2024 Year in Review

Well, what a year we've had. The start of D&D 5.5e? There's a Monster Manual on the horizon. And of course more adventures to review. I'm a bit behind, but I'll be caught up by the end of January. That means a review of the new DM's screen, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and Quests from the Infinite Staircase. 

I'm also hoping to do a couple writings on looking back. First, looking back on this edition. And after that a quick look back at the previous edition, 4th edition. We're at a crossroads as we stare at a new chapter of D&D, and that makes it a perfect time to reflect. 

 I've recently had some change to play Vampire: The Masquerade 5th edition too. I'm enjoying my time, but it does give me feelings as a system. I may not do a full review, but more a high level summary of my thoughts: what I like, and what I don't. 

I hope to stay more up to date this year than I did last. I've been routinely 2-3 months behind. I'll try to stay at most 1 month behind this year. It's not really an excuse, but things haven't been the easiest lately. I hope you've all been well, and let's hope for a better 2025.

New Year 2022

It was a good year for D&D things. I hope to still do more game reviews. I'm also in the process to catch up on my D&D book reviews. I'll be getting my review The Wild Beyond the Witchlight soon. After that, I have 3 more reviews to get through. I may make use of a faster review style for those, though it'll depend on the books themselves.

I'll keep focusing on D&D things in the new year. And I'm looking forward to it. I hope to go back to making more resources for Dungeon Masters again. Pre-made encounters, locations, items, that sort of thing. I truly missed it this year. But I want to catch up on my reviews too.

In general, Candlekeep Mysteries ended up being my most used book I think. A new player of mine loved the setup and had their character living there. So it transitioned into a campaign making use of these adventures very nicely. I hope to see another adventure anthology series. I also hope more adventures go up to level 20 in the published adventures. 

Thanks for a wonderful year. I loved reviewing, I loved reading, and I loved writing. And I'm looking forward to more in 2022.

200th Post!

As the title subtly hints, this is my 200^th post. When I started, I never thought I would have gone on for so long. It's not that I planned to quit before this point. It's just the thought never really struck me. I simply wanted the chance to ramble about whatever I wanted and offer advice no-one asked for. As time went my ambitions expanded to the point where I also wanted to review D&D books as they were released up as well as a wide assortment of 3^rd part content. It was and I hope continues to be a tremendous experience.

When I started posting it was meant purely for me. There are many things that you notice in a general sense while playing, but being able to put it into words requires a deeper understanding. Taking my vague feelings on the topic of tabletop games, and trying to express them forced me to think about things in greater detail and better understand my own opinions. I could have just wrote for myself and left what I wrote in notebooks or files on my computer. However, being out there for others to read had the potential to help others and start conversations. On the second point I think I largely failed, but tomorrow is a new day. I also realized that I actually enjoy writing on the topic.

Plans For The Future

200 posts down and who knows how many more to go. I hope to continue to cover new D&D books as they are released as well as 3^rd party products. Maps and 3D printable terrain in particular have my notice. I hope that going forward I might get the chance to do some interviews too. My focus will continue to be mainly on tabletop and board game topics, but I'll try to do more video game stuff as well on my other blog. If the time comes and I have to chose, I will do as I've done in the past: pick tabletop gaming. I've had the idea to do video game stuff for a while, but the blog just sat deserted.

Thank You!

First, I'd like to thank my players who let me try to kill – I mean play tabletop games with them. You know who you are.You've bargained with devils, hunted and been hunted by vampires, got lost across the planes, and befriended gods. And all in the last couple of months. You've inspired a lot of this, both directly and indirectly. Again, thanks guys.

Next, a big thank you to Wizards of the Coast, and the legacy of TSR. Besides giving me a game to play and write so much about, it gave me a life long hobby, an uncountable number of stories, and a fair few friendships that wouldn't have existed otherwise. Tabletop games have also led to some of my favourite video games. They'r everywhere.

Also a big thank you to 360PR+. In Particular thanks Mark, Sheila, Mary-Catherine, and Katie. They've always been incredibly helpful, even under a barrages of questions from me. The review copies make it much easier on my part too.

And also to Antal Kéninger and Black Scroll Games. They've released some wonderful sets and 3D printable models. It was a pleasure to be able to review them. I look forward to the new things you have planned.

Lasty to my readers. Some of you have commented, some of you haven't. Thanks for the chance to write for you all and I hope you found at least something of use within the thousands of words.

A Year In Review

A year has already passed. I've tried to do one post every week this year, and while I had to occasionally miss a week here and there, I think I managed to write about a lot of different things this year. Most of it was advice no-one really asked for (hope someone out there found it useful), but I also had the luck to do my fair share of reviews this year. The interesting part about products is that despite liking them, and appreciating them, you sometimes just find yourself not using them after a while. Small, not very obvious things just add up, or you get bored when over time. For this reason I hope to look back at my reviews, and the products I used to highlight those that I feel deserve an end of year shout out. So, let's get into it.

Official Dungeons & Dragons

We had 3 books released this year: Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Tomb of Annihilation, and Tales from the Yawning Portal. They were generally solid. Xanathar's Guide to Everything being very much a supplement book. Tales from the Yawning Portal was for those of us who wanted to see some of the old D&D adventures, which of course made it less tempting if you owned the original unless you wanted an updated version. My favourite of the 3 was Tomb of Annihilation, but I've always been a sucker for adventures that also work as adventure supplements. They give me a lot of material to reuse or steal, a new adventure to run and also a large degree of control, unlike a new Player's Handbook, for example. I can control what comes my players come across, where supplements often are harder to reign in.

3D Printing

The end of the year saw me finally being able to 3D print. And at this point I've had the chance to 3D print a whole slew of tiles, and props. The ones that I've used the most so far are the Rampage System and Dragonlock. The ease of printing for Dragonlock made it a favourite of mine, and the modular nature of rampage also made me like them. I still haven't decided which way I'll go but I've been enjoying them both so far. In terms of props, the Black Scroll Games chests have been my by far most used 3D printed props this year. Even 2D printed maps are made better with props so it isn't much of a surprise to why I ended up using them so often. The ability to switch the inserts as needed was extremely useful during play and made them even more useful.

Modular Inn Tiles

I reviewed this set in December of 2016, but over 2017 I used it quite heavily. Before my foray into 3D printing, I used it whenever I needed an inn battle map. Since starting 3D printing, I still use the tiles extremely often. They are just so much easier to print and provide very good visuals. 3D printed tiles often need to be painted. The Modular Inn tiles can just be printed in colour. Nice and easy. As an aside, I'd recommend printing dungeon tiles using white filament to help reduce or eliminate the need for painting if they are meant to be stone. It'll look slightly worse than a properly painted one but will be more usable than pitch black ones like mine. I also don't have the 3D printable sets that allow you to print buildings, so instead ended up re-purposing tiles meant for underground dungeons. That works fine, but it doesn't have the same level of detail as the specialized tiles and takes far longer to set up than the 2D tiles. In comparison, I could print off some tiles, tape them together, and be ready to roll. I could also quickly just set them up on the table and not need to worry about laying out all the props. I did still use a few props, most commonly chests, but I didn't need to completely fill the room in when going to somewhere else for my session. They were instead highlights. When running sessions in my house and using 3D tiles, I could just set things up ahead of time at the time. No problem. Where it got more difficult is when adding new rooms that also needed plenty of props. Either I'd connect the empty room and needed to add the props, or I'd connect the room with the props which caused them to shift. These issues weren't present with the Modular Inn tiles and allowed many different configurations. They are my favourite of all the sets I reviewed from Black Scroll Games so far.

Next Year

We've got a whole new year ahead of us. We'll get some new Dungeons & Dragons 5^th edition stuff, of that I'm sure and I'm definitely curious. Black Scroll Games also had a successful kickstarter for Cities of the Black Scroll, which looks great. What's not to like about enough printable tiles to make yourself a bulletproof vest?