2025: A Gaming Year in Review
Looking back, one of the most telling things in 2025 is that my gaming review can almost be done from memory. No lists, no spreadsheets – gaming has changed into a different rhythm, finally throwing off the post-Covid glut of games and turning into something smoother and more manageable – hilariously at a time when I have less pressure not to game. Typical.
The Games
I think my views of the year might be summarised by the rise of ‘boutique gaming’ – not one group playing games forever, but rather groups being brought together from a much wider diaspora of gamers, for a 6-10 session run, and then disbanding. I still have a bi-weekly Sunday gaming group, albeit with a wholly different cast from the one I gamed with for 20 years, but so many of the games have been in this boutique style this year, I can easily see it being the way forward.
That Sunday group has had a great year, as we settled into our current incarnation – swapping one Chris for another – and jumping from me running D&D to me running Star Wars flavoured Scum & Villainy for the first half of the year, and then another player running Ghosts of Saltmarsh powered by Daggerheart in the second half. Both games have been a blast, and it has been especially fun to play Daggerheart for a length of time!
In terms of those boutique games, we played a great game of 2e Dr Who AITAS with a group of Whovians, who leant heavily into the game. Sometimes having people who know too much at the table can be a pain, but when everyone knows too much it’s great.
I also got to play in a great game of Spectaculars online, with a whole new group of gamers and it was brilliant. Again, I think the last time I got to play in a superhero campaign was before I went to university, so this was an absolute treat. I’ve ended the year playing some online Vaesen through the Open Hearth portal and that’s been great too, in a totally different way. It has made me think about the way Roll20 creates more faff than it solves sometimes, and a character keeper, a dice roller and a video link is all that’s needed for the ‘theatre of the mind’ games I tend towards.
Guy (from the Burn After Running blog, Unconventional GMs youtube channel and my Garricon partner-in-crime) and I have had a great series of one-on-one games this year; Fight with Spirit and Hunt(er/ed) being the highlights. These, and my forays into journal and solo games, have been a new and fruitful avenue this year.
Convention game wise, I managed to play a full campaign of The Between in two days at LongCon (guided by the aforementioned Guy), ran Spire and played Pendragon, Run Out The Guns and Daggerheart at Furnace, and played Slugblaster, S&V and ran Sundered Isles at Revelation. I’m planning on doing a few more cons this year now that I have finished decorating the house, so who knows where I might pop up?!
(Edit: Last gaming of the year was my now traditional Christmas Perineum (TaintCon? GoochCon?) gathering where I ran Star Wars flavoured Tachyon Squadron, and a Babylon 5 flavoured version of Night’s Black Agents. Both worked well – Tachyon Squadron, in particular, is such a great system for dogfights, especially with the right minis!)
The Publishing
Oh I am so back in the game!
Earlier in the year I embarked on my first ever piece of crowd-funded publishing – The Journal of Paranormal Research – and it did rather well. These were the remastered versions of my Liminal RPG patreon blog posts, formatted as an academic journal. I learned an awful lot about the way Kickstarters work (or don’t, as the case may be), which is just as well, as I fully intend to do the same this year!
Another child of the Patreon has been the Caliburn Chronicles. This is my ‘magnum opus’ Arthurian adventure for Liminal and it is currently being played and tested by yet another boutique group on sporadic Tuesdays. This is a very different pattern of gaming for me. I write the adventures whole-cloth, play them, edit them from the play and then publish them. Eventually, I will edit the pieces together into one massive adventure book.
I do wonder whether my appetite for writing material for Liminal will wane in the future, but it hasn’t for years now so I don’t see why anything should change!
Anything else? Oh yes.
Duty & Honour 2e has progressed beyond a meme and is now a real thing. The discovery that Affinity Publisher can unlock pdfs meant that I could once more gain access to the base text of the game and go to work building in nearly 20 years of refinements. It hasn’t been easy because, well, the world and gaming have changed a lot in those intervening 20 years but it has happened. I’m about 85% of the way through the first draft, which I will be playtesting throughout 2026 as I gather the art etc. needed to make it happen. Printers have been sourced, cover has been discussed. It’s happening!
The Downsides
I think the major revelation this year has been that I am done with D&D. Not an emotional divorce, not a seething hatred, but more just a slow realisation that it doesn’t press any of my buttons and is, to be fair, far more difficult to manage than it makes out to be. That’s quite sad really, after so many years of it being ‘the game’ but it’s not like there aren’t other games to play.
I was saddened by the realisation that our annual CottageCon event – coming up to 20 years now – finally had a year with no roleplaying. What started as a mini-con with a full weekend of RPGs is now a boardgame event. There aren’t enough roleplayers left to run anything beyond a 1-on-1 game. This year I painted minis. I still had fun with my mates, but it felt like the final rubicon had been crossed.
Characters of the Year!
Let’s not finish on a low note – let me tell you about my three favourite characters instead! This year I have particularly liked playing Maisie McCabe, the ginger-haired agent of absolute chaos and budding bookshop owner in Doctor Who AITAS. I have been thrilled to play Merribelle Kelpfoot, the community-minded sea witch in Daggerheart. And most of all, I will always remember Fionn MacCullen aka The Finn, the raging Irish demi-goddess of fury who embraced her silver hand and her talking salmon of knowledge – all from the majestic randomness of Spectaculars.
And with that, the 2025 Gaming Season Ends…
And there you go – what I consider a quiet year has only had a few whole campaigns, several conventions, numerous one-shots, a successful kickstarter and the resurrection of my publishing arm. So you know, quiet…..*wink*
