It’s five years now that I’ve been writing this blog. Each year has had slightly fewer posts than the year before it, though if you add in all of the articles I’ve written for Tribality, I’m well above the writing output of my first year. It’s been a busy year; I’ve also written an article for ENWorld, I’m working on a piece of freelance writing for Green Ronin, and Dust to Dust needs as much or more writing now as it did when we began.

I like to include a list of games I’m running and games I am playing or have played recently, in the one time each year that I write about blogging.
Games I’m Running

1. Dust to Dust has now run nineteen three-day events, eight one-day events, and two World Events. As of this past weekend, we’ve completed Season Four. I remain excited and proud of what we’ve done, and looking forward to next season.
2. My D&D 5e Aurikesh campaign is still active; we play roughly once a month. I miss the days of playing more frequently, but my son is almost two and we can’t start play at his bedtime during the week if we want to get some solid gameplay in before people are falling asleep.
3. I’ve run two sessions of a Lost Mines of Phandelver campaign. I intend to continue it, but scheduling it around the first two items on this list is prohibitive.

Games I’m Playing

1. Eclipse remains my PC-side LARP of choice.
2. A friend is running a D&D 5e campaign entitled Reborn. I am playing a cleric of the Knowledge domain. I hope we can play again!
3. Same friend ran a flat-out amazing Paranoia one-shot, the most amazing part of which was that the game wound up getting played Straight, while remaining funny. (I totally expected Zap! or Classic.)
4. 13th Age: We played a session! I hope we will play again.
5. Apocalypse World: We played a session! I hope we will play again.
6. Massive Chalice: I probably need to start my game over and handle the early-game better. The province corruption mechanic drives me a little bananas. Otherwise I love this game.
7. Invisible, Inc.: A turn-based stealth game is an interesting idea – it plays like an even-more-fragile X-Com: Enemy Unknown. The game presents choices about gear upgrades a little awkwardly, and once again I probably need to start over and play better. Love the game, though.
8. Bioshock: I know I’m late to the party on this one, but Kainenchen finally got me to sit down and play it. I think I’m somewhere around the halfway point of the game? I was enjoying it a lot, and then I got distracted by something… probably DtD writing.
9. I still need to finish Pillars of Eternity, but getting obliterated over and over again by a REDACTED was too frustrating for me to deal with, since I had no expectation of getting more powerful. I love the core story, the mechanics, and the Endless Paths of Od Nua overall, though.
10. Transistor is incredibly good as well, but I got sick of fighting Men and Haircuts. Yet another game that I need to pick back up and finish playing… which I might even get to do, now that DtD is done for the year!
11. I wrote a review of Don’t Turn Your Back. I’m still itching to play again and see what else I realize about the game’s function and structure. I love how the mechanics click together.

Much like last year, I hope that next year I’ll have Games I’m Writing to talk about, but I’ve fallen down on some of those obligations. Thanks for reading and supporting Harbinger of Doom throughout this past year! If you want to translate any enjoyment I have provided into helping to pay my bills, there’s a Donate button over in the right-hand column, or you could buy a copy of my short story, “Dakrah’s Familiar,” from Amazon. I’m working on more stories about Dakrah, Corvello, and their allies!

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