2024 In Review

        2024 was the biggest year for me in terms of gaming in a long time. I think at one point I was either running or playing in somewhere up to 8 games. It technically started back in 2023 when I started a Dungeon Crawl Classics game with a few friends (that did not know each other at all), but this campaign has continued through this past year, and we'll be picking it back up in a week or so.

I really wanted to do more with TTRPGs, specifically Dungeons & Dragons and its various flavors. 2024 marked the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, so I set out to do a couple of things with various levels of success throughout the year.

DCC #51 - Ruins of Castle Whiterock

I came across a used copy of DCC #51 - The Ruins of Castle Whiterock. A white whale for DCC collecting sickos as it's been out of print for over 15 years, it's a huge Megadungeon that is supposed to take 3rd Edition D&D characters from level 1 to 15th or so. I've been running it in Goodman Games' DCC RPG, which to my surprise they announced an update is coming in 2025! My game is open to the public, but I've had a dedicated table of 4 players since June and we're picking up the pace trying to get a game in every 3 weeks instead of once every month. The game has been deadly, and I've been running it entirely online, but I'm having a great time running it.

Image of Castle Whiterock's Original Cover

Gary Con 2024

Because of the aforementioned 50th anniversary I made it a point to go to Gary Con in March of 2024. I had to, D&D has been a part of my life for over 20 years, and I have often wanted to make the journey to Gary's memorial on the shores of Lake Geneva, so of course I had to go. I had a blast, I played a lot of games, I ended up getting sick (thankfully not COVID), so my time was not as fun as it could have been, but that didn't stop me from wanting to go back in 2025. The one downside was that we stayed 45 minutes away in Racine because we just wanted to get our feet in the door and see if we even liked the convention. We did, we're ready for 2025.

Original D&D & Caverns of Thracia

We lost the great Jennell Jaquays at the beginning of 2024. For those of you that don't know, Jennell was an early adopter of Dungeons & Dragons back in the 70s, she created an early zine called the Dungeoneer, worked with the Judge's Guild on supplemental D&D products, amongst two major works that D&D nerds might recognize, Caverns of Thracia and Dark Tower (not the be confused with the Stephen King work). Jennell's dungeons often featured multiple paths through the dungeon, no particular specific linear path, verticality. You may see dungeon design that follows her footsteps as a Jaquaysed or "Jaquaysing" the dungeon. So thinking heavily about her work, and wanting to engage more with older versions of D&D, I ran two one-shots of Caverns of Thracia in OD&D (1974 Rules + Chainmail). This was an interesting experiment. It definitely made me think more about dungeon procedure and how I would rule things since those initial rules were vague at best or non-existent at worst. Did I retain any of this for my own games? No, but that's because I haven't really had a chance to internalize a lot of those things after only 2 one shots. I will say the best part of both games was that the players took wildly different paths through the dungeon, so it was fresh both times for me.

TomCon

I ran a little gaming convention. It was mostly a way to get friends into the same space to play games. We played a bunch of magic, I ran the OD&D game, and I play tested a Cairn hack that I wrote. This was exhausting, not very well organized, and admittedly it ended up being mostly me running things, I was hoping to get to play some stuff, but it was fun. I don't think I'm bringing this back in 2025, and that's okay.

Final Thoughts

2024 rocked. I enjoyed all of the gaming I did, I tried new games, I started more campaigns and played system I hadn't tried. I can't wait until I get more games in this year.