This is the End (of 2025), Beautiful Friend

Last year I did what I called a Traditional End of the Arbitrary Calendar Year Roundup, and I thought it would be a good tradition to keep going in the same format. The end of 2025 is looming very close, so I guess it's a good time to look back on the veritable tish-show that was the year. 

Looking back on what I'd hoped 2025 would be, it certainly didn't deliver what I'd hoped. I still feel like a hamster on a wheel going around and around, still not getting anywhere. And once more, just when I thought something was going to change, life punched me in the guts again. There were some high points, and some very, very low points. 

High points were going to Scotland, staying in a castle, going to see Twenty One Pilots and Nine Inch Nails.

Low points were definitely yet another (very unexpected) funeral. Miss you dude.

So, like last year, let's break the year down into what I watched, played, and read.

TV & Movies

I realised a couple of years ago that I watched a lot of TV and movies to the point of not remembering if I'd watched them before. Mortal Engines is one of those movies that I'm convinced I haven't seen, but when I start to watch it, I realise I have. Weird. Anyway, I started keeping track last year, and this year I continued to make notes of what I'd watched. I also started adding them to Letterboxd, and you can follow me on there if you like. I'm also on Serializd, but haven't really got to grips with that one yet. 

Here goes...

January 2025

Scene from the episode "Forks" in Season 2 of The Bear

Top Watch: The Bear (Season 2). You know, I had no interest in watching The Bear. Not really interested in the high stress world of running a restaurant. However, we watched season one, and everyone was shouting at each other, and there was this big revelation at the end of the season that kinda hooked you into the next...  Episode six, with the Christmas dinner, "Fishes", is often called an hour of perfect television - and it is completely masterful in its writing and acting, simply brilliant. BUT, episode seven, "Forks", is my favourite. Richie was such a complete pain in the first season, just antagonistic and confrontational, and (again) brilliantly acted, but in Forks he is sent off to learn how to work behind the scenes in a top restaurant, and he changes. He finds his motivation, his drive, and bonds with the team even though he's only there a short time. It's just so SO masterful, it makes me fill up just thinking about how brilliant it is. Richie quickly became my favourite character.

Honourable Mentions: Slow Horses (Season 4), Star Wars: Skeleton Crew (Season 1)

February 2025

Still from I Saw The TV Glow

Top Watch: I Saw The TV Glow (2024). I saw a lot of people raving about this, about how it discussed obsession, identity, and paranoia. It had that creepypasta vibe of the Candle Cove season of Channel Zero, but I wasn't expecting it to have such a great David Lynch vibe. Excellent performances, fantastic cinematography, and just creepy and refuses to explain everything. Great stuff. 

Honourable Mentions: Cobra Kai (Season 6), The Night Agent (Season 2)

March 2025

Promotional still from Season One of the series Paradise

Top Watch: Paradise (Season 1). Okay, full disclaimer here, this technically shares the top spot of the month with Severance (Season 2), but Paradise really surprised me. Admittedly, I was spoiled for the biggest surprise, and without that I probably wouldn't have watched it. I mean, it's a murder mystery of who killed the President of the USA, following Sterling K. Brown (who's always excellent) as the Secret Service agent assigned to protect him. Simple enough... but (and I'm not going to spoil it) trust me. Watch this. Go in without any knowledge of what's to come, and by the end of the first episode you will be hooked. 

Severance (Season 2) was excellent as well, and just as intriguing as the first season. Sure, it had some slow episodes, but the seventh episode "Chikhai Bardo" was masterfully shot and acted. 

Honourable Mentions: Mrs Davis (mini series), The Atypical Family (S. Korean series)

April 2025

Promotional image for the Netflix series, The Residence

Top Watch: The Residence (Season 1... the only flippin' season). I love a good murder mystery. Even more, I love a quirky, slightly weird, murder mystery. You'd think I'd love the Knives Out movies (they're okay, but I preferred Poker Face). However, one of the best in my opinion was the short lived series The Residence on Netflix. Super consultant Cordelia Cupp is called in when there is a murder in the White House, and every episode will leave you thinking someone different committed the crime. Really clever the way its structured and filmed, keeps you guessing. Why Netflix had to go and cancel it, I dunno. Would easily watch another heap of Cupp mysteries.

Honourable Mentions: Love Next Door (S. Korean series), Smile 2 (2024)

May 2025

Promotional image for Andor Season 2

Top Watch: Andor Season 2. I mean, what else could there be? Flippin' phenomenal season, and particularly timely. Stunning performances again, and we finished the final episode and went straight on to Rogue One, then A New Hope... it's powerful stuff. 

Honourable Mentions: House of the Dragon (Season 2), The Fountain Of Youth (2025)

June 2025

Still from Season Four of The Bear

Top Watch: The Bear (Season 4). Yeah, had to be. Sure, season four wasn't quite as jaw-droppingly amazing as the previous three seasons, but it was still fantastic television. 

Honourable Mentions: Will Trent (Season 3), The Accountant (2016)

July 2025

Promotional still from K-Pop Demon Hunters

Top Watch: K-Pop Demon Hunters (2025). Simply from the trailer I kinda knew this was going to be a blast. Fantastic animation, great music, and some really cool quirky moments that felt a bit like the Spider-verse movies, it was just really good fun. I can see why it has become a global phenomena, and Derpy does steal every scene it's in.

Honourable Mentions: Poker Face (Season 2), Department Q (Season 1)

August 2025

Top Watch: Resident Alien (Season 4). I hardly watched anything in August. I don't know what happened. I think I was just really busy or in such a funk I just continued my constant rewatch of The X-Files. So, Resident Alien (Season 4) was my top NEW watch of the month. Alan Tudyk was amazing as always, and the rest of the cast were really cool. Wrapped it up nicely, with the potential for more, but it's likely that's the last we get of his weird alien-ness.

Honourable Mentions: blurg... not much to choose from this month. Heart Eyes was pretty good, but I also watched In The Lost Lands which had to be one of the worst films I've ever seen in my life. 

September 2025

Still from Alice In Borderland Season 3

Top Watch: Alice in Borderland (Season 3). I must admit, when they said there was going to be a third season, I didn't think it should happen. Season 2 was great, and rounded everything off perfectly. It didn't need another season, but it happened, and I'm really glad it did. Returning to the Borderland, it all makes sense, works brilliantly, and is really darn epic. Very pleasantly surprised. Should I say it was better than the final season of Squid Game? 

Honourable Mentions: Alien: Earth (Season 1), Wednesday (Season 2)

October 2025

Promotion still of the TV series 'Revival'

Top Watch: Revival (Season 1?). Not sure if there will be another season of Revival, and it doesn't need one, because it was a really excellent story completely wrapped up by the end. A great twist on a 'zombie' series, and some awesome twists. Really good! 

Honourable Mentions: The Burning Girls (Series), Slow Horses (Season 5)

November 2025

Still from The Accountant 2

Top Watch: The Accountant 2 (2025). This is a weird month, because I rate everything I watch so I can work out what my 'top watch' is of the month, and The Accountant 2 rates just as highly as High Potential (Season 1), and the new Netflix version of Frankenstein. I know, I've weird tastes. However, in my notes, what I enjoyed even more than all of these was my marathon rewatch of the first four seasons of Stranger Things. Sure, I've seen the first season five times now, but I enjoy it every time. Just really cool. Season three was great rewatching it, and everyone is fantastic in all of the seasons (though my fave has to be Steve Harrington. Absolute legend.)

Honourable Mentions: I guess High Potential (Season 1) and Frankenstein.

December 2025

Promotional still for IT: Welcome to Derry

Top Watch: IT - Welcome to Derry (Season One). Another strange one, as I was really looking forward to this series. I'd read the book when I was a (late) teenager, and very much a 'loser' and it's the book that got me reading for pleasure. Stephen King, I owe you for that one. I loved the recent movies, and when the announced the prequel series I was very keen. However, those first two episodes felt like they were just trying too hard to be over-the-top and a bit gross. I wasn't sure. Debs gave up watching after those two, but I kept going, and the series calmed down and the characters really came into their own. There's an amazing episode explaining the origins of 'IT', and the indigenous people's efforts to trap it within the woods outside Derry. And by the time Marge realises she's being a right cliquey cow and switches sides, and Richie's moment in episode seven (oh my god, the tears)...

The way it ties into the future of IT, and into The Shining, and more of the Stephen King universe, is great, and the plan to set season two a generation before, and three before that, going backwards in chronology is brilliant. Has to be one of my watches of the year. 

Honourable Mentions: Pluribus (season one), Sinners (2025)

Gaming

Most of the people who read my rambling thoughts are here because of gaming and tabletop RPGs. This year, I continued the long running D&D game, though playing once a month can mean there's a lot of me being confused as to what's going on, and not having the time to read the full recaps.

My other group played a load of Mothership (which was good, scary, and incredibly dangerous), playtested Harrowhill Point, and we're in the middle of a Mythic Bastionland game.

Next year? I have no idea. My lovely wife bought me the Delta Green campaign Impossible Landscapes, so maybe that's on the cards, though I think our usual GM is keen to get us back to playing The One Ring.

In May, we went to UK Games Expo, and for the first time we did all three days! It was great, and exhausting, and we got to catch up with some cool people. It was our first stay at a hotel in Birmingham, and really getting the chance to take everything in rather than doing everything in an afternoon. It was far too warm, and Debs came out of the con at the end of the weekend saying 'Never again', but as the days passed, her tone quickly changed to 'we should definitely do that again next year'. So, hopefully, that'll be on the cards for the end of May.

Also in May, I joined Eleanor Hingley on hosting a short presentation about getting into the tabletop industry. I wasn't great, as always. But if you want to see it, you can find it here:

It was part of the Norwich Gaming Festival, which has branched out to include tabletop gaming as well as video gaming, and shouldn't be confused with the Norwich Games Convention that takes place in August. That was held in yet another temporary location, and was okay. Next year it's in another location (Norwich showground) so we'll have to see how that goes!

September was Tabletop Scotland in Edinburgh, and once again we shared a stand with the lovely folk at We-Evolve, so Debs could sell her goth-geek Misery Makes wares. 

Debs at the Misery Makes stand at Tabletop Scotland 2025

Financially it was better than the rather poor 2024 Tabletop Scotland, and thankfully it wasn't as cold, but the lack of options for a cup of tea was frustrating, and it felt just as quiet as the previous year. Still, it's on the calendar for next year... who knows...

And then, finally, it was Dragonmeet. Which I had tickets for, but didn't end up going to as I had a rotten headcold... which seems to still be lingering four weeks later... uggg.

Gaming Experience of the Year

Is it really sad to say that it's probably getting my old collection of Star Frontiers back after a few decades? It was the first game I bought when I started tabletop gaming back in the early 1980s, and when the group disbanded and I went off to University I didn't think I'd ever play it again, and sold the lot to a very good friend of mine. He kept playing with a very, VERY small group, but it had sat in his loft for many, many, many years and he was happy to simply hand it all back to me. Sure, all those years in the loft hadn't been too kind to it, but I was ecstatic to see those pages once more. The illustrations took me back to my teens, and all those (probably terrible) games of Star Frontiers I played over those years.

My original Star Frontiers books from the 80s

Other Media

Otherwise I've been continuing my read of Charles Stross' "The Laundry Files", though sometimes it does feel like homework as it's for the day-job. At least the books are good and fun! I also read the first few of the Chronicles of Narnia... I had this weird urge to read them for research for the game I'd been thinking about writing, but I was only four books in when I needed to catch up with The Laundry for work. 

I also blasted my way through Season 10 of The X-Files comics (the IDW alternate universe version of season 10, that is...) which were pretty good. I need to track down the out of print Season 11 collection... 

Music-wise, I've been listening to the usual stuff. We went to see Twenty One Pilots in London (which was covered in a lengthy blogpost), so that inspired lots of listening to their albums. And the same went for Nine Inch Nails, as we went to see them in London as well - and the new Tron: Ares soundtrack is flipping awesome (still haven't seen the film though)...

We also went to see Wet Leg, who were great! Though I think we stood too close to the speakers and made ourselves temporarily impaired for a bit. 

Big discovery of the year musically - there's usually one artist I'd never heard of that makes a lasting impression (last year it was Night Club) - was a weird band called Princess Goes To The Butterfly Museum (though they often just go by Princess Goes these days). Ketamine is a great track...

...yes, Michael C. Hall (Dexter himself) is the lead singer of the band. Seriously, check out their other stuff. I'd highly recommend 'Eat An Eraser' and 'Nevertheless'. Love it all.

--

And that's it. The end of a mostly crappy year. What does 2026 have in store? I said it last year, and I've said it many time before... something better change. 

Last year I had a Substack which I have since deleted. Now, if you want to keep up with my posts and what I'm up to, feel free to join my Patreon. Free being the operative word! It costs nothing and you'll get these updates and ramblings straight into your inbox if you pardon the expression. Click the linkage and sign up!

Above all, may I wish you all the very best for the new year, and let's hope it's a better one.

DFC

The End (Of 2024)

The Traditional End of the Arbitrary Calendar Year Roundup

At the end of each year, I look back on my blog post about the end of the previous year and see what I hoped would come to pass in the future… and most of the time it’s me saying “Next year, things are gonna happen, and it’ll be great!”. (Narrator: “It wasn’t.”)

This year, I look back on last year's “end of the year” post which I wrote on Christmas Eve 2023, and see I was (as usual) disappointed with the way the year had turned out. 2023 wasn’t bad, but I was hoping for bigger and better things in 2024.

Of course, that didn’t happen either. 2024 sucked. I felt like a miserable hamster on a wheel, going around and around and not actually getting anywhere. Just when I got some speed up and thought, ‘you know, this is actually okay!’ then something came along and tripped me up so I fell onto my face, smashing my stupid grin into a bloody mess.

It’d be great to get that project off the ground

Nope, didn’t happen.

At least nothing bad happened

Bad things did happen. Far too many funerals this year.

TV & Movies

The one thing I talked about at the end of last year that I actually DID do was keep track of all the stuff I watch during the year. So, with that in mind, let’s look at what held my interest throughout the year.

January: 

Top Watch: Star Trek Prodigy (Season 1) - went in with very low expectations only to discover that it was brilliant. Great crew, great animation, intelligent story that didn’t talk down to its target audience. Phenomenal. 

Honourable Mentions: Extraordinary Attorney Woo, Lupin (Part 3)

February:

Top Watch: The Creator - blimey, that was epic wasn’t it? Original, cool, and amazing special effects. It felt like it was part of the same universe as Blade Runner, and watching that while playing the Blade Runner RPG just made it even cooler. 

Honourable Mentions: True Detective (Season 4), A Shop for Killers (Season 1)

March:

Top Watch: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Season 1) - c’mon, let’s face it. While I enjoyed Star Trek Discovery, my favourite part of all of the seasons was the introduction of Captain Pike and the Enterprise. So, getting their own series was perfect. Great cast again, really great Trek stories. Loved it. 

Honourable Mentions: Star Trek: Lower Decks (Season 4), Will Trent (Season 1)

April:

Top Watch: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire - first time back in the cinema since the last of the Star Wars movies, and it was a perfect birthday treat. Love the characters, especially the new generation, and it punched me in the nostalgia feels all the way through. Not as emotional as Afterlife, but still great. 

Honourable Mentions: Three Body Problem (Season 1), Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Season 4)

May:

Top Watch: Sugar (Season 1) - I like me some weird stuff. Colin Farrell, before his amazing transformation in The Penguin, is a cool noir detective with a love of classic cinema, investigating weirdness in Hollywood. I’m not going to spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it, but it has a couple of seriously good twists. 

Honourable Mentions: Destined with You (which would have ranked higher but there’s a scene with an octopus that’s unpleasant), Star Trek: Discovery (Season 5) 

June:

Top Watch: Dark Matter (Season 1) - Once again, I like me some weird. This was good, maybe a little too long, but in a world of stories where the ‘multiverse’ is the ‘in thing’ this was pretty darn good. Apple really knocking it out of the park with their series (I mean, the Monarch TV series is easily the best of the Monsterverse media, and don’t get me started on how amazing Severance and Slow Horses is). 

Honourable Mentions: Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, Enemy (Denis Villeneuve)

July:

Top Watch: Shogun (Season 1) - Stunning. Brilliant acting again, visually stunning, and I can’t really fault it. My memories of watching the old Richard Chamberlain one in my youth with my dad may have surfaced a couple of times, but really good. 

Honourable Mentions: Star Trek: Prodigy (Season 2), A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (Season 1)

August:

Top Watch: Travelers (Season 3) - Started watching this for an RPG that didn’t quite work, but the series itself is stunning. Genuinely heartbreaking, moving, and smart sci-fi and a great take on the ‘coming back from the future to save the world’ plot line.

Honourable Mentions: No One Will Save You, Travelers (Season 2).

September:

Top Watch: Ludwig (Season 1) - I really love murder mysteries and police procedurals, so this quirky little series was a complete delight. And some great acting in here too. Really clever use of the obsessive consideration of detail being used to solve murders. Highly recommended.

Honourable Mentions: The Batman (movie), Will Trent (Season 2)

October: 

Top Watch: The Devil’s Hour (Season 1 and 2) - Watched a lot in October, I don’t know why, but the standout was The Devil’s Hour. Really original ‘time travel’ series (and I use the term in quotes as it’s not really about time travel, it’s time loops). Capaldi on top form, but Jessica Raine was amazing in this. Season 2 builds upon the genius, though not as amazing as season 1. Really intrigued to see where it goes from here.

Honourable Mentions: The Black Phone, Ouija: Origin of Evil

November:

Top Watch: The Expanse (Season 1, 2, and 3) - Late to the party, but I thought I’d see what all the fuss was about, and it was well worth it. Great and interesting characters (Amos kinda stole it for me), and the realistic interpretation of ‘space physics’ was really cool. I could so easily see how this was created as an RPG setting before it became books, and a TV series. Can’t believe it took me so long to get around to watching this.

Honourable Mentions: Arcane (Season 2) - so good, so very good, Fargo (Season 5)

December:

Top Watch: The Expanse (Season 4, 5, and 6) - I watched a LOT in December, and while seasons 5 and 6 were not as cool, The Expanse was better than a lot of the nonsense I watched this month. Frustrated that we haven’t had the rest of the series to complete the books’ story.

Honourable Mentions: Squid Game (Season 2), Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

Gaming

I know most of the people who follow this blog and Substack are here because I write tabletop RPGs, so Gaming needs to be mentioned. This year I continued the long-running D&D game with my old gaming group from 40 years ago, as well as my other group finishing off the epic Aegean game we’d been playing, shifting the setting from Ancient Greece to Mythic Vikings. We did some more Blade Runner RPG, tried our hands at FATE for the first time, and have returned to Aegean in a whole new setting.

Next year, I’m hoping we get to try Deathmatch Island, Mothership, Slugblaster, and a few other games that are brewing in the background. 

In May I went to UK Games Expo, which was MASSIVE and exhausting, but great fun. Met loads of publishers and people I knew, and was kinda overwhelmed by how huge it is. I’m really hoping to do the full three days for UKGE 2025. 

There was the second Norwich Gaming Convention, which was cool if strangely laid out - but that wasn’t the convention organiser’s fault. The location used before was under repair so it was held in a temporary home in the University of the Arts in various parts of the campus and nearby buildings. It’s certainly growing and should only go from strength to strength.

In September was Tabletop Scotland which was our first time attending, and I helped on the stall with Stoo and the We_Evolve games, and had part of the table for my wife’s Etsy business of cool gothy wares from Misery Makes. It was cool, huge, slightly damp and very foggy, but good. Didn’t make any money after the expense of going to Scotland, but the trip was great fun, and got to see lots of cool people.

And in November it was Dragonmeet, which again was great and exhausting. 

Gaming Experience of the Year?

Mothership. Which is weird, because I haven’t played it. Stoo bought a copy at Tabletop Scotland after we watched a review on Quinn’s Quest, and after thumbing through the various books in the basic set my mind was racing with ideas. I’ve always loved the ‘small book’ format and wanted to bring back the feel of Traveller, and Mothership really scratched that itch and beat me to it. It’s not so much the subject matter, but more the execution. I couldn’t stop thinking about it all week and ideas and plans were hastily jotted down…

One day I’ll get around to doing something with them…

Other Media

Finally, just a quick look at some of the other media I’ve been absorbing. I read some books, as always not as many as I’d have liked - I’m a terribly slow reader, I like to try to absorb it, and I often get distracted and start something else. Just my brain at the moment I guess. I read the new X-Files book, Perihelion - which was good, and great to see what happens after the 11th season. Had some issues with the ‘Charles Xavier School for alien hybrids’, but I hope there’s another one coming. I read the X-Files Origins books (though I’ve not quite finished Devil’s Advocate) which are pretty cool. 

I started Lev Grossman’s The Bright Sword and then got distracted by having to read something for work - speaking of which, I did the first seven Laundry Files novels by Charles Stross over the last year, which were cool. I must get back to The Bright Sword, but Debs bought me I’m Starting To Worry About This Black Box Of Doom by Jason Pargin, so maybe after that. It did remind me that I haven’t read the latest in his “John and Dave” series…. I also read Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, which was great, gripping, and genuinely terrifying, but not the happiest of reads. 

Music-wise, I’ve been mostly listening to the usual Nine Inch Nails music as always, along with some metal like Bring Me The Horizon, Falling in Reverse, Ice Nine Kills and the new Poppy album. However, real discovery for me this year has been Night Club. 

I’d not heard of them before, but this electronica duo are the perfect, dark, synthwave, retro-80s cool that I needed right now, and it has been on constant loop for weeks.

—

And that’s it. What a crappy year. Let’s hope 2025 is better. What do I want to get out of the coming year? That’s easy… CHANGE. A change in what’s going on, what I’m doing, everything… I’d post that video of The Stranglers singing “Something Better Change” but I do that every year and yet everything stays the same. 

May you have a brilliant new year, and all the very best for the future. 

2022 - A year in the rearview

 

Sunset over the street - photo by Debra Chapman

We're getting to the end of the year, and it's time for my usual review of what's happened. Another year I'm glad to see diminish into the rearview mirror. 

What actually happened? 

Work

This is where it gets tricky. Work-wise, I'm bound by lots of NDAs, but needless to say lots of things happened, there was lots of writing, approvals, checking, more approvals, and my line at Cubicle 7 put out some cool Doctor Who related stuff, including a Starter Set, a book of connected adventures, a guide to planets and alien worlds, and we did what was assumed to be impossible - convert Doctor Who for 5e Dungeons & Dragons, allowing non-violent conflict and encounters to really shine in 5e. When "Doctors and Daleks" was announced there was so much backlash it was ridiculous. Nearly half of the comments were "why don't you use another system?" - there already is one! Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game has been around for nearly 13 years.

Social Media

Comments like that nearly drove me off the internet entirely, and I tried to avoid social media for a bit. Of course, with the purchase of a certain large social media platform by another idiot with more money than sense, last month I finally pulled the plug on my Twitter account. 

It's been weird without it. I still have the twitching urge to sit and doomscroll, but I've deleted my account and the app, so maybe my need to constantly do something else while I'm watching stuff on TV will subside eventually. Sometimes I just can't switch my brain off...

Entertainment

Still of Scully and Mulder from The X-Files

As mentioned before, I find it really hard to concentrate on TV and movies. I need to keep my computer/phone/ipad away from me and actually force myself to sit and watch something. There have been two exceptions to this - one has been my rewatch of The X-Files. I started rewatching it a while ago when we got Disney+, and I've been really enjoying rewatching one of my favourite series ever (The X-Files is up there at joint number 1, sharing the position with Twin Peaks). I'm currently in the middle of Season Eight, and my lovely wife has bought me the bluray collection so it's even shinier than the Disney+ streaming rate (I don't think our X-Box does it justice) and there are loads of extras to immerse myself in. When I finish Season Eleven, I may start again, only going through all the extras as well, or watching episodes with commentary. 

Sell Your Haunted House

The other exception has been watching loads of cool series that require subtitles. That really means I can't get distracted with social media, and have to concentrate on the TV to take in the story. It has opened my eyes to a whole world of amazing series. I really enjoyed 1899, from the makers of another great favourite of mine, DARK. And I've been watching loads of fantastic South Korean series, such as Alchemy of Souls, Hotel Del Luna, and the fantastic Sell Your Haunted House. 

Games

When it comes to games, I kinda just mean tabletop roleplaying games. I've discovered I'm awful and very, VERY, out of practice when it comes to video games. And I mean real video games. Sure, I play things like Hogwarts Mystery on my phone, but when it comes to console games, I'm pretty crap. I tried playing Star Wars: Fallen Empire for the first time yesterday and I died a dozen times on the first level while it was trying to teach me how to play. And that was on 'Medium' difficulty...

On the TTRPG front, outside of some playtesting at work, I guess I've been mostly playing The One Ring. Okay, I have a confession to make - I'm not really one for 'fantasy' RPGs, though I still play D&D on a monthly basis with my old gaming group. The One Ring (we're playing Free League's 2nd Edition) has been fairly epic, but we're frequently getting killed in it and have recently started with a new set of characters after a stream of disastrous rolls lead to another TPK. It's been okay. I don't feel quite as invested as the Tales from the Loop games or the Star Wars ones have been, but it's been fun and we'll see how it progresses. There are some epic plots going on in the background we keep touching upon (though when we get close, I usually roll really badly and get my ass kicked). 

Very interested to actually play Blade Runner to experience the investigation side of it first-hand... 

IRL

Otherwise, it's been okay. I still dream of moving out of the city (it's too busy for a country boy like me). I'm still very reluctant to leave the house... there are scary people out there! I'm still convinced that the guys who fixed our roof were scammers who ripped me off, and I shouldn't keep reading the local news.

I did leave the house this year though, and in May I took to the air again for the first time in seven years, flying to Dublin to visit Cubicle 7's head office. I have to say, for someone who doesn't like being around large groups of people, Stanstead Airport is not a great place to be. 

At the airport, looking at a RyanAir plane

Compared to the 18-hour flight to Australia, this was thankfully short, and certainly a lot more cramped. But, I made it both ways. I think I have a similar trip to look forward to in the New Year, but at least I know what to expect this time around.

Looking Ahead...

With another trip looming on the horizon, what else can I expect from the new year? I have no idea. Only thing I can be certain of is that I'm going to try to host #RPGaDAY again in August - it's 10th year and we should hopefully do something cool for the anniversary. Don't know what yet.

I'm doubting the name of my various pages/handles, using Autocratik. I'd originally used the name when I wanted to do things for myself, and it began as a play on the REM album "Automatic for the People" when I published as "Autocratik for the Masses". But now I'm doubting it. A rebrand may be coming... 

I want to draw more. I started an autobiographical graphic novel... three times I've started that now... one day I may actually be happy with what I draw. Mostly, I think it sucks.

I want to get off of social media, and stop relying on it for everything - but on the other hand I want to return to blogging on here more. But does anyone actually read this? 

Above all, I want the fighting to stop. I want the rich to use their money for good for a change. I want people to care about each other, and the world they live in. 

And I want you all to have a peaceful, prosperous, and a healthy 2023.

Stay safe everyone, and stay multi-classy.