D&D General What are your 2021 gaming goals?

[Charlaquin]

I know I’m about a week late for New Years resolutions, but I imagine some of you made them. Even if you didn’t, maybe this thread will inspire you to. I want to know what your gaming-related goals are for this year. 2020 was a strange year for gaming, especially for those of us who strongly prefer gaming in person. So in the interest of making 2021 a better one, I thought it would be good to share our gaming goals for this year.

Here are mine:

Start a regular game up by March. Even if that has to mean running it online to start with. I haven’t run a proper game since last March, and a year is a long enough break. I need to get back into it by then. Which brings me to my next goal...

Be ready for game by game night. I’ve had way too many times where game night comes around and I just have to wing it because I have next to nothing prepared, and I want to break myself out of that pattern. Now, part of this will be getting more comfortable running with less prep than would be ideal. But part of it will be committing to doing prep every week, especially because of my next goal...

Run games weekly. In 2019 I ran games twice monthly. In theory the off-week was supposed to give me time to prep for the on-week, but in practice that just didn’t really happen. With two weeks between sessions, it took forever to get anything done, especially since a lot of time in each session would have to be dedicated to everyone getting their bearings again. And if a session had to be cancelled, forget about it. This year, I’m committing to one session a week, as well as...

Get more done each session. I know this one isn’t entirely within my control. The players of course have a lot of influence over the pace of the session, as well they should, but there’s a lot more I could be doing to help keep up the flow. This year, I plan to set clearer expectations around cross-talk, rules discussions, and distractions, and I want to go into each session with a clearer idea of what the plan is so I don’t have to waste time stalling while I figure it out on the fly.

What about you? What goals do you have for yourself, either as a DM or as a player?

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Start a West Marches style game - kinda cheating here as I had been planning this with another DM through the fall and we recruited our initial player pool in December. First session was last night (with me as DM) and second session will be tomorrow (with the other DM and I get to play - yay!). I think we'll enjoy the flexibility of this style in that the player pool should provide 3-6 PCs for any given day/time that either DM can run. And players won't feel pressure to make every session. This is going to hinge on active player involvement in the between-session communication on Discord. We're encouraging the posting of player session recaps with the promise of minor in-game rewards - we'll see how that goes. I guess at some point it would be nice to get a third DM to step up from the player pool to run a session now and then, too.

Streamline VTT prep - VTTs can really become a time-suck in terms of setting up the perfect scenes, especially now that I've been introduced to Dynamic Lighting in Roll20. The perfect is definitely the enemy of the good here and I want to be able to set up maps and enemies more quickly. I probably need to change my mindset to harken back to the days when we played in person: simple dry erase grid tiles, chess pieces for enemy tokens, and sometimes just theatre of the mind. Simplify...

Streamline overall game prep - I want to delve more into the Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master to help with this. Hmm... that sounds like an oxymoron, but I feel the more I can absorb more of the lessons from the book now, the more efficient I'll be prepping over the coming months.

Publish a few adventures on the DMs' Guild - I wanted to do this last year but put it off and now here I am putting it on my 2021 list.

Continue to learn DM tips and tricks from the good folks here on ENWorld - there really are some great nuggets of wisdom to be gleaned in different threads here - even if it is sometimes just re-examining and/or re-affirming how we currently play at our tables. Glad to be part of it. Thanks for starting this thread @Charlaquin!

 

[Musing Mage]

First and foremost resume my regular 1st ed campaign... which has been on hiatus since March due to the pandemic. That's a twice monthly (on average) game.

Make a point of writing up some stuff for publication.

Maybe start a podcast/webseries talking old school... been meaning to do this for a while now, but keep putting it off.

Check back with me in 2022 and we'll see how diligent I've been!

 

[GnomeWorks]

I'd like to have all my homebrew classes in at least a usable state by April or so.

I'd like to get the setting guide I'm working on also in a usable state, since my wiki got nuked and my current group is new and isn't familiar with my world.

 

[Charlaquin]

Start a West Marches style game - kinda cheating here as I had been planning this with another DM through the fall and we recruited our initial player pool in December. First session was last night (with me as DM) and second session will be tomorrow (with the other DM and I get to play - yay!). I think we'll enjoy the flexibility of this style in that the player pool should provide 3-6 PCs for any given day/time that either DM can run. And players won't feel pressure to make every session. This is going to hinge on active player involvement in the between-session communication on Discord. We're encouraging the posting of player session recaps with the promise of minor in-game rewards - we'll see how that goes. I guess at some point it would be nice to get a third DM to step up from the player pool to run a session now and then, too.

I’ve wanted to run a West Marches game ever since I first heard about them, but I just don’t have the players for something like that, and I feel like coordinating with multiple DMs would be hard for me. But, the campaign I’m working on for March is inspired by some of the parts of West Marches that excite me the most. I’m planning to set the game in a city based around Waterdeep (utilizing Dragon Heist and Dungeon of the Mad Mage), with Undermountain filling in the role filled by The West in West Marches. Sort of a “Down Marches” I guess. I have five players, but I’m planning to encourage them to make multiple characters, that they can switch between from adventure to adventure.

Thanks for starting this thread @Charlaquin!

No problem! I thought it would be a good conversation starter and could potentially lead to some useful ideas being shared.

 

[Charlaquin]

Check back with me in 2022 and we'll see how diligent I've been!

If this thread proves popular I might make it an annual thing.

 

[Undrave]

I'd like to do ANY gaming in 2021...

And do another pass at my Warlord class. Maybe try and come up with something new and rebuild it from the ground up as a first level subclass picking class.

 

[Marc_C]

My answer:

2021 RPG and Gaming Resolutions?

I know, I know, we often don't keep them but I still think it is good idea to set some goals for the coming year and look back at how well we did at the end. Overall I did good with my 2020 resolutions despite Covid-19. My 2021 Resolutions: Cut back on social media and forums. I've already cut...

www.enworld.org

 

[Charlaquin]

My answer:

2021 RPG and Gaming Resolutions?

I know, I know, we often don't keep them but I still think it is good idea to set some goals for the coming year and look back at how well we did at the end. Overall I did good with my 2020 resolutions despite Covid-19. My 2021 Resolutions: Cut back on social media and forums. I've already cut...

www.enworld.org

Whoops! If I’d known this thread already existed I would have just posted in it instead of starting a new one. My bad!

EDIT: Oh, I see, it’s in gaming general instead of D&D. That makes sense. In that case, I think it makes sense for both threads to coexist. This one for D&D-specific goals and the other for general gaming goals.

 

[Marc_C]

Whoops! If I’d known this thread already existed I would have just posted in it instead of starting a new one. My bad!

EDIT: Oh, I see, it’s in gaming general instead of D&D. That makes sense. In that case, I think it makes sense for both threads to coexist. This one for D&D-specific goals and the other for general gaming goals.

No resolution for D&D in 2021.

My 5e campaign is on hold until we can get face to face. We love using miniatures and terrain for that one. Tried playing it on VTT but it is just not the same kind of fun.