star Wars FFG and The Expanse. Mostly these were one or two sessions.

I also took part in the RPG Writer Workshop again and published the currently 4.8 out of 5 rated and Silver selling "The Oxford Articles" for Call of Cthulhu.

Writing for a system that I had zero experience with was challenging but it's definitely got me thinking about writing more for it. I had hoped to do the workshop again in November but post AlbaCon 2021 I think I needed a break from being creative!

Speaking of AlbaCon, after raising > £3,100 for It's Good 2 Give in 2020 we were delighted to raise > £3,300 for Penumbra in 2021. It's a fantastic feeling that the effort we put in to make the event a success not only results in people having fun but also enables us to support charity.

Day 366 of Year 2020...

It has been 31 days since my last post and it also happens to be the last day of 2020.

As far as leap years go, it has been a year full of challenge and no doubt many people will be keen for it to be over with as soon as possible.

While looking forward to 2021, I have some hesitation about how quickly things will improve with respect to the pandemic, politics, and ongoing aspects of other things 2020 will be remembered for.

But this blog is not about those things and I am not planning to change that any time soon.

Let us talk about tabletop games.

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I usually start one of these with a reflection on the year gone but I think my most recent posts do that for me.

Some brief highlights?

AlbaCon was a success and raised over £3,000 for an amazing charity.

I published Unsettled Ground. An adventure for Dungeons & Dragons on DMsGuild after taking part in the RPG Writer Workshop.

The Dungeons & Dragons Scotland Facebook Group has grown from 0 to 725 members and the associated D&D Scotland Discord Server now has multiple games running on it every week. Not bad. Naturally there was a big upturn of members after March...

I’ve DM’d more sessions of RPGs than I have since my teens including continuing to DM two ongoing D&D campaigns and running several intro sessions of D&D at work and for friends looking to explore RPGs. My two campaigns are made up of:

• Homebrew set in Forgotten Realms with some flavourings of my own. We hit two years of running this in October and successfully migrated to playing online back in March.
  
  
  
  
  
• The other is a run through of Season 9 of Adventurers League – Avernus Rising.
  
  
  
  
  

I’ve also played more RPGs than ever including playing in games of the Eberron - Oracle Of War storyline with Shane, Pete, Iain and Ian run by Rich.  Fabulous people I would usually only get to see at events like UK Games Expo but thanks to the wonders of online gaming I have the pleasure of spending time with them semi-regularly.

Probably worth a few hobby related lowlights too? Although in the grand scheme of things these really are not that important…

Lots of conventions were cancelled, including Tabletop Scotland 2020.

I haven’t played a board game since March, largely due to East Neuk Tabletop being on hiatus.

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So with 2021 on the horizon, what plans do I have?

Conventions?

If (and it's a BIG if) in-person events are actually possible in 2021 then my plan is to go to the following: AireCon, Conpulsion, UK Games Expo, GenCon, Glasgow Games Festival and I plan to finally go to Dragonmeet.  That’s with organising Tabletop Scotland 2021 and AlbaCon 2021.

If in-person events are not possible then I’ll look at attending an equal number of online conventions, although most likely to play RPGs.

Other stuff?

After completing the RPG Writer Workshop I intend to write & publish at least 3 more DMsGuild products & maybe some other non-D&D stuff too.  I’d like that number to be nearer 6 but that’s going to be dependent on available time which will be driven by whether Tabletop Scotland goes ahead or not.  I fully expect to take part in the RPG Writer Workshop events in July and November 2021 either way.

Alongside continuing to run my alternating D&D Tuesday campaigns I want to run at least 6 games other than D&D for more than a one-shot.  Now that’s not with the intention of starting up another campaign but more a case of running short (2 to 4 sessions maybe) arcs.  What games?  Damn good question…

Night’s Black Agents – Unlikely to be the Dracula Dossier (given the session constraint above) but want to run a short arc, likely one of the published ones.

The Expanse or Ashen Stars or maybe both.  They can offer similar play experiences but are different both in setting and play style.

Mutant City Blues or something else that’s police procedural. Maybe 2021 is the year I run Cthulhu?

I’d like to run some Savage Worlds although unsure what setting I’d use.  I could use this as an opportunity to write some Savage Worlds stuff as I have run games of it at cons "back in the day".

Plus it’s about time I tried out 2d20 (maybe Star Trek?), Cypher, Cortex and a couple of other systems to see if they work for me.

Typing that up highlights the challenge I’m setting but I think it’s doable.  Especially if my roleplaying remains online exclusively.  52 weeks in the year. If I run 3 sessions on average for 6 games that is 18 sessions.

Something tells me I’ll be reflecting on failure with this challenge but that’s why it’s a challenge!

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Before I wrap up it’s probably worth reflecting on my Objectives & Principles...

Objectives :

1. Balanced gaming – This is very RPG centric now.  Nothing wrong with that and a complete u-turn on previous times I’ve checked it.
2. More gaming overall – So, I think I’m still doing this.  Between the campaigns and running one-shot demos of D&D I think I’m “up” on previous years albeit RPG only.  Board gaming has stopped and likely will remain thus until ENT can return.
3. More involved – Interesting one this. Conventions help with this a lot and now with a plan to publish more RPG material I think this will develop further.
4. Event Attendance – Technically I attended 5 conventions this year.  All of them were online.
5. Organise Events – AlbaCon is the shining light for this.  I may revisit other ideas in 2021 depending on how things pan out.

Principles :

1. Only buy it if you're going to use it – Well this took a nosedive in March / April. When the first lockdown came, I started to buy more board games. Partly because I wanted to support Scotland's FLGS’ but also because I wanted some retail therapy. I stopped buying board games shortly thereafter and instead bought a lot of RPG books. Mostly D&D books but also other RPGs and lots of PDFs…
2. Is everyone having fun? Including you? – Continues to be key and is a regular topic when people ask me for advice on running RPGs.
3. Accept that you're going to be the GM – I called this an eternal principle a few years back. It still is and something I’m still very comfortable with. Getting to play is nice though 😉.
4. Change is a good thing and is necessary – This one has never been more evident than now. I’ve historically been resistant to playing RPGs online but when it became the only option, I embraced it.
5. Opinions aren't as important as knowledge and experience – This remains to be a truth for me. I continue to value input from lots of people, moreso when it comes to feedback on conventions I organise and of course with the release of Unsettled Ground. That said, I continue to reserve the right to ignore opinions in favour of relying on knowledge and experience!

A look back at 2018 & 2019 and a look forward at 2020.

I skipped the whole of 2018 and 2019 from this blog and I feel kinda bad about that.

Not hugely bad because both years were excellent in hobby terms but still kinda bad as I had plans for this thing.  So how do I summarise the last 2 years in my hobby?

2018 : My now annual visit to UK Games Expo, a return to GenCon, the realisation of a hobby dream in Tabletop Scotland and a return to DMing D&D thanks to my players and Matt Colville.

It was a great year for my hobby, a challenging one but a great one.  Whilst swapping a large chunk of my free / game time for convention planning wasn't hard, it wasn't easy either.  I did manage to offset that a little by running D&D 5th Edition.  2018 was a year that reminded me why I love this hobby.

2019 : No GenCon 2019 but I did go to Conpulsion in Edinburgh, AireCon in Harrogate and Glasgow Games Festival in erm Glasgow which was nice. Obviously I also went to UK Games Expo which in 2019 was a different experience largely off the back of the relative success of Tabletop Scotland 2018 as I had people thank me and the team for the con and "recognisable name" publishers mention that they'd heard about how good it was.  Oh and Tabletop Scotland 2019 happened too, twice the space and at times really tough but hugely worthwhile.  In between all of that my D&D group kept going, with an often disrupted schedule but all good, and East Neuk Tabletop turned 5.

So 2019 was another great year for my hobby.  In many respects a more challenging year due to trying to exceed the expectations of those who came to Tabletop Scotland 2018.  I could write a lot about my Tabletop Scotland 2019 experience but if I was to boil it down to two things it'd be this -

• we hosted over 100 tables of RPGs, avergaging 20 tables per slot. Including games especially for kids.
  As a Roleplayer "first" this gives me such joy.
• our attendance was up by 54% on 2018 with almost 1,600 individual people being there.
  That's a success story and one I'm hugely proud of.

2020?  Well now... it's looking busy convention wise -

• AireCon in March
• Conpulsion in April
• UK Games Expo in May
• GenCon in July/August - there for my birthday and I'll have my GenCon brother Greg with me as always.
• Tabletop Scotland in August
• Glasgow Games Festival in November

In between all of that the D&D game and East Neuk Tabletop attendance will continue; plus I'm planning to add another RPG "slot" to my schedule with Night's Black Agents looking like the favourite to start that off.  I have some other hobby goals for 2020 that probably bleed into 2021 and beyond but they're not currently for sharing :-P

I intend to post on here about GenCon 2020 (tickets go on sale on the 26th January!) and hope to get the chance to meet many people I only know in an online capacity.  So if you're at GenCon and our cyberpaths have crossed somehow let me know as it'd be great to meet you and maybe even play a game.

To wrap this up, I have one thing to ask.  If you see me at a convention, in a game store, at a games club or out and about and ANY of the above mean something to you then let me know.

Cheers and here's to a great 2020 in the hobby.

2018 is on the horizon and it's going to be a busy year...

So as ever I've not posted here for some time.

Why now?  Well this remains my primary "brain dump" source for what's going through my head hobby wise.  I do brain dumps less and less these days because I have a number of other channels in which to do that but if I want to rattle off a few things then I'll likely come back here.

2017 has been an interesting year for me and my hobby.

End The Turn ended.
Largely down to availability, surprisingly not my availability but Liz's.  Will we revisit a podcast in the future? Unlikely but only because of other stuff that's going on that is eating up time.
It was an interesting and enjoyable experience doing the podcast and whilst I have no desire to start another one I'm not ruling it out.

RPGLiveUK happened.
I ran a RPG at it and that seemed to go down really well.  The weekend as a whole was great fun and I came away from it with the desire to run more RPGs but also accepting that right now that isn't going to happen for all the reasons I've listed previously in this blog.  I'm not giving up but if I do run something I can see it being one-shots and I'd definitely re-run Brave New World again if the notion took me.

Roll Against Cancer faded.
Largely down to venue challenges, i.e. not finding one but more on that to come...

Convention Calendar on Google Sheets became a "go to" thing.
People on Facebook and Twitter started to contact me about it and were actually USING IT to plan their convention travels and perhaps more importantly convention organisers started to contact me about getting their 2018 dates on it.
If you've not seen it before I've tweaked the Bit.ly link to be - http://bit.ly/UKRPG_BGCons - if only because it's not just a 2017 list now...

Objectives & Principles largely remained on track...
If you ignore the lack of RPGing and End The Turn ending that is.

What does 2018 look like then?

Well 1st of all this is happening...

After 4ish years searching for a suitable venue, one appears from left field and I have to say it's damn near perfect.  So on the 1st and 2nd of September 2018 you should come to the Dewars Centre in Perth to attend Tabletop Scotland.
I've written a fair amount on this blog on what a convention should and shouldn't be.  34 posts (excluding this one) are tagged with convention.  I'm sure some of that will come back to haunt me but that's absolutely fine.  If my team and I fail to hit the heights of what I expect then I assure you the first people who'll be pointing that out will be us.

Alongside that I will be going to GenCon again. Whilst I won't be posting with quite the same voracity as I was ahead of that first trip, I hope to post some stuff in the run up to this trip.

Since announcing Tabletop Scotland I've visited a lot of game stores that I haven't been to before.  That will continue with some repeat visits no doubt for those I've recently visited.

I'm hoping to be at UK Games Expo, potentially going to AireCon and more than likely will be at Conpulsion at least for the Saturday to promote Tabletop Scotland.

I'll obviously continue pushing East Neuk Tabletop Games forward and go to DWARF for regular gaming.

Beyond that I've no idea.  All of my spare time and energy is going into making sure that this convention is all that it can be.

So yeah.  2018 is going to be a very busy year.

RPG Pre-Conditions and Self Limitations

So way back when I started this blog I kicked it off with a post called "I'm Dave and I'm a Roleplayer" and I proceeded to talk about the rediscovery of what I wanted my hobby to be.

Since then I've managed to rediscover my hobby and I've achieved some things too, not least of which would be attending Gen Con and establishing East Neuk Tabletop Games.

As my post on DMing Lost Mines of Phandelver attests though I've not really lived up to the title of that first post - namely I've not done much roleplaying since this 2nd Chapter started.

Why is that?  Well.....

My Star Wars game has suffered as a result of conflicting schedules (mine and my players) and establishing another game has proven to be more challenging than I think I ever appreciated.  Not through a lack of player interest more that I've not found or indeed at times made the commitment of time to run a game.

One of the beauties of boardgames is that the majority of them can be played in 90 minutes as a maximum time span. Yes there are some that will take longer but the majority of the ones I own can be played in that 90 minute slot which is great.

RPGs can also be played in a relatively short slot too but I'm beginning to think that I don't like that... I actually think that for me RPGs should be in a 4 hour slot as a minimum.  Sure you can play one-shots in 2 hours or even less and that's essentially how the Star Wars game has functioned since it started.  Now if any of my Star Wars players are reading this don't fret, I'm not about to say that we're only going to play it if I have a 4 hour slot (although that would be nice...).
What I am saying is that for any RPG that I kick off from here-on I want the slot to be roughly 4 hours.

This obviously brings me back to my challenges with that around available free time etc but it also gets me thinking too.  What other things should be pre-conditions of running a RPG?

4 hour slot is great but it should happen semi-regularly. Ideally it should happen fortnightly as a minimum although weekly would be preferable but let's not over extend things and just stick to the fortnightly as a minimum.

The funny thing is that I used to be able to do this.

Every fortnight I'd turn up on a Saturday at +ORC Edinburgh and run a game.  Not always a campaign game but a RPG and I'd run it for 4 hours.  This worked really well for a good few years and then I found I couldn't sustain it due to Real Life (tm) getting in the way...  Ok so that sounds bad. Real Life (tm) didn't so much get in the way, it was more that my priorities changed when I became a dad.

So how does that help me now?  Well it doesn't really.

Where it leaves me is going back to that consistent element of "time". The only way I can really kick off a new RPG session in a 4 hour slot is by making that time.  That really means that something has to give and the most likely (and also easiest) option is that I swap some of my existing game time for other game time.

There is another option, or perhaps just a different nuance to the option above. My Star Wars game has just completed the Beyond The Rim scenario and whilst the players are keen to continue maybe I should put it on a short break and run something else (likely D&D) for a time...  I'm not overly keen on that though as my preference leans more to running RPGs at ENT and given we're now running in a 4 hour slot that becomes more likely.

No conclusions as yet, more pondering required about my options but without pre-empting my 2015 look ahead post I think it's clear that more RPG play is going to be one of the objectives I set myself.

Golden Axe Award

So movies have the Oscars and the BAFTAs if you're in the UK.
Music has the Grammys, Mercury Music Award and other awards.
Tabletop games have plenty of awards, not least of which is the Spiel des Jahres.

Over at East Neuk Tabletop Games we're not to be outdone by industry awards with fancy (ok German) names.  As I said in my last post we've decided to have our own.

The Golden Axe Award will be given to the game that's voted on by the most number of people.  Seems simple enough right?

The challenge is in having a clear winner.

We've played 52 different games over 13 sessions since April which averages out as 4 new games introduced per session.  That's probably very normal for a new community as they look to sample and be exposed to as many games as possible.  I'll be very surprised if we hit that same level of new games per session next year.

So what did I vote for?

I decided to pick games that I've bought since ENT started. That way it was fully representative of my time at ENT.

Dragon Slayer - One of my many Gen Con purchases and probably one the most re-playable games out there. I've played quite a few dice games and most of them are fun, most are fun for a few plays but Dragon Slayer doesn't get old.  Sure it's limited in it's scope but every time I play this (and I've played it a LOT!) it is fresh and lots of fun.  It's also a great "introductory" game to the hobby as a whole as the dice are easily understood and the mechanic is so simple it can be explained in less than 1 minute.

Forbidden Desert - I picked this up at J G Innes in St Andrews.  I've never played Forbidden Island (the other Forbidden cooperative game by Matt Leacock) but I really enjoy cooperative games and I spotted this in the window of J G Innes so bought it on a whim.  Having now played it many times it's probably my favourite cooperative game.  Yes, dare I say probably even more so than Sentinels Of The Multiverse.  I said probably +Greg Barr !!!

Cash 'n Guns - Another one of my Gen Con purchases but a game I've been looking to pick up for several years.  With the second edition being released I had the opportunity.  Why did I pick this game though?  I mean it's hardly the most tactical but what it does have is plenty of fun. It's not about pointing foam guns at each other, nor is it about bluffing with respect to whether you have a bullet or a blank loaded.  This game is about having a laugh and quoting cheesy lines from films.  As with Dragon Slayer above it has a lot of re-play value and whilst it might not have the "introductory" feel of Dragon Slayer it does work on a lot of levels and of course can support a lot of players too!

So those are my votes.  There are many other games on the list that I could have chosen but these are the ones that stood out for me.

If I was to choose any others I'd probably go for Braggart (although I've never actually played it at ENT so doesn't count), Sentinel: Tactics or Shinobi Wat-Aah!
Again they all share that re-play ability that a game needs to encourage you to take it off the shelf time after time.

One Small Step For A Meeple...

One Giant Leap For Meeple-kind?

Not quite.

I realise I've slipped into another "no update" zone with the blog which I can only apologise profusely for. Other than work, family and of course gaming I've not really had any real time to spend on the blog.

So a quick update is probably in order then.

Games at a beer festival went really well. We didn't have any converts but we did have some people asking questions which is never a bad thing.
We managed to play Poo, Get Bit, Kittens in a Blender and Braggart which all worked pretty well considering we were sitting near where the live (and at times excellent) music was being played.
I look forward to the next Cambolicious beer festival in May 2015 where more games and more beer can be enjoyed.

DWARF wise we've finally managed to re-instate the Star Wars game that we've been playing. First game since July and 2 of the party almost died.
We're coming to the end of "Beyond The Rim" and I've been very pleased with the scenario this far.  It is a bit railroady at times but it's flexible enough to manipulate the story.
The question I have started to ponder is what's next? Another Star Wars scenario or something else?
Of course alongside that I've been playing more board games at DWARF

ENT wise we're approaching our final event of the year - Sunday 14th December.  Alan aka +donjondo pulled together a list of all the games we've played since we started and it comes to the frustratingly not rounded number of 49! Then our community pointed out a few omissions and we're actually now at 52!
To celebrate our first year we're hosting a sort of poll / survey to get people to vote for their favourite games played this year ahead of the session on the 14th. Alan came up with the name Golden Axe Award and we've decided to stick with it, although what an ENT would be doing with an axe I'm not sure... ;-)
ENT will also see some changes from the 14th December with us moving to a 4 hour slot (1pm to 5pm) and also moving to the Upper Hall which should be warmer over the Winter!  I think the changes are a positive step forwards for the community, especially for the longevity of the community but also increasing the options of what can be played.

I've failed miserably at getting the "gang" back together for some D&D. This has been solely down to me just not having that much free time to actually play the game for any reasonable length of time (a separate post is brewing on the topic of game length).

So that's pretty much where we are although I do have a couple of other topics to be covered, just need to find the time to write them!!!

The first East Neuk Tabletop Games session.

I should have done this post on April the 13th itself but unfortunately it's taken til now for me to get around to it!

So on Sunday April the 13th, Alan (+donjondo) and I hosted the first of hopefully many events under the banner of East Neuk Tabletop Games.

So how did it go?

It went really well.  We had more people than either of us reasonably expected to get and whilst most of the attendees were people we each knew there were some who had heard either through the grape vine or indeed through the flyers that had been distributed.

Games played were - Pandemic, Sentinels Of The Multiverse, Zombie Dice, Zombies!!!, Quicksand, Hey, That's My Fish and several other games that I can't remember.

All in all people had fun and want to come and play again.  That first meet (or moot?!) of ENT Games was completed and deemed a success!

If you're reading this and you happen to be near #Anstruther or indeed the #EastNeuk in general then do get in touch.

We're trying to bring together what appears to be a relatively strong but fragmented community of gamers and so far we're really only finding the board/card gamers.  There will be others that we haven't found yet, after all we've kinda thrown this together in the space of a few weeks.

Our next meet up is Sunday the 18th May and whilst that causes me some challenges (It clashes with the Event Registration for GenCon....) I am thoroughly looking forward to it.

First there was an ORC then a DWARF. Now there's an ENT.

Ok so that post title needs an explanation...

When I moved from Glasgow to the East Neuk of Fife I had a bit of a purge of my gaming collection with the expectation that if I was to get back into gaming I was start anew.

The first breakthrough I had with my gaming was via the Ottakars Roleplaying Club as it was originally known but what is now the Open Roleplaying Community (Edinburgh) or simply ORC for short.

The second breakthrough came as part of starting this 2nd Chapter.  I had been to the Dunfermline Wargaming And Roleplay Fellowship (or simply DWARF for short) prior to opening KoA and during my time at ORC too.  However, it wasn't until the start of this 2nd Chapter that I really became part of that community.  DWARF isn't "just" for wargamers or roleplayers though. Quite a few people play board & card games there as well as CCGs.

So that's the ORC (A RPG club) and the DWARF (A Wargaming and RPG club).  What's the ENT?

Well... As part of my Hobby Objectives I have been looking to do the following 2 things.

2. Play more with more.
3. Home based gaming.

ENT is how I'm going to satisfy number 2 and in a round about way it also supports number 3.

So again.  What's ENT?  ENT is East Neuk Tabletop Games - so that's any of the games I refer to in my What Are Tabletop Games? post. Oh and it kicks off next Sunday the 13th April in Anstruther from 2pm to 5pm and it would greatly please both myself and +donjondo (Alan Stewart) if you were able to join us for it!

Full details can be found either on the Google+ Community or the Facebook Group or follow us on Twitter and indeed on the website.