It’s the new year. This is typically a time to take stock. In this post I’m looking back at the last year for both the site and games and providing a plan for things to come.
The (Re)Launch
I made the decision in 2016 to take my defunct webcomic site and turn it into a weekly blog about one of my passions: tabletop role-playing games. The revised Attercap.Net launched at the start of 2017 and I’ve published over 52 posts in 2017, meaning I’ve kept the promise to myself to create one column a week. After an overall haitus of writing that lasted years beforehand, getting back into the groove of writing even one thing a week sometimes came as a struggle. However, as the year ended, I noticed I had a surplus of plans and ideas. I have enough columns planned to start the new year strong, so long as I keep my own internal momentum going.
An Unexpected Series
I came up with the idea of “Characters vs Nature” while on a winter hiking vacation in Montana, thinking about how the snow would affect characters. I’m also a fan of adventures and fiction where one of the enemies are the elements themselves. That said, I only expected to write a handful of “vs Nature” articles and leave it at that. When I saw the articles forming as a series, I still thought that particular tag would die in 2017. But nature keeps providing challenges I hadn’t really thought of in the context of gaming and 2018 will be peppered with more versus nature articles.
The Move; Games Lost, Games Aquired
This past September I moved from Chicago, Illinois to Portland, Oregon. I’ve always viewed moves as a good time to decrease clutter; remove the items on shelves and storage that one hasn’t utilized. This included reviwing my gaming bookshelf and taking stock of the systems I was unlikely to return to. I said goodbye to my HackMaster 4th Edition and Shadowrun 4th Edition books and a smattering of other core books (Supernatural, CthulhuTech, and other books I purchased but never used). I could not part with my In Nomine library—I had said goodbye to those books for a short time in the early 2000’s and it was only with luck and friendship I was able to re-aquire. There were still plenty of systems on my shelf and even before the move I received some of the books I had helped Kickstart or pre-oredered. After the move, my Call of Cthulhu collection returned to a strength it didn’t have since the late 90’s—before my move from Houston to Chicago. Starfinder has also started gaining a presence on my shelf, and I eagerly await each new release.
My shelves have also seen a resurgence in board games with RPG elements. While I already had Betrayal at House on the Hill and its expansion, Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate was released shortly after my arrival to my new city. Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: The Board Game may have been released prior to my move, but I only aquired it after (though in some ways, I wish I hadn’t). I have classics like Dungeon! and KickStarted releases like Mountains of Madness. My journeys to a friendly local game store (Guardian Games) have made it clear that board games with RPG elements are in vogue and this provides me with fodder for a more detailed article in a few weeks.
Music For Your Earholes
In the last quarter of 2017 I began creating playlists on Spotify to use as ambient/background music tracks for different game genres. While I feel like I’ve gotten many of the “main” genres in a state to be published, I have many additional or situational playlists still in the works or in planning phases. [Note: My Spotify account was disabled, and the playlists I compiled can no longer be accessed or updated.]
A New Webcomic
I’ve been thinking about returning to webcomic creation for a while. My main reason for shuttering my last comic was the difficulty in aquiring replacement toys as the wear and tear of “playing” with them for the sake of the comic was making it difficult for the articulated joints to retain a pose. I had rejected using Lego for the longest time due to the lack of articulation, but the universe of Starfinder and the versatility of Lego fit so well together that it seems like the right way to go. And Lego has a large enough inventory that paint or joint issues should not be an issue. New comics will be posted on Thursdays, but not every Thursday. Unlike my columns, the comic will not be a regular feature, just someting I create when time and ideas present themselves. That said, there should be a number of comics showing up in early 2018 as I want to establish the characters and sets.
System Specific Posts and Adventures
I’d like to say I was originally hesitant to make system specific posts, but given the surplus of Fate articles even at the beginning, I think I was mostly hesitant to post system specific adventure write-ups, presenting most ideas as more generic adventure seeds. While this works for many ideas, some things are best presented (or, at least, more easily written) in a specific system context. In addition to more Fate Adversaries and Starfinder Class Specializations, expect to read about class additions, NPCs, monsters, and fully-realized adventures for Fate, Starfinder, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, In Nomine, and Shadowrun 5th Edition in 2018.
What Else?
I post to this website primarily for me. I went without writing for too long and I feel that skill had somewhat atrophied. Forcing a weekly schedule allows me to rebuild that competence. That said, I appreciate readers and commenters and I am curious as to what you’d like more or less of on this site. How do you feel about the design and navigation? What systems do you think I should check out? Please let me know using the comments below.
2018 will be a busy year for the site and I hope you, the reader, enjoy what I put out into the world. Happy New Year!
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