Did you know that it’s been only one year since the last time I did one of these? That doesn’t sound right to me either. It’s been an incredibly rough year for me getting regular content into the Patreon and the blog – and the same for my Tribality column, for that matter. Between the pandemic (there’s been a pandemic, did you know?) and a busy year of freelance work, I’ve done the best I could but, well. Every year of the blog has had slightly fewer posts than the year before it.

Games I’m Running

1. Aurikesh isn’t canceled, but it is on indefinite hiatus. I can’t get what I want out of it in online play in 2-3 hour sessions. It’ll pick back up once we can play face-to-face again. I miss it terribly.
2. Kainenchen and I are now co-DMing a 5e Birthright game online, using Marsupialmancer’s Birthright conversion. We’ve played, what, ten or twelve sessions, and we’re about to run the second set of domain actions. I’m having a great time, and I think everyone else is too.
3. We canceled the 3-year DtD reunion event, basically because I had a panic attack about staging it. It was an unbearable feeling and I still hate that I had to do that.

Games I’m Playing

1. Altera Awakens… had its most recent game in late February. They got it in just before serious lockdown, and a bunch of staffers had to miss the game because they weren’t sure they didn’t have COVID. We’ll play again once it’s safe to do so.
2. Stands-in-the-Fire is running an online 5e game in a homebrew setting, where I’m playing an eladrin wizard. We’re six sessions in and I’m having a great time.
3. Jeremiah is running an online 5e Wildemount campaign. I’m having a harder time connecting to it, in part because the Heroic Chronicle rules have some deep problems. I’m playing a Zemnian human paladin.
4. Kainenchen has run the first few sessions of an aggressively rules-lite Mage: the Awakening game, in part because reading Mage: the Awakening 2e rules made us both bleed from the eyes. Anyway, I’m playing a Mastigos mage.
5. A bunch of other games are also on hold. We’d talked about transferring them to online play, and then didn’t do it.
6. I’ve played a ton of Slay the Spire. It’s real good; right now I’ve gotten my Ruby+ win and no more.
7. I beat Hollow Knight about a week ago! I killed The Radiance! I can’t even explain how surprised I was to accomplish this – I had been hurling myself at the fight over and over again, but on some level didn’t think I’d pull it off.
8. So I picked up Dark Souls. I… really sincerely don’t know if I’ll have the patience and drive to get anywhere with it, but I’ve taken down the Taurus Demon the first Black Knight.
9. I’m enjoying Battle Chasers: Nightwar, as an American-made JRPG with some fun dungeon crawling and pretty cool combat.
10. I want to get back to Planescape: Torment and Chrono Trigger and a bunch of other things.

Games I’m Observing

1. Critical Role – I’ve just finished listening to episode 92 of the Mighty Nein campaign.
2. How We Roll Podcast/Does It Roll
3. Sam Dillon’s D&Debrief campaign
4. Occultists Anonymous, a Mage: the Awakening 2e game that I’m listening to most of all because I want to understand how anyone could run this game.

Here’s to hoping that by my eleventh blog anniversary post, we’ve all got better news to relate.

Thanks for reading and supporting Harbinger of Doom! Also check out my products on DriveThruRPG, and Fey Gifts & Bargains on the DM’s Guild.

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