Monday, January 01, 2007

New Year's Resolutions

Here are my New Year's resolutions for gaming this coming year:

1) Try out the new wave of roleplaying. Matt Gagan is helping out with this, and I'll even be trying out one such system in a couple of weeks. At some point in the future I want to put together a "couples-based" ongoing campaign, no specific system or milieu as of yet, but I'm not expecting to start this in the coming year.

2) More wargaming. This is a no-brainer, now that I've got another partner in town, one who is thrilled to get in a game (even a short one) every couple of weeks. This actually leads me into my next resolution, which is...

3) Play some of the wargaming systems I've owned for years but never played, at least in depth. This includes Great Battles of History (Simple or otherwise), Panzer Grenadier, even some ASL via the starter kits. I'd also like to get some of the games I bought in 2006 and earlier on the table: Clash of Giants (I and II), Grand Illusion, Fire in the Sky, Triumph of Chaos. This will be more of a challenge as Combat Commander looks to take up quite a bit of my wargaming hours.

4) Start a new blog for gaming, but also as a source for gaming information and links. While the 'Geek does a great job for euros, there really isn't a good review site for wargames, and I may try to host something that will include a place for select people to put their reviews out there. However, the primary goal is to have a better host than Blogger, but it won't happen until Apple releases the new iLife apps, including iWeb, so nothing new for at least a month.

5) More 2-player non-wargaming. I did a lot of 2-player gaming for a while, but it dried up for reasons I really can't put my finger on. Good candidates would be Age of Steam, British Rails, good 2-player 18xx variants. Maybe even something that doesn't involve choo-choos! There are a couple of folks in the group who live nearby, and one of my wargaming partners has Thursdays off.

6) Take a more evangelical attitude toward gaming. There are a couple of ways I can do this, but the most effective may be running regular demo sessions at a friend's game and hobby store in the area. We're already talking about how to do this, and I may have to choose between this and playing RPGs as they will tend to happen on Saturdays.

7) While this is really not something that has any chance of having in 2007, I think it is almost a fait accompli that I will gain a dedicated gaming space when we buy a new house in the next 18 months. I would dearly love to have a space where I can have all of my games on display, as well as games set up for entire weeks without worrying if my wife would like to have access to the dining room table. This is a major requirement of any new place we move to, along with a yard for the dogs and not out in the 'burbs, which means it will be really expensive. Oh well.

Almost all of these things involve a greater commitment of time than I've given in the past, at least outside the regular sessions of Rip City Gamers. While I'm not planning to give a lot of that up, I may be putting a lot more effort into gaming on what have been my "off" days (days I'm at home but my wife is working).

Thanks to everyone who made my gaming experiences in 2006 so great - I'm looking forward to carrying it forward into 2007.

4 comments:

dave said...

Here's one: Fix your RSS feed. I'd love to tell folks (e.g., BGG) about your great blog here but they won't see any updates and then unsubscribe.

Dug said...

Update: Dave had the wrong address. I suspect it changed when I went to the "new" Googlized Blogger. Irrelevant, as we're about a month away from a changeover to a new host, but good to know that Blogger isn't killing my feed.

GamesBook said...

While the 'Geek does a great job for euros, there really isn't a good review site for wargames...
is this really true; the BGG allows for people to post reviews of wargames, as well as AAR (session reports) - do we really need another site (not saying you could not put your reviews wherever you wanted...)?

Dug said...

I've always felt that the 'Geek is much more euro-centric, borne out by the fact that the number one wargame only reaches 186 on the overall listing.

The other problem with the 'Geek is the lack of non-title centric information. For example, it's difficult to find illustrated examples of ways to store counters for your games, the relative merits of counter trays vs Plano boxes vs ziplock baggies. I find the Geek Lists tedious in general, and often with very little information.

I plan to focus on wargames partly because a) it's something I'm finding myself preferring to euros lately, b) because it's still a relatively underserved demographic, and c) I can limit my focus. For now, it will be a way for me to continue with my public session reports while allowing me to provide extra content that I think will be helpful. Reviews will come later. Of course, I expect to link into the 'Geek regularly, there is some very nice content there (player aids in particular), but once you start getting away from a specific title I think it's harder to find good info.

Anyway, that's a big part of my motivation.