2012 Gamer Resolutions

Last year I did pretty well at trying to hit my goals, and I believe that they did influence my behavior over the course of the year. Just knowing I had set my goals out for others to see made me more conscious throughout the year. I remember seeing video games that looked fun, but rather than purchase them on a whim, I decided I wanted to save my four games for the year for something I felt would be better. So this year I decided to come up with a new list of resolutions. Some of the old ones made it back in some fashion, others dropped away, and new goals were added.


1. Read 3500 pages.
I know that's not a huge goal. I mean, that's less than 100 pages a week. But I've been so bad with reading lately that I didn't want to give myself a goal that was impossible for me to reach and then become discouraged. My hope is that I'll hit this goal well before the end of the year and that a new habit of reading will have been formed. I'm already on a roll, about 25 pages away from finishing my first book (and first 400 pages) of the year. There's still a queue of books I'd like to get to including George RR Martin's new one, a couple of non-fiction books I heard about through work, and a sci-fi series my in-laws gave me for Christmas.


2. Finish running Scion.
This is basically a repeat of my last years' goal of finishing Grimm. There were times when I was close to the end of running Grimm last year where I kept thinking, "Only a few more sessions - I've done the heavy lifting... finish the campaign and I can mark this resolution a success." So in the interests of giving myself the same excuse in case Scion hits a rough patch, I want to say now that I will run this campaign to a conclusion.


3. Limit my purchases to 3 computer games in the year.
Another repeate one, this time dropping the number of games I can get this year to three instead of four. It wasn't that hard to limit myself to four last year, and I want to keep tightening my belt. I have plenty of old good games I can play, so rather than buy the next new thing, keep playing old games.

Speaking of which, I got myself a new character in Skyrim. Instead of going with the name of "Red", now I'm coming out of the gates with "Blue"! The game is going much differently this time around. I haven't been killed yet, and I've already bought and fully-furnished my first house by level 8. I still have 3 perks unassigned from my level-ups because I can't figure out what I want to do with my character yet. I'm wearing heavy armor and sometimes switching over to use magic, but overall I really enjoyed my last sneaking character and part of me wants to do that again. Ah well, we'll see how Blue progresses.


4. Paint and base all Malifaux models before playing them.
So I've mostly been doing this already, but I just want to keep it up. No Malifaux models hit the table until they're painted and based. I've got a small backlog of Resser models, but beyond that I'm already set on that.


5. Actively play no more than two miniatures games at once.
Malifaux's taking up one of those slots, and the idea is that I won't purchase and play more than one additional game. I think I'm going to set this by quarter. So in the first quarter, I can pick two games to play. If I pick up a second game in February, I can't then pick up a different second game in March. I don't think I really need to be that rigid, but just in case I try to game the system.


I excluded anything like winning tournaments or playing in events or anything like that. Mostly because I have a hard enough time enjoying them as it is and I don't want to make it seem like a chore to do those kind of things.

I did want to get another roleplaying-oriented goal. Maybe "play/run in four different roleplaying games in the year" but that's less of an issue of desire to play the games and more an issue of time.

And as much as I'd love to put "Win fantasy football" in my goals, as long as Dan's wife Ellen is in our league, I think that's an impossibility. I haven't been able to defeat her in three seasons despite playing each other six times over that span, including playoffs. Maybe I should spite her by saying, "Draft Calvin Johnson if he falls to me." Heh heh heh. That'd really get her goat.