2024 in games

And suddenly, it’s the end of 2024. Last time, I thought about 2024 in terms of song, this time I’m looking at it in terms of games.

Freeform Games

Freeform Games had a good year. In some ways it was not quite as good as 2023, but in other ways, better. I’ll write more about it on the Freeform Games blog, when the final numbers are in (so sometime in January).

Conventions and games weekends

I love going to conventions – I think my gaming high points have all been conventions. I enjoy them as much for meeting old friends as playing the games – and doing both is best.

In 2024 I attended:

West End Lullaby (February, Retford): The annual weekend-long freeform is back in its usual home, Retford. I played Aaron Burr and had a whale of a time in this crazy freeform based on West End musicals.

Airecon (March, Harrogate): A lovely local convention in Harrogate. I ran three tabletop RPGs and played lots of board games. As far as board games go, it’s my favourite convention.

LarpCon (March, Coalville): A convention all about larp. Mostly full of people selling stuff. It was okay, but reminded me that the freeform community is terrible at selling ourselves. I am not sure I want to go again.

Peaky (April, not far from Tamworth): I’ve been to every Peaky since it started in the early 2000s. It’s my favourite gaming weekend of the year: intense, creative and fabulous. I wrote one game and played two.

UK Games Expo (June, NEC Birmingham): UKGE is at the back end of the summer half term holiday, and because we’re normally away that week, I rarely go. This time I knew I was free, so I drove down for a day. UKGE is tiring, busy and crowded. It was okay, but I don’t feel the need to go back anytime soon.

Continuum (July, Leicester): Continuum was exciting for me for two reasons. First, Continuum moved to the Cranfield Management Centre – perhaps the best space for a convention that I’ve been to. Second, I took Megan with me. Luckily, she had a great time and wants to go to Continuum next year.

Furnace (October, Sheffield): Always a delight, Furnace is tabletop roleplaying only, and local enough that I don’t need to stay overnight. I ran one game and played in three.

Consequences (November, Chichester): Longest time away (four nights), I ran two freeforms and played in five and ran a game of Hillfolk. Too much gaming? Maybe.

Plans for 2025: Mostly the same, although I won’t go to UKGE, and I’m unlikely to go to LarpCon.

I also feel there ought to be something in Leeds. I wonder who I have to talk to about starting something up?

Freeforms

I played in or ran sixteen freeforms in 2024, which feels like a good year but is nowhere near the record of 20 in 2023. This year I ran six freeforms and played ten.

Best photo of me this year - taken for Home of the Bold at Continuum

In terms of writing, I finished and ran The Stars our Destination twice, once online and once at Consequences. I also got Backstage Business published for Freeform Games (and ran it at Continuum). I have also put together a short freeform, The Show Must Go On!, for Freeform Games that I have just sent out for playtesting. And I published All Flesh is Grass and Children of the Stars.

Favourite to run: The Stars our Destination at Consequences, which went really smoothly. I also ran Murder on the Istanbul Express for Megan’s 18th birthday in our garden, which went really well.

Favourite to play: Do You Hear The People Sing by Alex Helm was just so much fun that it was my favourte freeform of 2024 by a mile.

Plans for 2024: 

• Write and run the game that follows The Stars our Destination – set on Callisto. (It doesn’t have a title, yet.)
• Then start work on getting Messages from Callisto ready for publication.
• Publish The Show Must Go On! via Freeform Games.

Tabletop RPGs

2023 was a little hit and miss in terms of TTRPGs. My regular group had to cancel rather often due to health issues – something I suspect will only increase as we all get older. 

In terms of numbers, I played more Fate Accelerated than anything else in 2024. Good Society came second, with Most Trusted Advisors and DramaSystem (Hillfolk and others) tied for third place. 

I playtested and published The Dead Undead, an investigation for Other London: Desk 17.

Favourite to run: I loved running The Dead Undead – it was very satisfying, although it took a lot longer than I expected.

Favourite to play: Good Society, which we started in 2023, was so much fun, and I had some of my single favourite sessions this year.

Plans for 2024:

• Playtest the two scenarios I have written for the Department of Irregular Services (for Liminal) and then publish them.
• Write an investigation for The Dee Sanction.
• Continue working on The Orphan Room for https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2022/11/liminal-department-for-irregular.html. It would be nice to get it to a point where I’ve tested it. But I’m aware I’ve got a lot of other projects going on.

Boardgames

In 2023, I played more games of My City than any other game. (That’s the same as 2024!) This year I played a legacy campaign on Boardgamearena, which I enjoyed. (The full campaign is 24 episodes, and it took the four of us about six months to play it.)

An honourable mention goes to Ticket to Ride: Legacy of the West, a legacy game. We’ve got two more games to play, but I’m really enjoying it. (Yes, the criticisms are valid – the early games are very short and the later games are very long. But I’m still enjoying it.)

New games to my collection:

Kavango: Collect animals for your reserve in this drafting game with similarities to 7 Wonders. I backed this on Kickstarter, and have enjoyed the handful of games I’ve played with the family. It’s got a nice theme and design – but takes up quite a bit of space on the table.

The Crew: The Quest for Planet 9. A Father’s Day gift, and one I took on holiday over the summer. It’s a cooperative trick-taking game which we enjoyed, but curiously haven’t played since we came back. (Kavango took over.)

The Mind: A deceptively simple game about emptying your hand without communicating. Really good filler with the right group.

6 Nimmt: Excellent game that plays with up to 10 players (!) – simultaneously. I’ve played this with friends but not with the family yet.

D-Day Dice expansions: D-Day Dice was the first game I ever Kickstarted, and I backed the second edition as well. D-Day Dice is a dice-rolling push-your-luck game of storming the beaches on D-Day.  It plays really well solo, and I enjoy it a lot. This year, several expansions turned up for it – I now have enough D-Day Dice goodness to last me for years. (But there’s more planned…)

Plans for 2024: Play more games! Always! No doubt my games collection will swell – at least until I get rid of some of it. Already on order is Innovation Deluxe (card-based craziness from Carl Chudyk), due early next year. And D-Day Dice: Pacific Kickstarts in January. I expect I’ll back that.

Video games

And I played more World of Tanks Blitz than is probably healthy. It’s probably time I uninstalled it again.

And overall?

2024 was great for games. I feel very lucky I’m able to play so many games.

2024: The year of song

For me, 2024 was the year of song.

Yorkshire Voices

First, it was my first full twelve months of being in a choir. I’d been in a couple of short-lived choirs before, but I started 2024 in Yorkshire Voices, and I ended 2024 in Yorkshire Voices.

It’s been really good – we’ve learned loads of songs, we put on free concerts quite a few times a year, and there’s a nice social scene. It’s lovely.

West End Lullaby

In February, I played in West End Lullaby, a weekend freeform based on various UK and US musicals. (I was Aaron Burr from Hamilton, with a dash of Pierce Brosnan’s character from Mama Mia!) More singing and much laughter.

Backstage Business

After West End Lullaby, I developed and published Backstage Business for Freeform Games. Backstage Business is all about a band after their first tour – and whether they continue or not.

No actual singing is required by anyone.

I ran it successfully at Continuum, and we published it shortly after that.

Success2Soon

Success2Soon is another band-related game, this time a Hillfolk playtest. I created this because as I was working on Backstage Business, I realised how well it would suit Hillfolk.

So I ran this at Furnace and then put it on Itch.io.

All You Need Is Love

Then, at Consequences 2024, I played in All You Need Is Love, another game about being in a band. This time, I was a player, and as part of the game, we sang Beatles songs.

Do You Hear The People Sing

And finally, also at Consequences, I played Do You Hear The People Sing, which is about an amateur dramatics society putting on Les Miserables. Lots of songs from Les Miserables, and I played Thenardier, so I got to sing lots of good ones.

A year in song

So there we go. A year in song.

I wonder what 2025 will bring.

2023 in games

And suddenly, it’s 2024. Was 2023 anything to write home about? Some good, some bad – at least in terms of games.

2023's new boardgames

Freeform Games

Freeform Games had a great year. We published two games, transitioned our old shop into a more modern shop, and had our best year (sales and revenue) so far. I will write more on the Freeform Games blog, in a few days.

Conventions and games weekends

I’m attending more conventions these days (largely thanks to giving up the day job). I love going to conventions – as much for catching up with old friends as much as playing the games.

In 2023 I attended:

Retcon (February, Retford): A replacement for the normal UK Freeforms weekend game, Retcon was a convention of smaller freeforms and boardgames. I ran two freeforms and facilitated a game of Fiasco.

Airecon (March, Harrogate): A lovely local convention in Harrogate – I’ve been going for a few years now. It’s primarily a boardgames convention, with a small-but-healthy RPG stream. (It’s like a small UKGE, but more focus on playing and less on the trade halls.) I ran two tabletop RPGs and played lots of boardgames.

Peaky (April, not far from Tamworth): I’ve been to every Peaky since it started in the early 2000s. Intense, creative and fabulous. I wrote one game and played three. Brilliant.

Continuum (July, Leicester): This was my first Continuum in a while – it had fallen off my games calendar. I like the mix of tabletop and freeforms that I get at Continuum, plus I ran into several old friends that I don’t see at the other cons. I ran two tabletop games and played in three freeforms.

Furnace (October, Sheffield): Tabletop roleplaying only, and local enough that I don’t need to stay overnight. I ran one game and played in three.

Consequences (November, not far from Poole): Longest time away (four nights), I ran two freeforms and played in five.

Plans for 2024: Mostly the same, except that the weekend freeforms are back, which means there’s no Retcon. And I’m hoping to get to at least one day of Larpcon in Coalville.

Freeform larps

2023 was a great year for freeforms. I played or ran 20 freeforms, which I’m sure is a record. I also self-published a book, Writing Freeform Larps, which does what it says on the tin.

Favourite to run: Children of the Stars, at Consequences, was my favourite to run. It went smoothly – and although the follow-up (Messages from Callisto) also went well, that was beset by errors on my part.

Favourite to play: The Ashlight Labyrinth, which I played at Peaky, was a delight and my favourite freeform as a player in 2023. (Close runners-up were Across the City, Better than Life, Antarctic Station 13 and Ghosts: It’s not Ibsen.)

Plans for 2024:

• Finish writing and then run The Stars our Destination (the next in my first-contact series of games).
• Publish All Flesh is Grass on Itch.io. Start work on getting Children of the Stars ready for publication.
• Maybe start writing another freeform for Freeform Games.

Tabletop RPGs

I played in and ran fewer ttrpgs in 2023 than in recent years. My regular groups are fairly small (usually just four of us), and if someone can’t make it, then we cancel the session rather than struggle with just three of us. Unfortunately, we had lots of cancelled sessions in 2023.

My 2023 top games in terms of numbers were As the Sun Forever Sets (nine sessions as GM), Good Society (four sessions as a player – this is ongoing), Kingdom (three sessions as GM/facilitator). 

I ran two sessions of Hillfolk, which I’ve been meaning to run ever since it came out in 2023. So it only took me ten years. It was as good as I hoped, and I want to run more.

I published Other London: Desk 17, along with a couple of adventures. They’re not setting the world alight, but I find the whole process very satisfying. I like sharing my stuff.

Favourite to run: The two sessions of Hillfolk, which were a delight.

Favourite to play: The session of Fiasco I played (and facilitated) at Retcon – we had a great group of players and it was one of the highlights of the con.

Plans for 2024:

• Run more Hillfolk (at Airecon – and maybe see what it’s like online).
• Playtest the two scenarios I have written up (one for the Department of Irregular Services, one for Desk 17) and then publish them.
• Finish writing up two half-finished scenarios and playtest them as well.
• Maybe run a bit of Traveller, which would be very old school for me. At the very least, I will buy Mysteries of the Ancients and Wrath of the Ancients, which are completely in my wheelhouse. (I know I can get the pdfs right now, but I’m saving myself for when the hardbacks are ready.)
• If the Urban Shadows 2.0 Kickstarter appears, I’d like to take it for a spin. It’s very late (the campaign was back in 2020), but I’m relaxed about its tardiness. I don’t have room for another game, and I’d rather it was right and late than wrong and on time.
• And perhaps most important, I’d love to meet more gamers and play more games. Maybe run a few one-shots online or find a semi-regular face-to-face group.

Boardgames

In 2023, I played more games of My City than any other game. I played on boardgamearena a fair bit, which has been a lot of fun. While I’ve had a couple of online evenings with friends, most of my games have been turn-based against strangers. It’s been more fun than I had expected, and I’ve tried a lot of new games.

The new games to my collection:

My City: Reiner Knizia's legacy game with 24-episodes, plus an “eternal” game once you’ve done with the legacy game. It's a tile-placing game that takes about 15 minutes to play - so easy to play a few games in one sitting. I’ve played the eternal game quite a bit on Boardgamearena. The campaign is okay – although, toward the end, it can be demoralising if you get too far behind in the overall score.

Mottainai: a small card game by Carl Chudyk with a lot of gameplay. It’s the spiritual successor to Glory to Rome (one of my favourite games), and I like it a lot. It's tricky to get your head around and has some of the craziness that Glory to Rome has – but in a smaller, quicker package.

Daybreak: A cooperative game of decarbonising to solve climate change by Matt Leacock & Matteo Menapace. I gave it to myself as a Christmas present. I’ve played it solo on Boardgamearena a few times, but my first in-person game with Miss H ended in a loss. Don’t put the fate of the planet in our hands!

The Traitors Card Game: A Christmas present from Miss H. A tie-in to the wonderful TV series. I wondered if it was just a reskinned Werewolf (which is all The Traitors is), but it brings in elements from the TV series, such as shields and gold. It's for four players or more, and so we haven't tried it yet.

Plans for 2024: More of the same – no doubt the games collection will swell. Already on order is Kavango (drafting African animals, Kickstarter) and Innovation Deluxe (more card-based craziness from Carl Chudyk, Backerkit), but I should restrain myself. (I try and cull it every now and again, but not always successfully.)

Other games

And as usual, I played the usual assortment of video games: too much World of Tanks Blitz, plenty of Star Realms and Race for the Galaxy.

And overall?

So overall, 2023 was not so good for tabletop roleplaying, about average for boardgames, and excellent for freeforms. So I can’t complain.

Games in 2022

So it’s time to look back at 2022 in terms of gaming. I normally leave these posts until January (or very late December), because the year hasn’t finished – but my regular RPG groups have all now finished until January (both games hit a sensible finishing spot). So I’m fairly safe that nothing will change much between now and the end of the year (I will probably play more boardgames).

Freeform Games

Freeform Games had a good year. We haven’t fully recovered from the pandemic, but sales levels are almost back to what they were. I will write more on the Freeform Games blog, in January.

Freeforms

I played or ran 14 freeforms in 2022, which is probably a record for me. This was boosted by attending Retcon in November – a convention I don’t normally attend.

Favourite to run: I think All Flesh is Grass, the second of my first contact games, was my favourite freeform to run. I felt it went better than the first (The Roswell Incident) and the third (Children of the Stars) was unfortunately beset by technical difficulties.

Favourite to play: Smoke and Mirrors, which I played at Peaky, was a delight and my favourite freeform as a player in 2022.

Plans for 2023: Run Messages from Callisto, the next first contact game, and plan the ones after that. I also hope to run The Roswell Incident and All Flesh is Grass at Retcon B in February. This will be the first time I’ve run any of them face-to-face. And attend Peaky, of course.

I also hope to publish in 2023 my book on writing a freeform larp. I’ve been pulling my notes together and laying it out this year, I’m nearly ready to let others see it for comment. I’ll publish it in book form in Lulu (and probably put it on my itch.io page).

Tabletop RPGs

My 2022 top games in terms of numbers were Fate of Cthulhu (16 sessions as GM), Troubleshooters (8 sessions as a player), ALIEN (7 sessions as GM) and Fate Accelerated (7 sessions as GM).

Favourite to run: My favourite games to run were Murder of a Templar (a Desk 17 investigation using Fate Accelerated) and Perfect Organism (my cinematic one-shot for ALIEN), equally. (And very differently.)

Favourite to play: Without a doubt, my favourite game to play was Jon’s Cthulhu Deep Green investigation set in London. We only played a couple of sessions, but they were a delight.

Plans for 2023: I want to get Kingdom and Hillfolk to the table. And if I manage that, maybe even Good Society and a bit of Traveller. I also want to develop an investigation for the Department of Irregular Services – ideally for Liminal, although the current investigation I’m working on (based on MR James’ Count Magnus) feels like Cthulhu Dark would be more appropriate.

With a bit of luck, I’ll also publish Other London: Desk 17, an urban horror setting using Fate Accelerated. (Murder of a Templar will be an adventure.)

Boardgames

The year isn’t over for boardgames yet, but so far I’ve played more games of Wingspan than any other game – mainly because it has a good solo option. Sadly, my family don’t enjoy it as much as I do.

The only new game for my collection was Everdell, which turned up for my birthday. Only a few plays so far – but we’re enjoying it.

Other games

And as usual, I played the usual assortment of video games: too much World of Tanks Blitz, plenty of Star Realms and Race for the Galaxy.

A good year

2022 might have been rubbish in many ways, but in terms of games played, it was great.

2021 in games

It’s January, so it’s time to look back and review my previous twelve months of game playing. (Previous years here.)

Should I do these in December (along with everyone else)? No--I’m likely to play games right up to New Year’s Eve (as happened this year), so I wait until January.

2021: Gaming online

As with 2020, most of my gaming was online. I played a small number of games face-to-face.

Freeform Games

Freeform Games had an okay year. I will write about 2021 on the Freeform Games blog, but the pandemic put us back by about four years. This year, sales have predominantly been of our smaller games—presumably because they are easier to run at home with close friends and family.

Sales are picking up as the vaccinations and boosters continue to be rolled out.

Freeforms

Mostly online, given the pandemic.

• Bludgeoned on Broadway: At the start of the year I ran Bludgeoned on Broadway (from Freeform Games) for my family. We used Discord, which held up well despite lots of Discord-newbies.
• The Highgate Club: This could have gone better, but then I did have Covid when I was running it. Again, on Discord.
• At Peaky I co-wrote The Castleford Ladies Magic Circle Meets Tonight and played Culture Crash. 
• At Consequences, I played in Awakening and was a last-minute replacement for Under the Faerie Hill. Both used Discord, and both were delightful. Under the Faerie Hill had a great interface with Remo, and used lots of online tools (whiteboards, inklewriter) in ways I’d not seen before.
• I uploaded Venice and Mars Attracts to my itch.io page.

2022 plans: I want to continue running and playing in freeform larps. I find them convenient, and I’d like to do more of it. I’m toying with running a regular Freeform Games murder mystery online (aimed at our customers), which would be fun. I’ve also started writing a series of linked freeforms involving first contact. I plan to run the first of them in 2022.

Game Conventions

I’m not sure if Peaky counts as a games convention, but it was the only face-to-face gaming I did all year.

I played in two games at Consequences, both of which were online. I didn’t participate in the other events as I find them hard to fit around family life. (It’s one thing taking a weekend off and diving into a convention, another when you’re attending from home.)

2022 plans: I’ve got my sights set on Peaky (of course), Airecon in March, and Furnace in October.

Tabletop RPGs

All of my 60-or-so sessions of tabletop RPGS were online in 2021. My preferred tools are Trello (for characters, NPCs, locations, clues and things) and Discord (video chat and rolling dice).

Games I played: Tales from the Loop, Cthulhu Deep Green, Wanderhome, Agon, Lasers and Feelings, and Apocalypse Keys. My favourite was Cthulhu Deep Green (modern-day urban horror which continues into 2022), and my least favourite was Wanderhome (anthropomorphic animals on a journey).

Games I ran: Lady Blackbird, Alien, The Dee Sanction, Brindlewood Bay, Fate Accelerated, Microscope and Follow. My favourites were The Dee Sanction (which was epic and resulted in me publishing Abaddon’s Puppet) and Lady Blackbird (so easy to run). My least favourite was Brindlewood Bay (I’d rather have a more traditional mystery to run).

I put three scenarios onto itch.io: Abaddon’s Puppet, The Seeds of Doom (for Monster of the Week) and Hardknott Roman Fort Ghost Realm (for Liminal). They’re all pay-what-you-want, and I’m grateful for the generosity of some readers. It will never be a significant revenue stream, but I enjoy creating and sharing them.

2022 plans: My upcoming RPG plans are here, and I plan to put more onto Itch.io.

Boardgames

I played boardgames around 130 times in 2021—much fewer than 2020 when I played over 200 times. (I should say that’s not 120 different boardgames!) I think the difference is that I haven’t used BoardGameArena as much this year—I played a lot with Mum in 2020, and with her passing away, I’ve not played online as often.

My top three games were Wingspan, Glory to Rome, and London. I was pleased to play more Glory to Rome and London this year—mostly against Mrs H, who I find devilishly difficult to beat at London.

Boardgames new to my library:

• Wingspan: A birthday present, and my most-played game. I got the two expansions for Christmas. So far, I’m enjoying it, but I’m not great at it yet. The solo version is good—just like playing normally.
• The Matchbox Collection: This was a Kickstarter of five small games, none of which are particularly good. I honestly can’t remember why I backed this, other than it was relatively inexpensive. I had high hopes for Eiyo, a solo/co-op samurai game, but it suffers from winning depending on the initial shuffle. You know when you play Solitaire and sometimes can’t get it out? That’s how I feel about Eiyo. Anyway, I doubt they’ll be with me for long.
• Streets: Another Kickstarter, this one from designer Haakon Gaarder, the designer of the wonderful Villagers. Not as good as Villagers, but I haven’t decided if I’m keeping it or not.

2022 plans: Play more of my older games, that don’t come out of the cupboard much.

Video Games

Most of the video games I play are electronic versions of boardgames (the exception is World of Tanks Blitz.)

I have a strange attitude to recording plays of games on boardgamegeek. I don’t record it if it’s just me against the computer. If it’s me against a real person (whether electronically or in person), then I’ll record it. But if I play a physical boardgame solo (such as the Wingspan automata), I will record it. Illogical? Yes.

I am also wary of getting a digital version of a game I enjoy. For example, we have Ticket to Ride on the tablet, and now we’re much more likely to play it digitally rather than unpack the box. That’s a shame, so I’m wary of buying digital versions of boardgames I love playing in person.

The video games I played most in 2021 are (in no particular order):

• Race for the Galaxy: Most days I’ll have a game or two of this—a game normally takes only 5-10 minutes.
• Kingdom Builder: I play this now and again—but the AI is hard as the game is relentlessly mathematical. I have learned to play against the medium AI so I stand a chance of winning.
• Terraforming Mars: I bought this digitally to learn to play it properly. I’ll never buy a physical copy as I know it’s not Mrs H’s cup of tea. The other reason I won’t buy it is that I don’t think I like it all that much—it’s okay, but I suspect the digital game is inferior to the physical version. But at least I know how to play now!
• Oceans: Oceans was one of my favourite games in 2020. Luckily, the app only works for two players, so I still get my physical copy out for higher play counts. (Although I didn’t play it much in 2021.) The app stopped working on my tablet, although it works on my phone (but the screen size is so small it’s fiddly and so I rarely play it).
• Star Realms: I didn’t play this as much in 2021, as I was playing the other games instead.
• World of Tanks Blitz: I played World of Tanks Blitz on and off during 2021. I play it, get frustrated at the time it soaks up, and then uninstall it. And then I want to play it again and re-install it. Right now, I’m still playing. I just can’t kick it.

2022 plans: I have no plans to play or buy more video games. I suspect I will buy expansions for the ones I already have. My love/hate relationship with World of Tanks Blitz will no doubt continue…

Treasure Hunts

This year, I created two treasure hunts—one for Christmas Day and one for New Year’s Eve. I’ll write about them soon (here).

2022 plans: No doubt I will create more treasure hunts for Christmas.

A year full of games

Looking back, I realise how lucky I am to be able to spend so much of my time with games. Playing them, writing them, thinking about them, and talking about them. I am very lucky.

2019 in games

How is it already mid-January? Perhaps I should have started this a bit earlier...

Never mind the politics, how was 2019 in terms of games?

Freeform Games

2019 was another good year for Freeform Games. Sales were up 13% on 2018 which was great. Amazingly, we’ve doubled our sales since 2014, but I’m taking that with a pinch of salt as 2013 and 2014 were low points: we’re only 38% up on 2011.

(The difference is down to Google. If I remember correctly, there was an algorithm change in 2013 that hurt us badly compared to the previous years. A reminder of how vulnerable we are to factors outside of our control.)

We only had one new game this year - and that was simply a Christmas version of one of our older games. It was a bit too late to have much of an impact in 2019. I’ve written more about our year on the FFG blog, here.

Freeforms

2019 started well with Death on the Gambia (which I ran and wrote about here) followed by The Torch of Freedom (in which I played the Russian ambassador and wrote about here).

Death on the Gambia

Torch was followed by Peaky in April, where I co-wrote Tea at Longbourne and played in The Circus of Wonders and Shadows and Seeds of Humanity (more on Peaky 2019 here).

Tea at Longbourne was a delight to write and seemed to go down well with the players. It has been played again since and I look forward to taking it out for another spin.

Unfortunately Peaky was my last freeform of 2019. I had hoped to get a Leeds freeform group going, but I’m really bad at that kind of organising. And I had hoped to meet with the Liminal Dreams crew in Huddersfield, but I’ve not managed to do that either. Maybe in 2020 I can get my act together, but judging by my past performance, that seems unlikely.

Tabletop RPG

I ran four tabletop roleplaying games this year:

• In Whom We Trust for Cthulhu Dark at GoPlayLeeds (GPL).
• https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-aurors-fate-accelerated-scenario.html, a game of hunting dark wizards set in the world of Harry Potter, using Fate Accelerated. I ran this twice - once for Megan and my nephews, and once at Furnace.
• The Bone Swallower, an Other London game using Fate Accelerated.

I played D&D, Liminal, Fate Accelerated, Dragon Age and a homebrew fantasy heartbreaker that I can’t remember much about. These were all at Airecon, Furnace or GoPlayLeeds.

Fate - my tools of the trade

Unfortunately my semi-regular online group fell away due to scheduling conflicts, but hopefully we’ll pick it up again.

In 2020 I’m hoping to run The Aurors at GPL, and maybe something a bit different such as Hillfolk. I’ve also got an Achtung! Cthulhu! one-shot brewing, so maybe I’ll get that done for 2020. I’m also hoping to do more tabletop with Megan and the family.

New RPGs for my collection in 2020:

• Liminal: Created by Paul Mitchener and featuring some stunning artwork by Jason Behnke, Liminal is a British urban fantasy (think Neverwhere, Rivers of London, Ultraviolet and the like) game that ought to be right up my street. The only reason I don’t like it more is that it’s a little too close to the Other London games I’ve been running recently. (I’m also not a huge fan of the system, but that’s my reaction to learning something new than anything being particularly bad about the system.) I backed this in pdf form on Kickstarter, and I probably need to get my hands on a hard copy so that I can read it properly. (I find most RPG pdfs very tiresome to read on my tablet.)
• Mouse Guard: I won this in the Furnace raffle and read it on holiday. The system looks intriguing. It’s based on Burning Wheel, and the games are split into GM Turns (much like normal RPGs) and Player Turns (which are similar, yet different). I can’t quite see how it works, so I feel I need to play it before running it. Not sure how it works in a one-shot though. I’m indifferent to the background - I’ve read a couple of the comics but I’m not inspired by them.
• Fate of Cthulhu: I Kickstarted the pdf of this. The setting appealed - in the future Cthulhu has arisen and you are sent back in time to prevent it happening. So Terminator v Cthulhu. Not sure when I will get to run it, but never mind, it’s not taking up any shelf space. (Unlike Liminal, I was okay reading the pdf of this - the Fate books are formatted such that they’re pretty easy to read on a tablet.)

New RPGs for 2020 will include Fiasco and Trilemma Adventures, both of which I Kickstarted and haven’t arrived yet.

Boardgames

I played 187 boardgames in 2019, so one every other day on average. A lot of these were solo games as the rest of the family isn’t quite as excited about boardgames as I am… My top three most-played games were Villagers, D-Day Dice and Pandemic Legacy Season 2.

Villagers is my game of the year, I think. I Kickstarted it in 2018, and it turned up in May, just in time for me to take on holiday. We all enjoyed it, which means we’ve played it a lot. We have barely dipped into the expansions yet.

D-Day Dice is another Kickstarter, which took two years to arrive. I may have over-invested in it, as I already had the first edition (which I have now given to a good home). DDD is a push-your-luck resource management game, and plays really well solo. I usually win, but I enjoy the thought and strategy involved.

I played through Pandemic Legacy Season 1 in 2018, and I almost completed Season 2 in 2020. I have just the last game to play. I think I prefer Season 2 because of the way the board so drastically changes (and I found Season 1 to be a bit of a drag in the 6-9 month section). However, I haven’t quite been motivated to complete Season 2, which probably speaks volumes. It’s possible I’ve had enough of Pandemic for a while.

Games new to the Hatherley games library (all of them Kickstarters this time) include:

• Villagers and D-Day Dice, as mentioned above.
• Rival Restaurants arrived just before Christmas, and has a nicely chaotic trading system. Seems good with at least four people, although some of the abilities seem a bit unbalanced. I’m not sure how much I like this, but Megan likes it which is good. It’s maybe a bit light, but I probably need to play it more.
• I haven't played Brexit: The Real Deal yet. I backed it in impulse. I ought to play it at some point.

New game to the collection in 2019

I’m not planning to buy any more boardgames in 2020, I think I have enough. I am expecting Oceans (another Kickstarter) to arrive at some point soon, and I may get rid of some to make some space. And maybe there will be gifts…

Other games

As usual I played a bit too much World of Tanks Blitz in 2019, and I created two treasure hunts.

Overall

So that was 2019. 2020 will be more of the same. At this point in the year I am not expecting to buy more games, but we’ll see.

Meanwhile, elsewhere...

Links to some of the things I've recently written elsewhere.

Hosting Death on the Gambia in 2019: In January I hosted Death on the Gambia for the Little Leeds Larps Facebook group. Getting enough players was a bit of a challenge - we were hoping to get enough to run The Highgate Club, but instead I hosted Death on the Gambia instead.

Leeds Freeform Larps: This is the wiki I set up to promote freeforms in Leeds. Not terribly successful, at least not yet.

Looking Back at 2018: For the Freeform Games blog. My annual review of the year. I know that December is full of looking back stories, but I like to do this in January because the year isn't over until it's over, and I want my figures to be accurate.

Big Money: Again, for the Freeform Games blog. Here I've provided the money graphics for all our games so that our customers can do what I did when recently hosting Death on the Gambia.

Investigating Pickpocket Crimes simple rules for investigating pickpockets in freeforms. Written for Freeform Games, but anyone can use them.

2018 in games

So how was 2018 in games for me? Pretty good, I think. Here’s what I played, wrote and ran.

Freeform Games

Freeform Games had a great 2018, with sales up on 2017. This year I finally finished The Reality is Murder, a game I’ve been editing for longer than I care to admit. We put it through playtesting over the summer and in October it finally went on sale.

Freeforms

Getting theatrical
in Shogun

The weekend freeform this year was Shogun, and I surprised myself by getting involved in a theatrical troupe. I really don’t normally do that, but it was the highlight of the game for me. At Peaky I co-wrote Love Letters: The Crusade and I played in The U-Geneva Convention and The Borden Legacy.

I did a bit of development work on Second Watch, getting it ready for a third run at Consequences (and also into a publishable state). I also started work on volumes 2 and 3 of The Peaky Files (collections of Peaky freeforms).

Daniel Taylor introduced me to Little Leeds Larps (a Facebook group), but our first attempt to run a freeform for them (The Highgate Club) didn’t get enough attendees and we are trying again in January. Still, it was a good excuse to do a bit of development work on The Highgate Club (it’s a game I’ve always wanted to return to).

Tabletop roleplaying

2018 was a great year for me - I ran more tabletop rpgs than I have in a years:

• The Fallen (Fate Accelerated). An Other London investigation that I ran with my online group. I had originally conceived this as something that could be played in an hour - but I failed badly! 
• The Crasta Demon (Fate Accelerated) at Airecon, GoPlayLeeds and with my family. Although I like running the same game over and over again, I am tempted to tweak it every single time. The GPL session was interesting - I had three players, all female. I wondered if they would play female characters (the characters are all set up as gender-neutral), but only one of them did.
• The Bone Swallower (Fate Accelerated) at Furnace (more Other London(.
• The Seeds of Doom (Monster of the Week) at GoPlayLeeds. My first PbtA game, and I wrote about it here.

My character for Megan's game

Also, Megan ran a totally improvised tabletop rpg for me and two of her cousins, which was awesome. She had a whale of a time, which was great to see. It looks like she may prefer running games to playing them.

RPGs played: Starfinder, The Cthulhu Hack, Fate, Blades in the Dark, The Sword, the Crown and The Unspeakable Power and maybe a couple of others that I don’t remember. (All of them apart from The Cthulhu Hack and Fate were new to me.)

Tales of Terror

I published 37 Tales of Terror on the new website in 2018. That’s a little down on 2017, but I have been publishing a lot from the 1996 Tales of Terror collection (ToT#2, as I think of it) and none of these have been published online before.

Boardgames

I have been recording my boardgames on boardgamegeek.com for a few years now. I don’t record games where I’m playing an app, unless I’m also playing another player. (So if I play Ticket to Ride on my own, I don’t record it. If I’m playing it against Megan or Emma, then I do.)

So this year I played 221 boardgames in total, of 48 different games. The games I played most of were the ones I can play solo - so the games I played most were Tiny Epic Galaxies, D-Day Dice and Star Realms: Frontiers.

New games to the Hatherley games library were:

• Set: A very simple pattern-matching game that Megan usually thrashes me at. 
• Impulse: By Carl Chudyk. I really like his Glory to Rome and Red 7, but this hasn’t worked for me and I won’t be keeping it.
• Tiny Epic Galaxies: I really like this, a push-your-luck dice game with spaceships. It has solo rules, which means that I have played this more than any other game this year. (That also means that my family won’t play this with me because I’m too good at it.)
• Rhino Hero Super Battle: An awesome balancing game - very family friendly.
• Star Realms Frontiers: I Kickstarted this and it arrived in September. I really like Star Realms, but it’s always much easier just to play it on the app rather than get the cards out. This is probably my favourite set of cards though.
• London (second edition): Much prettier than the first edition, I’ve not played it enough to work out how much I like it.
• Pandemic Legacy Season 2: Christmas present and I expect to play through that in 2019. More on Pandemic below.
• Crypt: I Kickstarted Crypt and it turned up just before Christmas. I gave it to Megan to give to me. We’ve played a few games so far - it’s taken me a few games to get the hang of it..

Our last game of Pandemic Legacy

I finally played through season 1 of Pandemic: Legacy. I started playing it with Megan, but she got fed up with it by about August. I enjoyed the story aspect of Pandemic: Legacy, but July-August-September was a bit of a grind. The game did then pick up in October and November, with the changes taking place then having a really big impact on the game, which I really liked. (There was a point in my first November game where I considered deliberately throwing the game because of how it would affect later games. Which I guess is a sign of a good legacy game.) Megan then joined me for the finale in December: we lost the first game (on outbreaks), but got ourselves in a good place to win our last game. We ended on 799 points (“Disaster Averted”). Had St Petersburg not had an outbreak in our last game then we would have been at 802 “Legendary”.

Videogames

Videogames were dominated by World of Tanks Blitz (again - and despite trying to give it up a year ago), with Star Realms (the app) a close runner up.

2019 in games

Next year will be more of the same. In no particular order I’m looking forward to Peaky, The Torch of Freedom (2019’s weekend freeform), running The Highgate Club, Furnace, Airecon and there will be more Kickstarters arriving.

Plus Mrs H gave me the best Christmas ever: a promise to play more games!

Best present ever! Tickets to play more games!

My favourite books of 2017

I’ve read (or listened to, via Audible) 67 books in 2017. These were my favourites:
Armada by Ernest Cline. I enjoyed Ready Player One (which, with its mix of computer games, roleplaying games and Rush felt like it was written just for me) so when Armada turned up on Audible’s deal of the day, buying it was an easy decision. The story has a lot of similarities with The Last Starfighter (but the games are on a bigger scale) and Wil Wheaton’s narration is just perfect.

Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel. A first contact novel in which a strange alien artefact is discovered piece by piece. Unusually it’s written entirely using interview transcripts (with a very enigmatic interviewer) and journal entries. The sequel isn’t quite as good, unfortunately.

Hunting Hitler's Nukes: The Secret Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Deadliest Weapon by Damien Lewis. I’ve written previously about this.

The Nightmare Stacks by Charles Stross. Probably my favourite Laundry Files book so far, and not only because it features scary elves attacking Leeds (which is where I live). I think the only geographical mistake I saw is the reference to the Odeon, which hasn’t been in city centre for some quite (I think it must be at least a decade since it was turned into a department store).

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner. I’ve written about this previously as well.

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. This was a pleasant surprise at how much I enjoyed this. I picked it up as I spotted it was cheap for the Kindle, and I’d already read a couple of others of his so I knew it wouldn’t be awful. But I didn’t expect it to be as good as it was. It’s basically old people sent into space to fight, and makes a pleasant change from young kids doing all the heroic stuff. (The old people get new bodies, but retain their memories and perspective.) It turns out that I'm not the only one who liked this as it was Hugo nominated and generated a bunch of sequels. I gather Netflix may be turning it into a tv series.

The Ballad of Halo Jones by Alan Moore and Ian Gibson. Best comic book series ever, as far as I’m concerned. A lot of praise goes to Alan Moore, but I am just as much a fan of Ian Gibson’s artwork (I’ve always enjoyed his art). I resubscribed to 2000AD a year or so ago and there has been nothing recently to match Halo Jones. It’s interesting how spare the dialogue is - there’s very little wasted, and some of the modern strips seem wordy by comparison.

This was a re-read, as part of the current 2000AD partwork. It was nice to read the series in one hardcover volume, but being slightly smaller than the original and now being the wrong side of 50, I found the fonts a bit too small for comfort (so I’m not replacing my original Titan copies). Rebellion are preparing a colourised version for 2018. I’m not sure what I think of that as I really like the black and white art - I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

The Night Without Stars by Peter F Hamilton. Second (and final) book in The Chronicle of the Fallers, this is a huge improvement on The Abyss Beyond Dreams, which I found a little slow. I like Hamilton - he writes well and his SF is full of augmented humans and other craziness. A good place to start is the thoroughly epic Pandora’s Star (and its sequel Judas Unchained).

The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell. This is Helen Russell’s delightful account of a year of living in Denmark. Her husband gets a job with Lego, and they both move to Denmark and embrace the happiest country in the world. I loved it - lots of laugh out loud moments as cultures clash and they try to fit in. I wouldn’t normally have chosen something like this, but Mrs H wanted to listen to it on Audible, and I thought I’d give it a try. I’m glad I did.

The Clever Guts Diet by Dr Michael Mosley. It’s really not a diet book, it’s instead an exploration of your biome and what it does for you and how to keep it healthy (TL;DR eat lots of veg, lots of variety, with occasional fasting). A healthy biome helps us lose weight, keeps us healthy. There are a small handful of recipes, but I didn’t read those. I preferred this over Gut by Giulia Enders as it’s easier to read, and seems more up to date.

Empire Games by Charles Stross. Excellent start to a new series in his Merchant Princes series (the one where the USA carpet-nuked one faction out of existence). The world-hoppers are back and trouble is brewing with two aggressive nuclear superpowers in two separate timelines. I don’t know if you need to read the previous series (starting with The Bloodline Feud), but I found that it helped.

So it seems I particularly enjoyed science fiction in 2017. I wonder what 2018 will bring...

2016 in games

It appears that I am unable to refuse the seductive lure of reflecting on the past, so here is my 2016 in games. Along with a few plans for 2017.

Larp: 2016 was okay for me in terms of larp. Here’s what I ran/played/published:

• I co-ran Once Upon a Time in Tombstone.
• At Peaky I co-wrote Ex Nihilo (the new game for ReGenesis), played Trenches and Miss Maypole and the Case of the Missing Admiral.
• Played Disaster! at Continuum.
• Published Venice and Mars Attracts using a creative commons licence.
• Started work on getting Sword Day ready for publication.
• Started work on a collection of Peaky freeform larps.

Writing at Peaky 2016

The one thing I wish I’d done was run a freeform larp in Leeds or York, so that’s something I want to try and do in 2017, perhaps linked to GoPlayLeeds.

My other larp plans for 2017 are to get Sword Day published, which requires some help from the original authors, and finish the collection of Peaky freeforms (I’d like to include Sword Day in that, so these are linked)

Freeform Games: I’ve written about Freeform Games’ 2016 on the FFG blog, so no need to repeat that. My biggest job in 2017 is likely to be getting The Reality is Murder into shape.

Playing Pandemic: The Cure

Board Games: According to my boardgamegeek log, I played 208 board games in 2016. To my surprise, the game I’ve played most has been Rummikub, which I first played at Mum’s back at Easter and was such a hit with the family that we bought a copy as well. X-Wing was a close second (boosted by several solo games).

I didn’t play any Cosmic Encounter in 2016, so I will try and fix that in 2017. I also have an unopened copy of Pandemic Legacy, and I need to find someone to play that with. (Mrs H is ambivalent about Pandemic and doesn’t want to commit to it.)

Playing Monsterhearts
at Continuum

Tabletop RPGs: I played more tabletop roleplaying in 2016 than I have in a long time. That’s thanks to a semi-regular Google Hangouts group, GoPlayLeeds, Continuum and Furnace. One thing I haven’t done is more roleplaying with Megan, which I’d like to change (as she enjoys it very much).

I’ve also ran some scenarios - the first time I’ve run anything serious in a long, long time. I ran The Crasta Demon (Fate Accelerated) twice (once at Furnace and once online), and I ran In Whom We Trust (Call of Cthulhu) at Continuum. I also facilitated an online game of Microscope.

In 2017 I want to run more games (or at least run no fewer) - and I’d like to run something at GoPlayLeeds. I’ve also started preparing a London-based urban fantasy scenario using Fate Accelerated, which I will finish and run in 2017. I also want to get a bit further with my plans for an Orkney Neolithic game (so that probably means writing a scenario).

Tales of Terror: At the start of 2016 I restarted republishing Tales of Terror using Blogger. So far I’ve published 41 (which means it will be five or six years before I’ve got all the old tales uploaded). The nice thing about Blogger is that it’s easy to label the Tales, so that if you just want to see all the Tales involving, say, witches, you can do just that.

Even better, I wrote four completely new Tales of Terror: The Gibbet Frame, The Tower on Dulas Island, Gargoyle's Watch, and Homunculi. I think I did a really good job with The Gibbet Frame and Homunculi.

I will continue with Tales of Terror in 2017, and I might even see if I can create a print-on-demand collection using Lulu and/or Createspace. We’ll see how much time I get.

Videogames: On my tablet I’ve mostly been playing World of Tanks Blitz (which I find a bit too addictive, and reminds me why I stopped playing computer games), Star Realms, and Ticket to Ride.

I tried playing Sorcery #3 (Inkle’s highly praised version of the legendary Steve Jackson gamebook), but found it much too irritating. I quite liked the first two episodes, but I found #3’s sheer size and randomness a bit too much. I haven’t tried Sorcery #4, and I don’t know if I will.

I suspect 2017 will find me playing more World of Tanks Blitz, as I’m still addicted to it.

Garrison Hotel - home to
Furnace

Games weekends: Games weekends in 2016 included: Co-running Once Upon A Time in Tombstone in Retford), Peaky, Continuum, and Furnace.

2017 should see me at Across the Universe (another weekend long freeform), Airecon (where I hope to run something), Peaky, and Furnace.

Other numbers: I read 67 books in 2016, 38 of them fiction. Yes, that’s more than one a week - but I’m counting audiobooks in that (that I listen to in the car and whilst doing chores). Favourites included: The Truth About Employee Engagement by Patrick Lencioni, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett. Black Box Thinking: The Truth about Success by Matthew Syed. The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson. Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained by Peter F Hamilton.

That’s my usual mix of business books and science-fiction/fantasy with a little bit of gentle humour thrown in. I don’t read too many RPG books (I tend to treat them as reference books and dip into them here and there rather than read them cover-to-cover, which is how I track my books), which is why there aren’t many listed here.

2017 will no doubt continue the trend - I’ve read/listened to two books already.