2025
Looking back on my gaming related activities for 2025, I got a lot done, but didn’t quite achieve some of my goals. And yes, I actually had a couple of goals for the year when it came to gaming.
The most important was probably Mongoose Traveller support for FoundryVTT. I got a lot of coding done, and added a lot more features. I also created content for the Starter Pack, Core Rules, Central Supply Catalogue, and High Guard. These have all been sent to Mongoose over the course of the year, however none of them have actually been published yet. I was hoping that they could go out by the end of the year, but that isn’t going to happen now.
I’d really like to start getting feedback on this content, before moving on to anything else, so everything else is on hold until this is done.
One thing I have been doing, is continuing my video series tracking the development of the system. I seem to be getting some good feedback on this. Making videos is something that doesn’t come naturally to me. It’s a lot harder to fix problems that it is with text. I have a new microphone now as well, which will hopefully improve the audio quality. I’m going to start making some tutorial videos as well for Foundry Traveller.
TTRPGs
On the actual playing of RPG side of things, I was hoping that my Deepnight Revelation campaign would get wrapped up before the end of the year. This is close, and the end is very definitely in sight, but it’s still not quite finished. Hopefully just a few more sessions to go before it is complete.
Something that I’ve come to realise, is that for any long term campaign, the players really need to have a good focus on what their objectives are. It’s something that we lost in the Deepnight campaign, and I think the players enjoyed the journey more than the reason for the journey. I plan on doing a longer in depth dive into the campaign once it’s completed.
Our Ars Magica campaign has continued. I have no idea how far through it we are. We could be close to the end, or we could have several years to go. It’s difficult to know. I’m getting to play at Criamon maga again, which is a House I do like. I’ve made life difficult for myself by taking a character that is something of a pacifist. It does make it hard to get involved with the game, but there’s always so many reasons for not getting involved.
As I learned with Deepnight, its important for players to have a desire to get involved, take risks and want to achieve things. I’m trying hard to find ways to get Pisciculus involved more in the plot, and maybe start making some hard choices that involve hurting people in other to help the more deserving. I don’t think it’s a Criamon thing to be too judgemental about people though, and divide them up into deserving and non-deserving. So it’s going to be tricky.
The other campaign is Masks of Nyarlathotep. This is probably the Call of Cthulhu mega-campaign. Unlike our games, it’s face to face, so we’re getting to do roleplaying around a table, with snacks, pencils and paper. We’ve completed New York and London, and are now in Egypt. I’m guessing that there’s at least three other major locations for us to visit, so I think we’re making reasonable progress.
It’s a fun game, and the 1920s is an interesting period to be playing a game in.
We didn’t get to play anything new this year however. The problem with having several long running campaigns is that you don’t get time to try out new things. However, you do get a chance to really get to know a system. I did get a copy of the new Twilight 2000 game. It is really high production quality, and would be something I’d be willing to play. However, I think I have other priorities for what I want to run next.
Wargames
On the wargaming side, we got to play a bigger variety of games. As has been the case for the last few years, Saga has come to dominate the games I play. By my count, I had 20 games of Saga, and one each of Barons’ War, Xenos Rampant, Dragon Rampant, Brethren, Check Your Six and Crusader.
Brethren I thought we would play more of, but it suffers from the same issue as the * Rampant games in that putting together an army is a lot of work in point cost calculation. Which means it’s far easier to just have a game of Saga, than it is to organise a game of anything else.
Barons’ War is something I picked up about a year ago (just before 2nd Edition came out), and got some figures for it, but it’s taken a long time to get them painted. I did finally get to have a game, and it was fun, but I need to put together an army or two before playing it again.
For Saga, we had 9 games of Age of Invasions, 6 of Age of Chivalry, 4 Age of Vikings and 1 Age of Magic. I also got to do a small campaign game, which was interesting, even though I won it quite clearly. I’m up for giving it another go, maybe with easier factions.
Next Year
For next year, I want to finish my Deepnight campaign, and get the Mongoose Foundry stuff published so I can get some feedback on it. That latter is sort of out of my control though, so I have no idea how long it will take.
Last year, I published one thing on DriveThruRPG, which was my Seriizar Medium Freighter for Traveller. I wanted to do more, but I was focused on Foundry. I have ideas for publishing more things next year, but it will come down to how much time is spent on Foundry.
Once Deepnight is finished, I have some ideas for another Traveller game, but that will depend on whether others are interested in playing. I’ve had two players in my game for quite a while now, and would like to go back to having more players. Two players can give quite focused game play, but four or five players can provide a lot more variety in how games run.
On the wargaming side, I want to get back to Dirtside (reading through Twilight 2000 has given me the itch to do some NATO/Russia post-apocalyptic wargaming), and also try more of games like Brethren and Barons’ War. This requires finding the time to put together armies, and finding people willing to play them.
In a year, I’ll know how well I’ve done at that.
