The Year in Brief

I'm not too humble for an end of year roundup, so let's do it. 

Let the old year burn that the new might thrive.

JANUARY saw me dipping into Classic Traveller for the first time and becoming especially enamoured with the 2400 games. This marriage is probably responsible for my Ask the Stars project. Despite sitting in touched for nearly a year I'm hoping to come back to this idea one day. 

FEBRUARY might have seen the post that really got the ball rolling on Mythic Bastionland, talking about how "The Wyvern" is can be more interesting than "A Wyvern".

MARCH took things further and now we actually see The Wyvern in full. Behind the scenes I was working on the Mythic (née Primeval) Bastionland document and trying to get it into a playable state. Lots of pieces still weren't in place, though. 

APRIL had me thinking about the complexities of having an emergent world that still feels coherent, fair, and real. After reading about the Blorb Principles I wrote about the concept of Patching.

MAY saw me digging into Journeys as a focus of Mythic Bastionland, including a stripped down mapping system that would ultimately be replaced with a more traditional hex map system. 

JUNE was tidying up the Mythic Bastionland draft so that I could release it as a playtest. This included generating a lot of AI art to use as placeholders for this version. Looking back at this post is interesting, if only to see how far Midjourney has come in the past six months. Interested/Horrified to see where it's at this time next year. 

JULY expanded on my earlier deliberations around running a somewhat-liquid setting, rather than something with a strong canon. I called it Liquid Flesh on an Iron Skeleton and wrote about some of the difficulties and opportunities.

AUGUST was broken up by a trip away, but I did some more thinking about the place of System in RPGs, landing on a desire for surprising elements that exist outside of the players and GM. 

SEPTEMBER was the first of several months spent taking a break from Mythic Bastionland. Those past few months were very intense development, so it was nice to let it mull for a while. Of course, I couldn't stop talking about hexes entirely, so wrote my Universal Hex Profile post.

OCTOBER was when Battletech got me. It hooked me very strongly, and I've only recently escaped. I guess we got MAC ATTACK out of it though, and here's where I first talked about it.

NOVEMBER had my post about Breaking Rules, where I talk through the process of designing factions for MAC ATTACK and how this might apply to RPGs. 

DECEMBER is here and next week's post will likely be the last of the year, as I'm taking a semi-break over Christmas. Expect some speculation on what to look forward to next year.

None of 2022 may remain.

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Art by Midjourney

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