2024 Retrospective

As is traditional (well not on this blog yet because it’s the first time but anyway) it’s time to look back at the year and reflect on what we’ve done. CW: there’s quite a bit of personal stuff and mentions of mental health and death and general ramblings of a grumpy middle-aged man.

So this year:

On a personal side, the year started with my father’s funeral. Then the cat died at the end of February.  Unfortunately, I’m at the age where a lot of people I know have also lost love ones through the year.

On a brighter note, 3 kittens arrived in May bringing total madness and 1 dead bird (so far). Also, 3 people I roleplay with have got married.

I have been suffering with depression for a while now but a number of things have helped me this year.  I attended a number of sessions with a mental health nurse and talking through things has helped.

I started collecting and painting miniatures. I’m not very good but it’s quite relaxing. This really started with the gnome blood-bowl team but I’ve painted loads of things for my D&D game.

My partner requires carers but we had funding problems at the start of the year. When this got resolved, I was able to go into office for a couple of days a week, which has made me more productive at work

I started this blog back in January, which has been a good outlet for my terrible puns of nothing else.

So onto roleplaying games:

My Monday group passed 15 years of playing together - online since 2020. I’ve played numerous sessions of Space 1887 using Hero system rules and also Dr Who..

I ran one session of Call of Cthulhu for them, which seemed to work out ok. No-one died.

On Fridays, I was a player with my face-to-face group as we finished off Strahd (5e). My monk-librarian decided to become a Lich.

I then ran 24 sessions (including session 0) of Night’s Dark Terror (also 5e). This has run even longer than I thought it would - it’s amazing how much content some of those old modules had. However, there were several memorable bits that emerged from play or I added in: the dual between the half-elf and a goblin king, Droop the snake-worshipping goblin and of course, the goose hydra.

I’m really enjoying being a DM again despite getting more and more disenchanted with the 5e rules. 

On my blog I also wrote one review and one rant about D&D.

I think my favourite rpg book that I got this year was the WFRP 4e Imperial Zoo, which was fun to read.

I bought a number of good minis, including a massive pathfinder Gold Dragon, the goose hydra (obviously), the warhammer darkoath marauders especially the chief’s New Romantic horse and a number of weird 3D prints by Vae Victis. Special mention must go to the gnome blood bowl team that started all 

Other stuff from this year: 

I managed to read quite a few books this year - I started trying to read in the evenings before bed. Highlights included Anna Smith Sparks grim-dark Empires of Dust books, a couple of Tana French’s Dublin Murders books, The Boys in the Valley - horror novel by Philip Fracassi and also Kim Newman’s Guineveve warhammer stories (some of which I hadn’t read before).

I think the best tv show was Shrinking on Apple.  There were quite a few other things I watched that weren’t as good as previous series.

Podcasts I’ve enjoyed this year include: what would the smart party do, how we roll, grizzly peaks radio and Hell or high rollers.

I didn’t play many video games of note. The Arkham Horror video game with props Road to Innsmouth and my colleague’s game PrinterSim are the only ones that spring to mind.

I didn’t manage to go to the theatre or cinema as my partner is a bit housebound at the moment. I think the only album I bought was the final Shellac one.

I was going to look ahead to next year but I’ve already gone on too long so I’ll do that later.

So with that, 2024: off you pop. Happy new year.