2012 Gamers Resolutions Revisited

At the beginning of this year, I set up five goals to achieve over the course of the year.  Seeing as I'm a week away from the end, I figured it would be good to reflect back on the year and see how I've done.

1. Read 3500 pages.
I thought this would be a simple goal for the year and get me back in the swing of reading.  Well, it should have been simple, and while I did achieve it, it really did come down to the wire.  The problem I ran into was right around the September-November timeframe.  I was starting to run the Legend of the Five Rings roleplaying game at that point and put down all my novels and picked up all my roleplaying books.  Since I skipped all around those books and didn't read any of them cover-to-cover, I couldn't really count them.

Still, at the end of the day I achieved this goal, so 1/1 so far.


2. Finish running Scion.
Another successful goal.  This one hit a few long breaks in the middle, but I managed to completely tell the story I wanted to tell.  In the end of the game, several of the heroes had bargained with the gods to gain their power in order to fight Chronos.  I had five players, and of them, three took on the power of the gods.  Two were killed in the fight, one ascended to Mount Olympus to replace Ares, who had been killed in an earlier fight with Chronos, and the other two remained mortal and completed the ritual to bind away all the gods and titans remaining on the planet.

The whole goal here was to run my campaigns through to completion.  I used to have trouble doing that - getting another great idea for a story well before the one I was telling finished, and from there I just ran out of steam on the older story.  It's frustrating, both as a player and as a GM, to go through a story and never really see where it's going to end.

Another success, so 2/2.


3. Limit my purchases to 3 computer games in the year.
I came really close on this one.  I had two game purchased heading in to the last quarter, but ended up looking over Dishonored and Skylanders: Giants and finally deciding to buy them both.  That put me up to four games on the year, one more than I should have bought.  I bought four games during 2011 too.  Might just be that's a reasonable number for me to buy - one each quarter.

My first failure.  I'm at 2/3 now.


4. Paint and base all Malifaux models before playing them.
Damn GenCon and the Ten Thunders models.  All year I had been doing well getting my models painted up and based before playing them.  Often I would go out of my way to get through painting my models before playing them - staying up late and working hard on getting them all done.  My McHammish crew was finished in less than a week meaning I could get it on the table all painted and ready to go.

But just after GenCon, Dan and I sat down to play a game and I pulled out my Jakob crew, unpainted.  I really wanted to give them a try, and they performed well.  But that one game (and that's the only game that had unpainted models all year) cost me this goal.

Another failure.  A poor 2/4.


5. Actively play no more than two miniatures games at once. 
This one was a success.  Currently I'm in two miniatures games: Malifaux and Blood Bowl.  I did briefly dabble in Warmachine, but only for a day and I never purchased another model for it.  Overall, I managed to hold my spending habits on models down to a reasonable level in a single game.  I already had Neverborn and most of Ressers by the time the year started, so my gains were just whatever new models were coming out for the factions, plus the three Guild crews I bought into and the one Ten Thunders box.

We're ending on a success, leaving me at 3/5.

I didn't do as well as last year, unfortunately, when I hit four of my five goals.  But I didn't do too bad either.  One of my misses was because of a single game, and the intent of the goal (get me to paint models and base models I was using) was successful, so I'm okay missing that goal.  The other one I missed by a single purchase as well, so I came close on that one too.  And I may have been unrealistic in what I was seeking to do.


Anywho, 2012 is rounding an end.  Time to come up with some new goals for 2013. 

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.

Gamer Resolutions Revisited

At the beginning of the year, I set forth a few Gamer Resolutions for the year. We're closing in on the end of the year, so I figured I'd see how I did.

My first goal was to run a roleplaying game I had started the previous year, Grimm, through to its conclusion. I have a tendency to have grand plans for my games and then not see them through to conclusion, leaving half-finished storylines and the like. I've been trying to get better at it. Actually, I'm on a roll for finishing out games now. And Grimm was successfully finished. I tried to keep the story small and mapped out from beginning to end while still allowing myself the opportunity to tie together loose strands as I go. I tend to be a more improv GM so it was hard to stay fixed to a course, but that certainly did help. I finally got everything wrapped together as the characters slowly figured out how their imagination in Grimm was changing the real world, and that there were a group of people in the real world that were trying to harness that imagination. A member of that group had been part of an experiment that had failed and left him in a coma, only his imagination had been split apart from him and he was running around in all the Grimm worlds, destroying everything in his anger. The characters went to Oz, overthrew the Wicked Witch who had tried to control the reckless imagination guy, and then fought off his army and saved Grimm. They were finally able to return home and, understanding better their powers, remade the world to put it back the way it should be. A very cool ending to a story that was not without its problems.

I also wanted to run my play-by-post roleplaying game, Rembaldi, for at least six months out of the year. I started out strong, hitting four months in a row, but work, being laid off, finding a new job, and then working to keep that new job basically killed my chances at Rembaldi continuing strong for the year. It's my on-again-off-again story that I hope will some day be resolved. I have so many of the final reveals already in mind and I'd just love to see the story get there. I calculate I'm probably 2/3's of the way through telling it. I've been running it for almost 10 years. So I failed at this one.

My third goal was to sell either my Cygnar or Legion, if not both. I managed to sell my Legion to Bill from the Gamer's Lounge so that he could get started with his Warmachine habit. I gave him a great deal on it, mostly because I just wanted to move it out of my house. I think I'm going to hold on to my Cygnar at this point unless someone gives me an offer - Dan's been getting back into the game, and I don't know if I'll give it a swing again at any point. But still, sold my Legion, so made that goal.

My fourth goal was to play at most three miniatures games at any given time. I hit this one easily, playing Malifaux all year and then mixing in a little bit of Pulp City at one point, and some Hell Dorado at another, neither overlapping. I managed to keep my miniatures habit under control here - not too bad!

My last goal was to buy no more than 4 video games over the course of the year. Again, made that one easily, buying only Fallout 3: New Vegas, Dawn of War: Chaos Rising and Skyrim all year. I could still buy another, but no need. Skyrim's kept me nice and cozy. Next year's got Mass Effect 3 coming out, and who knows what else on the horizon.

So four out of five, not that bad. I am really bummed about the one I missed - I figured with starting out strong in the year I'd have no trouble hitting it, but that last month has just been very elusive.

I guess I'll start thinking of some new ones. Some of these might come back in some form, others might just drop away. I don't feel like I'm in danger of grabbing a ton of miniatures games next year like I thought I would this year. I haven't been as big into video games either. I do still need encouragement to keep my roleplaying games going - I love running them but I know my tendency to chase the next story I have in mind. Who knows - we'll see how next year's goals shape up.

Gamer Resolutions

I was listening to a podcast and they were talking about Gamer Resolutions, so I figured maybe I should come up with a few of my own. I'm not usually big on New Year's Resolutions, but what the heck, this could be fun.

1. Run Grimm through to completion. I have a tendency to start campaigns and not finish them. Of late, I've been doing well at breaking that habit (Alpha/Omega, the Ice World campaign) and I'd like to keep up that trend of actually finishing the games I start.

2. Run Rembaldi at least six months out of the year. I know myself well enough to know that I won't continue Rembaldi the entire year. There will be breaks in the middle of it where I need to decompress. But I would love to see the story continue. It's coming closer and closer to the planned ending, and I have my next campaign world already in mind, so I would like to see Rembaldi reach its conclusion at some point. Best way to do that is to keep it going.

3. Sell either my Cygnar or Legion (if not both of them). I already got started on getting rid of my Cygnar, but I still have a lot of both armies I could off-load. I have far too many games at my place, and I really would like to downsize them a bit.

4. Play at most three miniature games at a single time. This means I can only collect three lines, etc. This one should not be hard, as this is already what I do. But it means since I currently have Malifaux and Firestorm Armada, both of which I want to continue to play, and have recently bought into Pulp City (which it remains to be seen whether I will keep up with), I am at the limit of my miniature gaming.

5. Purchase no more than four computer games over the course of the year. I'd like to ensure that I finish games I get, and if I limit the ones I can purchase, it will improve my odds of doing so, and also save me money. Good deal on both counts.


I wanted to add something about going to a convention, or something about playing/running another campaign (be it Descent or Firestorm or what have you), but I'm still on the fence about those two. I also wanted to add something about being sure to play a dozen games of Firestorm Armada (which doesn't sound like a lot, but I only played 18 games last year, and 8 of them were in the campaign), but I'm honestly not sure how easy that will be given that essentially only Dan and I play that game anymore.

But the themes of my resolutions seem pretty solid: finish what I start, limit the games I play, and downsize the ones I no longer play.