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Year in Review – 2024 – Settling in for the Long Haul

Welcome to the fifth annual review on this blog. (Previous annual reviews: 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023.)

This felt like a year where we settled into a mode of hobby gaming that can be maintained indefinitely. Barring exogenous shocks, of course. I also managed to complete my PhD, which has taken the pressure off things a little bit but did not lead to as much slack to really expand my hobby activity on this site as I had hoped. There is always more work to do.

As has become customary, here’s a review of what we played, some statistics, games, and game-related paraphernalia I acquired, D&D-related fiction I read, and, finally, some resolutions for the new year. Happy 2025, everyone.

Addendum: I also blogged an overview of content and rules I homebrewed throughout 2024.

What We Played

Planet Karus

I described Planet Karus, our current D&D campaign, at some length in last year’s review. The game is still going from strength to strength, and I continue to expand the map with new adventuring sites. We also have the occasional almost fully improvised session of shenanigans. Running a fully homebrewed game continues to be an incredibly freeing experience, if at times slightly daunting. I look forward to many more sessions in the years to come.

Board Games

We had nine board game nights this year. Across those, we played Cyclades (2 plays), Galaxy Trucker (6), Kemet: Blood and Sand (2), Lunch Money (2), Modern Art (2), Quantum (1), and Sidereal Confluence (1).

Galaxy Trucker is a quick game, which explains the high count. We typically manage to play two rounds in a night. I am happy we managed to give Sidereal Confluence a go. It’s a beast of a game but also quite the experience. I wouldn’t mind giving it another go at a future occasion, if we all feel up to it. Lunch Money we played on a lark for nostalgia’s sake. That game is so incredibly nineties it hurts. Cyclades is a new acquisition. I would say it is on par with the other Matagot dudes-on-a-map games we like. It is most similar to Kemet, and I think out of the two, I prefer Cyclades because it is less sprawling and more tightly wound.

A game of Cyclades in progress.

Tabletop Role-Playing Game Play Statistics

I once again crunched the numbers on our RPG sessions. Read on for the dirty details.

Sessions

We played nine sessions of Planet Karus, one of which was an eight-hour marathon session. We’ve made the transition to only playing in person with success. I don’t feel it has affected overall attendance too much. If it has, I would say it’s an acceptable trade-off against a much more convivial and engaging play experience.

Attendance

The number of players ranged from 2 to 6 (M = 2.9, SD = 1.3). The six-player marathon session skews these numbers somewhat. If we take that one out, we get a range of 2 to 3 (M = 2.4, SD = 0.5). Almost exactly the same as last year.

The top player was good for 29.6% of the attendance, the number two for 18,5%, and the two shared number three players for 14,8% each. It looks like we had a slightly broader base of participation this year, which is nice and healthy, I would say.

Chart of player attendance.

Character Deaths

We had a total of two player-character deaths and eleven retainer deaths over those nine sessions. Total deaths ranged from 0 to 4 (M = 1.6, SD = 1.2). Both those PC deaths occurred in session 21, which happened on my birthday, and the same player lost both characters. They really do know how to please their referee.

The MilliWhack rating for this year’s sessions ranged from 73 to 103 (M = 89, SD = 9). That’s a decline compared to last year, which I feel reflects the players’ increased savviness and stronger characters. I guess I need to up the ante and start introducing some deadlier environments.

Chart of MilliWhack rating of the Planet Karus campaign to date.

Experience Points

XP per session ranged from 0 to 13,200 (M = 5,710, SD = 4,703). The most lucrative sessions were #23 (13,200) and #26 (11,273). Both were hauls acquired from the second level of the tentpole dungeon, with levels of danger to match the sizeable rewards. I won’t share spoilers here about if there is much more to acquire on this level, but players might need to start exploring the third level if they want to push more of their characters into the upper-level range.

Seven of the current characters saw action this year. Their levels range from 1 to 6 (M = 3.0, SD = 1.5). These characters have now acquired between them 69,994 XP. (Do note that players can get XP from burning treasure, so in effect, each piece of mundane treasure they acquire has the potential of netting them XP twice.) That’s a 3× increase compared to last year. Very well done. Our most active player has managed to get their magic-user character to level six, which is the highest level attainable in Hackbut. A notable achievement!

Game Acquisitions

I believe I did not buy as much hobby-related stuff this year as I did previously. My wallet thanks me.

PDF game books: No ArtPunk, Vol. 1, Yoon-Suin 2nd Edition, Fight On! #15.

Yoon-Suin was a backer reward (I think?) NAP I got to read a few of the winning entries for models to emulate (chiefly Melonath Falls and Caught in the Web of Past and Present). Haven’t gotten around to that yet. Fight On recently relaunched. I had a browse, and it looks fun.

Physical game books: Knock! Issue Four.

Just one physical game book as far as I can recall. This was a backer reward. Knock is always fun to flip through.

Board games: CoraQuest, Captain Sonar, Dragon Quest, Cyclades.

CoraQuest was a birthday present, and it ended up being a big hit with my two six-year-old boys. It’s an extremely well-done, kid-friendly dungeon crawler. Captain Sonar was a gift from my player group, which has yet to find its way onto my table. Dragon Quest was also a gift from a longtime friend and occasional player. A great collectible I am not sure I will ever play, but I am very pleased to own. Cyclades I acquired myself to sort of complete my Matagot dudes-on-a-map holy trinity (alongside Kemet and Inis). We’ve played this a few times, and gosh, is it fun.

Kit: Some more Gamescience dice (d4, d6, d10, d100, d12). I am still on the hunt for a nice d8 and d20. After the previous year’s splurge on some kit for in-person games, I am pretty much set, though, and I don’t feel I need much more.

Books Read

This year, I read a tad more widely than the last, so I did not cover as much D&D-related speculative fiction as I did in the previous year. But still managed to get a few good ones under my belt. In order of reading, these were A Voyage to Arcturus, Carmilla, Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons and Dragons, and Hyperborea.

The final one, CAS’s Hyperborea, is an absolute must for any old-school D&D head, of course, but the single volume I’d recommend the most is Bebergal’s delightful anthology. It’s a near-perfect collection of sword and sorcery, the kind I’d like all of my players to read. I like it so much that I acquired the second, expanded edition in hardback later in the year.

Peter Bebergal’s Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons and Dragons (revised and expanded edition).

Blogging

Ah, blogging. The thing I enjoy doing but can’t seem to make the time for. In the hierarchy of hobby-related things, it does come last. I mean, if the choice is between doing some prep on the Planet Karus campaign or drafting a post, the former takes precedence. And that’s fine, I guess.

I did start cross-posting session reports here, which is better than nothing. But what I’d really like to do is wrap up that series of posts on things I learned about running Castle Xyntillan, continue the series on my homebrew rules, and also start posting some things I have created for the Planet Karus campaign. Now, to make the time for it. Ah well.

Views

The blog had 3,720 views and 1,257 visitors. Surprisingly, that’s an increase from last year of 341 (10%) and 309 (33%), respectively.

The top-performing posts were Running Xyntillan: Downtime (198 views), 1d100 Planetary Romance Tropes (118), and Running Xyntillan: Magic Swords (87). The Xyntillan posts continue to perform very well for understandable reasons. It’s kind of surprising that an AI-generated list of tropes did so well. Clickbait? The next two posts from 2024 that did well were Hackbut – Time and Movement (63), and 1d100 Sword, Sandal and Planet Tropes (46).

Referrers

We had 498 views through search engines, 93 through Beyond Fomalhaut, and 85 through Reddit. Melan beat Reddit. Amazing. (I don’t really post to Reddit anymore. Maybe that’s part of it.) I also continue to receive traffic through The Byzantine (21), Anne (17), and Xaosseed (10). My thanks, as always.

Looking Back and Ahead

Let’s conclude this post by reflecting on last year’s resolutions and making some new ones for the year ahead.

Last Year’s Resolutions

The goals for 2024 included restarting the Planet Karus campaign on a monthly basis, continuing monthly board game nights, running an in-person marathon session, and maintaining a monthly blog schedule.

We played nine Planet Karus sessions which isn’t exactly monthly, but close enough if we factor in the usual breaks over summer and Christmas. If we manage to maintain this level of play over the coming year, I would be perfectly satisfied. But maybe we can bump that number up by one or two.

It also looks like we managed to have nine board game nights. Similarly, I hope we can keep that up and maybe squeeze in one or two more.

The big achievement in 2024, gaming-wise, was, without a doubt, the in-person marathon session we had on March 2. It was an absolute blast to play for eight hours straight. I can’t remember the last time we did that. It may have been back in high school decades ago. We had so much fun that we have set a date for a new marathon session in the new year.

The only goal I feel like I did not achieve was the monthly blog schedule. Aside from the play reports, I only posted three things, two of which were AI-generated lists. For a variety of reasons already discussed, a monthly schedule is just asking too much. But more than three should be doable. I mean, that’s one post every 17 weeks. So, let’s cut the original goal in half and shoot for a proper blog post every other month, for a grand total of six this year.

Upcoming Year

In closing, here are some resolutions for the new year.

Continue the monthly in-person Planet Karus games, as well as the monthly board game nights. Obviously. See if we can increase the attendance and the frequency, if only slightly. Run another in-person marathon session of Planet Karus. And yes, see if we can have a modest increase in the number of blog posts.

That’s it for this year in review. Happy 2025.

Categories
Notes

Year In Review – 2021 – Spitting in the Face of the Bat Plague

The second year of blogging has come to a close, time to take stock. Contrary to my hopes and expectations this time last year, 2021 turned out to be the second year of playing in times of a global pandemic. In spite of this, we managed to continue our gaming.

What we played

So what did we play? Most notably, I refereed two seasons of Castle Xyntillan using my homebrew classic D&D rules, Hackbut. Season two ran for 14 sessions, from late January to late April. Season three lasted 10 sessions and ran from mid-September to mid-December. In between these, from early May to mid-July, one of our players stepped up to “warden” a season of Mothership. We played one session of The Haunting of Ypsilon 14 and 10 sessions of Gradient Descent. Over summer I ran a two-shot of The Coming of Sorg, again using Hackbut. When circumstances allowed for it, we managed to resume our monthly face-to-face boardgame night. To celebrate, I acquired Kemet Blood & Sand, which according to many is the pinnacle of Matagot “dudes on a map” games. We managed to play this three times between late July and late October.

With regards to our ongoing Castle Xyntillan campaign I kept pretty extensive records. What follows is some data on attendance, character deaths, and experience points. Just for kicks.

Attendance

Like last year, our play group numbers 7 players, not including me. Most sessions had 2-3 players attending, with average attendance being 3,6. Season 2 had an average attendance of 4,4, season 3’s average attendance was 2,6. This drop in attendance is probably the result of a number of factors, including big life events for at least one of our players, and perhaps also some fatigue with online gaming setting in for a few others.

Attendance

The top 3 players were good for 66% of the attendance. This was 56% in the previous year. This shift can be explained mostly by one of our group not participating at all this year, and another only playing in the beginning of the year.

Number of players

Character deaths

Ah, killing player-characters, the thing every classic D&D referee enjoys doing the most. I am kidding of course, but still, deaths is a good indication of how hazardous my game is. Seeing as how a key distinguishing aspect of classic D&D is that it is a game of challenge for the players, character death serves as a reasonable proxy for it.

Deaths

In total, 10 player-characters died in the dungeon. That’s an average of 1,7 per session. The most PCs killed in one session was four, which happened during session #18 when the company had an ill-fated run-in with a bunch of ghouls.

Retainers were unluckier still, with a total of 27 perishing across this year’s two seasons, for an average of 2,3 per session. The most retainers killed in one session was five, during session #33, when the company got lost in a pocket dimension forest.

Overall, 37 characters were killed by the dungeon, for an average of 1,5 per session. I don’t have a baseline to compare these numbers to, so I really can’t say if I run an extraordinarily deadly game, or if I am soft-pedaling it. I guess over 1 PC killed on average every session is kind of rough, but I don’t go out of my way to try and slaughter them. In fact I often feel bad about not giving the players the challenge they deserve. Maybe this number is an indication I should relax a little on that front.

Experience points

In any case, was all that dying good for anything? I would say so. The players brought back 132.796 XP. This breaks down to 84.754 XP in season 2, and 48.042 XP in season 3. That is an average of 5.533 XP per session (6.054 XP in season 2, 4.804 XP in season 3). I think it is safe to say Castle Xyntillan is a pretty generously stocked dungeon, but not overly so. I think this nicely offsets its lethality. Yes it is easy to die in the dungeon. But it is is also easy for players to get back into the game reasonably quickly, and level up past those first fragile levels.

Experience points

All of this XP is from treasure recovered, at a rate of 1 GP equals 1 XP. I award no XP for killing monsters and in case you are wondering, magic items also do not yield any. Another important thing to note is that players get to divide XP between all player-characters that participated in an expedition as they see fit. I do not enforce shares for player-characters.

The highest single haul was 15.900 XP, in session #21 (in season 3, the biggest score was 11.660 XP during session #34). In general, it is those wine barrels in the cellar that are the real money makers.

The seven currently active player-characters between them have acquired 106.393 XP. The average party level is 4.

The lowest level character is Guillemette, a level 1 thief, with 432 XP collected over 4 sessions. But this character saw no action this year. The next lowest-level character is Robert, a level 2 cleric, at 2.529 XP, all of which was acquired in one session.

The highest level character is Hendrik, a level 6 magic-user, at 36.000 XP, collected over a whopping 24 sessions of careful, diligent play. Level 6 is the highest level in the game and the magic-user is of course the class that requires the highest amount of XP. Getting there was quite an achievement, well-earned.

Closely following Hendrik is Jürg, a level 6 fighter / level 1 thief, at 31.600 XP collected over 14 sessions. Jürg is the only multi-classed character in the game. I wonder if more will follow now that some of them are plateauing and have no use for XP anymore. It’s also worth noting Jürg began life as a retainer (and husband) of this player’s previous PC, Bartolomea.

Blogging

Moving on, what happened with the blog? I mostly wrote play reports, for Castle Xyntillan seasons 2 and 3 (see the index), as well as the Coming of Sorg two-shot (a, b).

I also continued to write up commentaries on my homebrew ruleset, Hackbut. This year I covered the four character classes, equipment, encumbrance and retainers.

WordPress tells me I had 3.519 views and 1.188 visitors over the past year. This is of course very modest, and in truth I pay little attention to this sort of stuff. I do promote my posts on the OSR discord server and my twitter, but not anywhere else really.

The best performing posts this year were the first Castle Xyntillan play report, the thief class, and The Coming of Sorg.

I got quite a bit of traffic through referrals from Beyond Fomalhaut (thanks Melan). Most of my visitors are from the anglosphere (US, UK, CA) and also from The Netherlands of course.

Looking ahead

I hope I will be able to keep our weekly online D&D game going. It is definitely something that keeps me sane, and a welcome outlet for my many creative urges. I think we have one more season of Castle Xyntillan in us. I might try to add a new player or two to our group, so that we push the average attendance back up to the 3-4 mark. We are a close-knit group though, so recruiting will have to rely on our immediate social networks.

After Xyntillan, I think I want to try my hand at running material of my own fabrication. I have come to realize that this is the purest form of D&D, homebrewing everything, and I want to experience it first-hand. I have been quietly chipping away at a mid-size dungeon (about 120 rooms across three levels) and am about half-way through completing it. It is strongly OD&D inspired, but filtered through my personal fantasy canon, which is very much in a science fantasy vein and includes things like Masters of the Universe, Storm, and The Incal.

Of course, once we are able to, I look forward to once again playing games face-to-face, but that will most likely mean more boardgames. I recently acquired both a copy of Tigris & Euphrates, and Quantum and I hope to get those to the table in 2022.

In terms of blogging, I will continue to write up play reports for as long as I referee games. I like keeping a record of what happened and most of all reflecting on what went well and what I can improve on as a referee. Occasionally I get a comment saying others are getting some use out of them as well, which is always nice. I also intend to continue the series on Hackbut, although we have now hit the section on running the game, which may lend itself a little less well to the kind of posts I have been doing so far.

In any case, despite circumstances, 2021 was another good year for me for gaming, and I hope to maintain this in the year to come, bat plague be damned.