Missed my anniversary

I missed my one year anniversary with this blog.

For a recap- this blog has covered 3 separate campaigns in the course of 1 year.

First was an AD&D1 campaign set in my own world of Garnia that lasted four or five sessions before ending abruptly in the middle of what was most likely the final combat encounter of the adventure when my wife Mona paused to make dinner. That was my post apocalyptic Garnia game. Oddly enough, we will be restarting this one next Sunday.

Second was a Rules Cyclopedia game where I figured the more rules light version of D&D might keep the game flow going for the kids, particularly John and Em. That didn't really seem to matter to them particularly. I held John's attention but not really Em's. Em died about half way through Castle Caldwell. Ashli died literally on the second to last hit of the last encounter because of a failed save vs. poison. John and Ash were both pretty psyched about actually finishing an adventure though. We planned to do the Castle Caldwell dungeons in the next session, but we never had another session of that campaign. I have really got no idea why that was, but it might have had something to do with either Ash getting ready to join the Army reserve or Ash training for SCA heavy weapons combat or both. We pretty much spent the summer getting in shape, training sword and shield and then moving back to my old property and cleaning it up and repairing things. After school started up again we were really busy all the time. John was in football, Ashli is in Marine Corps junior ROTC and National Honor Society and pretty active in both as well as being in the Army reserve, so we really had to wait for the weather to get cold before moving on to gaming again.

Third was my extremely short-lived Oriental Adventures/Ruins and Ronin hybrid campaign. I was looking forward to it for weeks and it really was my baby. I had been subtly prepping everyone on a diet of cool feudal Japanese stuff during our evening family TV viewing time. It lasted a total of three sessions, all in the month of December and we only made characters during the first. Two TPKs in two weeks apparently killed the enthusiasm for the mystic orient.

It's all OK though, in a year I have discovered the OSR which led me back to my gaming roots and my family and I have had some good times with gaming. This year seems to be well on track to having a D&D game every Sunday. I only wish I could connect with someone local that was into wargaming, all my old wargaming buddies have left the area. I haven't been able to get so much as a game of Axis & Allies going with the kids. By the time I was Em's age I was already experienced at getting my butt kicked at numerous AH and SPI games :)