January is miserable enough without making resolutions based on guilt and self-denial. But it is a fresh start, and a chance to make plans.
First of all, I shall play and run games, rather than just buying games, filing them on the shelf and stroking them occasionally.
Here’s my wish list of games to play/run this year:
- Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor (campaign in progress)
- Lamentations of the Flame Princess (one-shot planned with date and everything!)
- Don’t Rest Your Head (another one-shot, date planned, substance needs work)
- Ghosts of Albion / Angel / other Cinematic Unisystem (potential campaign, no set date or party)
- Apocalypse World hacks (design in progress for Eternal Champion and Sapphire & Steel)
- De Profundis (starting this weekend, hopefully!)
Candlewick is on the home stretch (I think); with a bit of effort it may become one of the campaigns I actually finish. Haelmouth (Buffy/Morning Glories Cinematic Unisystem) is partially planned but without players or a gaming slot. The two one-shots (DRYH/LotFP) are in good shape. The AW hacks are nebulous entities–I’ve been devouring the Sapphire & Steel TV and audio plays as research, and I think it has potential.
And then there’s De Profundis, which I think I will save for another post. If all goes well that should last the year. We’ll see.
Games that didn’t make the list are Everway, Over The Edge, and a fantasy homebrew game. The latter is tied to the City Accelerator tool; we’ll see if it ever gets played.
Telly and Books
We watched a lot of crappy TV last year. The magic box sits under the telly and inhales all the third-rate fantasy, sci-fi and crime drama we tell it to. Once it’s on the box we have to watch it to “free up space” so it can record more and more.
2012’s viewing included such seminal masterpieces as Game of Thrones, Teen Wolf and Falling Skies. I don’t think I’d have bothered with half the stuff we saw if it hadn’t been free with the cable box.
We’re gradually learning the discipline to cull series that are under-performing. Once that starts you lose the habit of scouring the listings for new dross to record. Eventually the list of recorded shows is confined to one page, and since none of it looks appealing the default option is now “let’s go to bed and read” instead.
After finishing Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell (which I think I started reading at Reading Festival in 2007) I’m not going to commit to one book a week, but it could happen.
Music
I have a big music collection and I do listen every day, but it’s frequently the same stuff. I don’t know if I can commit to listening to every single album I own in a year, but one thing I fancy doing is creating a new playlist every week. The rules are:
- no repeats of tracks
- artists only appear once on each playlist
- an artist that appeared last week can’t appear in the following week
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p>I’ll publish the lists here. For obvious reasons I won’t be posting download links, though if it’s something difficult to find I may provide some links for legitimate copies, or at least some Youtube downloads.
That’s enough resolutions for now. Happy new year!