2012 Goals: Need to Improve

In January, I set a few gaming and writing goals for myself. I was a little ambitious with some of the goals, but overall thought that I’d be able to hit most of them. Then I got hit with an unexpected amount of work and ended up not having nearly as much time to devote to gaming this year.

Writing

Publish 1-2 posts each week: I ended up writing 46 posts this year which is a little less than 1 per week. Considering how busy I was for parts of the year, I’m pretty happy with that rate.

Write an Age of Terror post each month: I only managed to write 3 of these for Dragon Age Oracle this year. I’d have really liked to do more and hopefully will get a chance to catch up on my backlog of ideas for them in the coming year.

Write a Game of the Month post each month: I did 6 of these for This is My Game this year covering Dungeon World, Icons, Gamma World, Deathwatch, D&D Next, and Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries. This is My Game seems to effectively be dead now, so I don’t expect to post any new Game of the Month posts there.

Write a Game Night post each month: I wrote 7 board game reviews for the Game Night blog carnival.

Compile my Gamma World posts: I’ve got an initial draft of this, but I haven’t had time to finish it yet. Hopefully I’ll get it posted sometime in early 2013.

Write an article in Dragon, Dungeon, or Kobold Quarterly: I sent in a few pitches for Dragon and Dungeon, got 2 accepted for drafts, then had both of those drafts turned down. I haven’t been doing much with 4th Edition recently, so I didn’t even send any pitches in for the 2nd window this year. I didn’t make any pitches to KQ and now that magazine has ceased publication.

Playing Games

Run my D&D campaign: I ran the campaign for about half the year before scheduling conflicts resulted in stopping. Overall, I’m pretty happy with how the campaign went, but I think I’m going to avoid long-running campaigns for a while. I’ve been running more one-shot games recently, and that has allowed me to have a lot more variety in my gaming.

Try a new RPG each month: I’ve played plenty of games this year, but I think I only hit 5 or 6 new ones. The games I know I tried for the first time this year are Icons, Deathwatch, D&D Next, Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries, and Marvel Heroic.

Host a couple of board game nights: We’ve had a few after-work board game nights this year, and hopefully will continue that into the new year.

Painting

Paint the miniatures I had at the beginning of the year by spring: I’m almost done with those miniatures now that its more than 6 months past when I was hoping to have them finished. The Warhammer 40k minis from last year are painted and I only have the squad of Exemplar Cinerators from the Warmachine 2-Player Box to finish.

Paint my Super Dungeon Explore minis: I’ll be starting on these as soon as I finish up the Exemplar Cinerators that I’m currently working on.

Start a Warhammer Fantasy Lizardman army: Indefinitely postponed due to my slow painting speed and the Relic Knights kickstarter providing me with a bunch of new miniatures to paint.

Conventions

Gen Con: I went to Gen Con for the first time and had a blast. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it back this year due to scheduling issues, but I hope to return in 2014.

Attend a second convention: I also went to Emerald City ComiCon and Gamerati Game Day this year. I regretted missing PAX even though it was only a couple of weeks after I got back home from Gen Con.

Gaming Projects

Sword of Terra: I ended up not doing much work for Sword of Terra this year beyond some adaptations for using it for Star Wars ships.

Ninja, Pirate, Robot, Dinosaur: I didn’t do any work on this idea during the year other than occasional brainstorming.