With all of my emphasis on playing loads of new games this year and I am beginning to switch gears somewhat. Next year I plan to focus on running lots of games. This is to dust off both my GM skills and to allow me to effectively assess the worth of the many games I own. A lot of which I have never played nor run in the past. As much as my limits game budget will allow I plan to grow my collection, but only with games that pass muster!

To prepare for the quickly coming new year, I was digging in some of the boxes where I store many of my little used game books. When I came upon a Pathfinder RPG module and I quickly remembered how much I truely despise Pathfinder and it’s organized play iteration. For those of you that have followed this blog from its beginning (January 2015) you might remember my scathing post about my dislike for Pathfinder (here). Well, my attitude towards Pathfinder has not changed. It’s a good games at its core because it based on D&D, but none the less the game development and advancement has gone into a realm where one needs either a PhD or a software package like HeroLab to manage your character and determine your final modifiers. Combat is still unmanageably long and unwieldy with all the supplement books out there adding this or that skill or feat. Sorry, I digress, my dislike of Pathfinder is not the purpose of this post; it’s actually to highlight the amount of  games I have that I need to run to truly assess if they should stay in my collection. I want to streamline my collection to only those those games that I enjoy as both a player and a GM. It is these games that will get the table table time in the years to come.

Over the past two years I have focused on two things. One, acquiring new game system core books and supplements for games I already owned and two, backing really cool looking Kickstarter projects. This has lead to a swollen collection, both physical and digital, of games and supplements that have never played or run. I plan to resolve this in 2015 all the while seeking out new additions that will be worthy additions to my collection. A secondary focus will also be to play lots of new games next year. See my blogged list of 100 RPGs I would like to try in the future, here. I have identified three RPGs that I own that I have never run and they are Call of Cthulhu, Dungeon World and Early Dark. They are my priorities for early 2015.

This refocusing of my collection is not limited to just RPGs, I have a slew of historical board-wargames that I have had on my shelves collecting dust; in some cases for years. I am resolved to the notion of streamlining this part of my collection as well. I hope to be able to play at least one wargame each month, more would be better, to determine which will stay and which will eventually get sold or traded. As with RPGs I have the ability to play most if not all of my wargames virtual through the use of a java based platform called vassal. This will hopefully allow me to get more games played this coming year. I would love to get this part of the collection down to 30 or so games that I really enjoy playing. The three games I am going to focus on first are Hoplite, Bloody April, 1917: Air War Over Arras, France and The Dark Valley.

I am wide open to suggestions for new games to add to the collection, both RPGs and wargames. If you think you can recommend a game that will have staying power with me, throw it out there and let’s talk about it. Here’s a quick summary of my current interests.

RPGs
Horror
Dungeon Crawling
Storytelling focused
Historical

Wargames
Ancients
French & Indian War
Revolutionary War
WWI

~ Modoc

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