2009 in Review

[hewligan]

2009 High-points:
Pathfinder RPG
Golarion Campaign Setting - reminds me of the grey-box Forgotten Realms
Keeping my excellent 4 players on my PbF game, and converting said game to Pathfinder RPG

2009 Low-points:
Mid-Year ENWorld flakiness, which was doubly frustrating as I GM a PbF game here. Seems to be a LOT better lately!
Continued edition wars here (and elsewhere) causing useful/interesting threads to get lost among the noise

2010 Hopes:
Maybe, just maybe, finding a real, local gaming group, rather than exclusively GMing online.

 

[Derulbaskul]

Good Points

- I picked up 4E and found I loved it after avoiding it like the plague in 2008.

- The Monster Builder proved to be outstanding, as did the Character Builder.

Bad Points

- Owing to splitting my time between two countries and launching a new company I found myself running only about five D&D sessions this year.

- The continuing Edition Wars. They destroyed much of the community feeling here and on other boards.

2010

- By hook or by crook, I'm going to get a regular gaming session organised in 2010.

 

[Nai_Calus]

High points:

Finally finding a RL D&D group.
Character Builder is awesome.
My dice collection broke 1,000.

Low points:

Pathfinder refreshing the edition wars yet again and deepening the divide.
How more and more stuff keeps getting put behind the DDi paywall and how Dragon keeps getting progressively worse. I hate the new format.
The RL Shadowrun game I was in dying.

Looking forward to:

The Plane Above
Going to GenCon this year since I now live two hours away instead of a couple thousand miles.
Maybe this year we'll finally get some support for Eladrin Clerics and followers of Corellon.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Just game-related stuff

2009 High Points In Gaming

• Having an awesome time running the Shackled City Adventure Path as the campaign ends its second year
• Running a campaign that is now my longest ever at almost 2 years (and we're only at the halfway point)
• Enjoying running a group that has fun just playing the game
• Not having to spending hours arguing and debating rules changes and interpretations with a player that wants to change half the rules in the rulebook
• DM'ing my first ever Dragon combat
• Having the Dragon combat almost result in a TPK and yet still allow the players to defeat the Dragon without any PC deaths or DM fudging (it was such a climactic encounter, just what I had hoped for).
• "Helping" my players get their PC's out of sticky situations by getting them to choose between bad and even worse situations
• Despite doing that, not having the players hate me as the DM as a result, but rather having their PC's hate the NPC that did that to them.

2009 Low Points In Gaming

• The deaths of a number of big contributors to the gaming community
• Edition Wars - Enough already, if your group is having fun playing your edition of choice then does it really matter if someone else is having fun playing a different edition to yours?
• Scheduling Problems - Sometimes co-ordinating 6 people's schedules for a fortnightly game is too hard and people will miss sessions, no matter how many times you try and reschedule the game.
• Having to take a 3 month break from gaming due to the birth of my second child (a low point for my gaming, but definitely a big high point in my personal life - some sacrifices are so worth it! )
• Still not getting a chance to run a few sessions of Feng Shui, Paranoia, XCrawl or Year of the Zombie

Things To Look Forward To In Gaming In 2010

• Getting back into the Shackled City Campaign
• The end of Edition Wars (one can only dream! )
• Finally getting to run some Feng Shui, Paranoia, XCrawl or Year of the Zombie
• Getting around to painting up some of my Reaper minis for my players to use as their PC's
• Building a dungeon from Hirst Arts molds and seeing how it adds to the gaming experience
• Less missed sessions from a couple of my players

 

[rkwoodard]

C&C goodness

Hello,

The Good:
New Energy from the Troll Lords and Castles and Crusades:
4th printing of C&C PHB
Crusader Mag getting better each issue
Bright outlook for 2010

Geist: The Sin-eaters. Nice new WOD game by WW.

The Bad:
My gaming group being burnt out on Fantasy in general


RK

 

[delericho]

I'm listing the low points first, because 2009 hasn't been a great year for gaming for me. That first point is a real killer.

Low Points:

- Nowhere near enough gaming. In the first ten months of the year, I may have managed a dozen game sessions, if that.

- While I find Pathfinder to be an improvement on 3.5e on balance, it isn't "better enough" to compel me to switch.

- Massively turned off by the design of Warhammer 3rd Edition.

High Points:

- The last two months have been awesome for gaming! My pre-existing group seems to have rallied and have started a new Warhammer 2nd Edition campaign, while I have put together a second group and have started a 3.5e Eberron campaign. Both are going well so far.

- Have discovered the benefit of my "editions of choice" going out of print: no more supplement treadmill!

- Ran a great SWSE campaign at the start of the year. Will definitely play more of that game.

2010

- More of the same: run the WFRP campaign to completion, then run a 'sequel' SWSE campaign with that group. Continue the Eberron campaign; don't yet know how or when that's going to end.

- Try Hunter: the Vigil, and some Pathfinder.

- Build a library of "the best of OOP". If I'm sticking with D&D 3.5e, WFRP 2nd Edition, and Eberron 3.5e then I might as well hunt down any books I don't have while they are relatively plentiful and cheap.

 

[Primal]

For me the definite high point has been GMing Pathfinder with great players -- I've never been this excited (or inspired) as a D&D GM!

Paizo's adventures plus companion and chronicles product lines have been absolutely great so far -- I'm very happy about Golarion, too (and I also agree that it reminds of the best qualities of the original FR boxed set).

I'm also very excited about 2010, as Advanced Player's Guide, Gamemastery Guide, NPC Guide and Bestiary II (to mention a few) all seem to be very well-designed books, and Paizo has clearly put a lot of effort and thought into HOW the mechanics should be expanded.

@Jack99: Congratulations, Man! I didn't know you have published material professionally... what, where, when?

 

[Infiniti2000]

High Points

• Finished up preliminary 4E campaigns - good learning experiences
• Character and monster builders
• Was able to afford babysitter for kids so we can play without interruptions

Low Points

• Death of one player's mom
• Not playing as consistently as I would like
• KotS and especially Spellguard are not terribly good modules
• Still can't convince group to try Morrow Project

Looking forward in 2010

• Start of my homebrew campaign, January 9th!
• Start of the other DM's campaign sometime later in the year
• More consistent playing
• Improvements to CB and MB and hopefully more tools
• iPhone D&D tools, now that I got an iPhone 3GS 32GB for Christmas!

 

[jaerdaph]

Highlights:

• Paizo and the release of the Pathfinder RPG - what a classy company with top notch products!
• Excellent 3PP support for Pathfinder out of the gate.
• The return of many 3e/3.5e compatible 3PP products from 4e 3PPs like Goodman that were previously prohibited under the draconian GSL when WotC finally relented.
• Profantasy Sotware releasing Patch 8 for Campaign Cartographer 3 which includes a lot of new features (like anti-aliasing) that I've wanted for years.
• Getting to assist Joe Bloch (the Greyhawk Grognard) on his epic mega-dungeon, The Castle of the Mad Archmage.
• Scoring all six hard covers and the narrator's screen for Decipher's Star Trek RPG for $35 bucks!
• Release of the revised edition of the Colonial Gothic RPG.
• Introducing a younger generation to tabletop RPGs through Microlite20.

Low Points:

• Dave's passing, and the passing of several other icons from the RPG community.
• WotC pulling the plug on older edition PDFs.
• Continued edition wars and oversensitivity to *any* criticism of 4e/3.Xe/older e's/your favorite game or e, not to mention the growing trend towards shouting "Edition War!" before one has even started.
• RPG piracy and other disregard for the IP of others.
• No further news or development on OpenD6 (West End Games).
• And the biggest loser low point, hands down: Jason Shipman of Outlaw Press using stolen art in his products.

2010:

• Dr. Who!
• A "Pathfinderized" d20 Modern?
• More Pathfinder, more True20, and hopefully more wonderful surprises!

 

[crazy_monkey1956]

Low Points

My Sunday night game group (the "grown-up" game) effectively disbanding.

The end of my involvement with the WotC Community (no sour grapes, just finding that I'm no longer really a WotC costumer and thus not able to be an effective volunteer community lead).

The end of my play-by-post games on EN World due to the technical issues earlier this year.

Having to, yet again, sell some of my RPG books to pay the bills.

High Points

Crazy Monkey's Asylum taking off quite well as a true community and place for Play-by-Post gaming.

My Friday night game group (the "kids" game) still going strong.

Playing in and running a large variety of games via both tabletop and play-by-post, and thus being able to use most of the stuff on my game shelf despite the eclectic nature of the collection.

Getting some preliminary work done on my own little pet project RPG.

Looking Forward to 2010

Continuing to grow Crazy Monkey's Asylum.

Continuing to work on my own little pet project RPG.

Sitting on the player's side of the screen on Friday nights.

Rebuilding my RPG collection and not having to sell any of it.