Death Bat's 2025 Gaming Plans: Dragonbane, Mothership, Savage Worlds and the Usual Suspects

Here it is! The short and sweet outline of what I plan to do for 2025....at least in theory:

Part I: The things I am certain to be running this year:

Dragonbane

Starting next week we are going to finally start a campaign in Dragonbane. I am really looking forward to this, as until now if you wanted to play BRP Fantasy, the only real options were: find a copy of the out of print (albeit POD) Magic World, customize Runequest, or finnagle Mythras. Actually those are all good options, but Dragonbane has a astyle, character and odd mix of OSR and modernity that resonates well with me. I am looking forward to this.

Savage Worlds

We started Savage Worlds this weekend, using Supers/Horror mashup for a sort of Planetary/Hellboy/Horror Comics inspired campaign. I think this is going to be a fun, long prospect for a campaign as I get to lean in to my secret obsession I never usually write or talk about: the comic genre and all its quirks! I also plan to offer up more SW genres down the road, and am really looking forward to the new Science Fiction Companion when it ships in February.

Mothership

I plan to run more Mothership intermittently throughout 2025, and may warm up to a short or long campaign again at some point. I realize with Mothership it is as much about the player investment in the experience as anything, so how much Mothership I get to run will depend on the group I assemble.

Part II: The things I expect to run or try to run this year, but there are caveats:

D&D 5.75

The new D&D is on hold until the Monster Manual comes out. I have to see how the final tome in the revised books looks so I can assess my feelings on the new revision, and how it all comes together. Right now, using existing monsters with new characters makes the characters feel a but overpowered and I can't tell if that's by design, or because we're missing the appropriately revamped monsters to accompany them.

Tales of the Valiant

I really want to run this, but I need to detox a bit from having run way too much 5E in 2024. If the final book in the D&D 5.75 set doesn't really live up to expectations, I may just insist that any future 5E in 2025 be via Tales of the Valiant.

GURPS

I would love to get a chance to play GURPS again, but it's thunder may be stolen by Savage Worlds in 2025, which is honestly a better fit for my regulars. I may get to run GURPS with my son and some new players, though, if I can find them.

Mork Borg and Vast Grimm (and Maybe Death In Space)

This is all part of the Mork Borg universe. I anticipate running more one shots and short 2-3 session games here at some point, especially if this year is not monopoloized by protracted D&D campaigns. That said, which flavor and variant (and I also just got Ronin, another Mork Borg spin off that is amazing) depend on mood, I guess.

Part III: The Fever Dreams

I can sum the unlikely candidates up like this: Runequest (because I can't quite invest in Glorantha); Mythras (because as soon as I start diving in to relearn it I remember why I stop); Vaesen (I really want to, but the cute approach to the art is at odds with my ability to convey a horror atmosphere); then there's Pathfinder 2E, which I actually fully expect I may be playing in as a player, but do not think I will get around to GMing this year, but who knows! I often say that then prove myself wrong for at least one session. Also Traveller, which I wouldn't mind running, but I need a shift in my group dynamics before I will consider it (e.g. honest die rollers only please). That last one applies to a lot of these games, actually. 

I didn't mention Cypher System because I can't quite pin down what I want to do with it, but that could change in 2025. I also can't quite bring myself to offer it up right now (despite loving the system) because the die rolls are all player facing, and when you may have one or more suspects in your group who like to cheat on their die rolls, it can be very demoralizing. Yes, I likely need to have a chat with the specific person(s) about this. If you wonder why I don't just kick them, keep in mind I am gaming with a group of players who have in some cases been together as gamers and friends for 18 or more years, so these are not just randos, or people I don't know (or want to know), or pickup gamers. So at some point an honest talk is a better approach. Also, we're all really old now, and so one would think age would make us better people, both on how to approach this and (yes) why on earth would anyone at this stage cheat? It is frustrating....but it is not like 20+ years ago when when the cheating was generally unheard of among those I gamed with, as we all took the experience more earnestly. So yeah, I do need to decide what to do about this and how to approach it, and maybe I am doing so in too nuanced a fashion, but age has a way of doing that to you I guess.

Anyway, See you all on the flip side in 2025! Some predictions to come next. 

Death Bat's 2024 Computer Gaming in Review

 2024 was the year I really started to feel my age. I've complained about this before, and as you can see my gaming lists often include some older titles, or titles I played 2 or more years after their release, but this year was especially onerous. To look at what I did in 2024 I can turn to my Steam Review, and the equivalent on Xbox and maybe PlayStation, if they do that sort of thing. I would label this year the "year I Learned to Love Walking Simulators and Creepy Retro Horror Games That Don't Ask You To Do More than Run Away When The Time Is Right." My aging reflexes can handle those games just fine!

The Steam Metrics

According to Steam I played Destiny 2 the most, though only through March after which I quit, and I haven't been able to bring myself back to it, not even for the grant finale of the Final Shape. I also apparently played a lot of Division 2, which I can't really get enough of, and also a fair amount of Forza Horizon 5 which surprised even me until I realized that we're talking like maybe 20 hours in that game spread out over the course of several months. I also played a lot of Diablo IV in October and November of this year (because it works really well on the Steam Deck). 

Xbox - Year of Decline

Beyond Steam I had some very minimal engagement on the Xbox, which has all but ceded its position in the market to PlayStation and PC (and Switch, technically). People play on Xbox now because that's the walled garden you invested in. If you have even one alternative route out of there, odds are you've already taken it and not even noticed. Either way, my year in Xbox can be summed up as: Alan Wake Remastered, which I played with the intent to get to Alan Wake II on Xbox, but I haven't done so as of yet. Part of the holdup is by the end of Alan Wake Remastered I felt the game was so far up its own butt with the metatextual "author creates literal reality" that I felt their grand plan was being let down by the needs of the video game medium to turn it all into a shooter (of average quality) at the expense of what, in a future time from when Alan Wake was made, could have been just as easily a jump-scare driven walking simulator.

PlayStation 5

My PlayStation time was spent early on getting so burned out on Fortnite I bailed entirely and missed three seasons in a row. I jumped back in for an OG season, and stuck around for the current season. Then they put Skibidi Toilets into it and I was slapped in the face by the cold reality that I was enjoying a game which had moved beyond the realm of memes I could generationally feel comfortable with. So yeah, I'll probably take a long break from Fortnite in 2025 (again).

Aside from that my clan got PS5 VR2 headsets for the holidays and have already played a ton of VR games. It's really good, actually....but I am glad I waited until they shaved $150 off the price of the headset. It has an optional hookup to use it for PC, by the way, improving the versatility. A few of the games are excellent exercise inducers, too. Not for everyone, of course, and VR is most definitely not how one relaxes with gaming, but if you want to merge "moving around a lot, sometimes a whole lot" with "playing a video game" then VR has you covered.

Oh, and I played completely through Horizon Zero Dawn (again) on PS5 and PC, and am halfway through Forbidden West on both. So there is that! 

Switch (and also all the weird indie horror games on Steam)

On Switch I played a lot of games like Blood Wash, Night at the Gates of Hell, and The Silver Case. I also played a lot of games like this on Steam (such as Ad Infinitum), but the thing is....none of these games take more than a couple hours of your time (usually), so they are a "blip" on the Steam tracking radar (though they do contribute to the 158 games Steam says I played over the year).  They are fun and short romps, sometimes also terrible games but not bad enough to feel regret...and occasionally they are brilliant. I highly recommend Pools, for example, its both weird, creepy and relaxing and meditative.  

This was also the year I realized I buy too many JRPGs on Switch and play them for a few minutes to a few hours before either (roll a D6): 1-2 losing interest at a plot driven by anime teenagers in school; 3-4 getting disgusted with the recycled plot of some generic anime fantasy realm; 5-6 getting tired of the grindy parts (usually after a fantastic lead in with a good plot). I did play Persona 3 Portable on Switch and...you know what? That one was pretty good until it got grindy, even with all the angsty teens in school. Alas, I will never capture the lightning in a bottle that was Final Fantasy VII on the original PlayStation. Not even the FFXVII Remake can do that.*

So this year, I have plenty of games I enjoyed, some more so or less so than others, but it was mostly a year of "playing comfort games" mixed with lots of short fun experiments. But go check out Pools if you want a fun, relaxing and enigmatic walking simulator that doesn't pressure you at all. Much.

*For those of you who also wonder why this is so, note that it's because the most important ingredient to enjoying "That Game from the 90's I loved" is your younger self. You can never really go back.

Death Bat's review of Last Year's Projections

 Well here we are again! Another year, another review on last year's predictions and projections for the outgoing year. How did my plans and predictions stack up?

Predictions:

D&D 2024 Releases but Beyond Isn't Ready - near as I can tell I am spot on about this; that demo with fully 3D figures that looked like a CRPG? I don't think there's any evidence that exists right now, so far as I can tell...

Tales of the Valiant - I predicted it would be successful and might eat some of Pathfinder's market share but not penetrate the core D&D crowd. I think I am wrong on the first count and right on the second count. Instead, it looks like TotV will be its own niche corner, and won't really eat anyone's market share, instead becoming yet another variant with its own core crowd thanks to Kickstarter.

D&D-Spin Off Fatigue - I expected this to happen in 2024, and I think to some degree it has happened, as the "alternative to D&D" market has indeed fragmented into something like a dozen different variants from Daggerheart to Tales of the Valiant, Pathfinder, Shadowdark and all the existing D20 variants out there. It's so bad that I think D&D 2024 is effectively succeeding by being an anchor with the most common ground in the middle of it all. 

Fewer new IP and Gaming Properties - I am not sure this is true. It seems like there are a metric ton of new IPs and games out there, or on the way, but what I am missing is where people are collecting their information. I rely largely on ENWorld for my gaming news, and they are only "so so" at things not related to D&D. 

Goals:

Mothership - I wanted to run more Mothership in 2024. I did run a one shot in January and a two parter at the end of the year in December. I did not run another lengthy campaign, however. I forget offhand when the Mothership Boxed set finally arrived, but I recall it was sometime in May. That waiting for the new edition to release proved to be part of why it didn't take off; it finally came out, and as is often tradition for Kickstarters it took me a while to get back in the mood to deal with it. I also realized that my last really successful online Mothership game was a bit of lightning in a bottle; you sort of need the right kind of group to really pull off Mothership. I don't know that I currently have that sort of group right now. Some of my players, sure! But others.....hmmmm not so much.

Dragonbane - Despite wanting to run this, I have not as yet gotten around to it. 2024 was a year where I found little time to mess with new mechanics, and ended up sticking to the "familiar and easy," which is to say, lots of D&D 5E.

Traveller - I did run a short Traveller campaign early on. I stopped running Traveller for one very specific and disappointing reason, about which I won't dive too deeply here, but let's just say that I wish players would let the dice roll and not fudge crap all the time (read: cheat). I am unsure of how to fix this problem other than to run games of somewhat more complexity, making it harder to easily cheat on die rolls, or to take over some dice rolling (which I really prefer not to do). In general I sort of assume that this happens on occasion from certain people, but it was a bit excessive in the last Traveller game I ran, and was substantiated by others. As a result, I really lost my taste for running the game for my group. And honestly....it's impacted me kind of hard ever since, and I am extremely reluctant to run certain game systems with entirely player-facing die roll mechanics as a result. If certain players (and there are only certain ones here, mind you; others in my group are great and honest!) desire to cheat to insure their "victory" then why not just play a video game, watch a movie or read a book? 

Post More - Pssh 'nuff said! I totally slacked off on posting for most of 2024.

Pace Myself - I think I did okay here. I have gamed less often on Saturday, which is often a trouble night for me, especially now that I live a 25 miles south of the city where the gaming locations we meet are at.

Miscellaneous:

I made some offhand comments, and wanted to mention those:

Rivers of London - Chaosium has not done much new with it, but its still there being promoted. In this day and age a game with maybe one sourcebook in a year or two is becoming increasingly common. I did buy the first novel in the series the game is based on, but haven't read it yet. 

Esper Genesis - They actually came through! The print edition of the Technician's Guide arrived a few months back, so kudos to them for getting this out at last. A pity it arrived in the wake of a new edition of D&D and took so long I suspect it will be harder for Alligator Alley to get the trust of Kickstarter backers.

GURPS - I suggested GURPS could have a new edition but won't. In their defense, they did get a good reprint with nice binding. I think, based on my observation of the market and the interesting directions it has gone, that GURPS is probably best off as a niche game system with a core fanbase that can remain ignored by the broader community.

13th Age 2nd Edition - I suggested it won't come out in 2024 and I was right. Another Kickstarter waaaay behind deadline. I am looking forward to this one when it comes out. Will it come out in 2025? Maybe, but it will arrive to a saturated market. Unless WotC releases the new Monster Manual and it turns out to be garbage for some reason, causing a wave of dissatisfied DMs to look elsewhere.

Pathfinder - I suggested maybe Pathfinder's increased costs will lead to a shrink in market share. I have no idea if this is true or not, but I know I have fellow players who have commented on how Paizo's books are getting too expensive to keep up with now. I think the costs are driven by the unionization of their workstaff, which is a good thing, but also a rough spot to be in a largely non-union, low-profit corner of the business. I suspect 2025 could be a make or break year for Paizo. 

Okay, next I'll make some predictions for 2025 and set some goals!

An Old School Feeling I haven't Felt in a Long Time....the Dragonbane Publishing Community

 A brief post, but I just wanted to share that I discovered a metric ton of content brewing on drivethrurpg.com, much of it pay-what-you-want and plenty of it worth money. I've been picking up print on demand versions of some Dragonbane books, but when I started sifting through the total available content I was really pleasantly surprised to see that there is a robust and growing community of enthusiasts for the game sharing all sorts of fun content from new professions and talents to monsters, encounter charts, modules and more. It genuinely reminds me of the old days, when game interest was 90% driven by earnest enthusiasts, and people just having fun....there's no posturing, no profiteering, just cool stuff.

This has me rethinking my priorities on what to play next. Dragonbane's ability to generate such enthusiasm has sparked some very old feelings in me, and reminds me of gaming from many an age ago. Must think about what I can do with this! I had sort of been waiting on the side to see if more rules content came out, to flesh out elements of the magic system and resources that I felt would make the game a bit more robust for my needs....and turns out all of that is sitting here amidst dozens of useful zines and resources the community has put together already, and practically all of it is eminently useful (and often pretty, too). 

The Economy of design in a Tri-Fold / One-Sheet Module (Or: Not All Tri-folds are Created Equal)

 Last night my group returned to Mothership, which I haven't run since January. It was fun! But it was a tad bit frustrating for me, as I picked a tri-fold module to kick things off which, on an initial reading, sounded fun....but in actual play I realized it was maybe too skimpy, too brief in its presentation and details for me to work comfortably with. On the plus side, an important component of running this sort of tiny module is that you as GM must out of necessity be ready to riff and improv, and I immediately started doing so, but as I was, I had to wonder to myself if I couldn't have just saved myself a bit of grief by simply writing my own scenario instead. 

And then I remembered The Haunting of Ypsilpon-14, a benchmark of quality in this sort of module design. I wrote more about that module here, and now that I've had a lot of Mothership scenarios under my belt, I realize that there is a special and unique art to designing a compact adventure that fits on two sides of a page and somehow gives enough detail to a Warden to comfortably run the adventure and extrapolate new directions and details without much effort. 

So why does one tri-fold module succeed and others fail? The module I was working with last night is called "Tombship of the Lich" and comes from a boxed set of 5 modules called Terrors from the Cosmos. The thematic elements of the modules are essentially a blend of futuristic horror with more primal, magical (technomantic) horror. They have thematic similarities, and a chunk of the modules are driven by the style and presentation, including extra monster cards, art pieces (in the deluxe set) and a "off color on black background" design aesthetic. So....a lot of flashy weirdness, as has come to dominate the new wave alt indie zinerpg scene, in other words.

Taken at its own value, the Tombship of the Lich module is a short set up (investigate an anomaly and the tombship) with a timer countdown, and a description of half a dozen key locations. The module offers guidelines and links to connect locations, and some guidance on the big bad (the lich Nekrul) and his reanimated alien skeletal cyborg army. It is simple enough. I think if I did not have high expectations, and did not have the GM/Warden narrative style I have (where I like to make sure there is consistency in the underlying plot and universe, and like to convey through description what is going on, and want to make sure the PCs have a reason and interest to be involved and have agency) then maybe this module could be run really simply, and without any real effort at preamble or expectations. But it really doesn't work that well without adding a lot to it (for what I need, anyway). It is like the barest outline. 

Contrast with The Haunting of Ypsilon-14.  Like all tri-fold modules it's got only so much space to work with, but it provides an alarming amount of interesting detail that you can extrapolate a universe from without much effort. It's economy of design maximizes the connectivity of the setting, and the text is effectively embedded in a diagramatic map which allows the Warden to spatially understand what is going on and where things are happening. If you run it on Roll20 the module even comes with an actual map with a retro aesthetic that works very well for this purpose (you can find it here, in fact).  That map really helps, but the tri-fold's diagrammatic layout works quite well. The one in the Tombship module is far more basic and doesn't entirely clarify how it relates to the text. 

The Haunting module also provides a myriad of NPCs for the game, with just the briefest but most useful bits of information as well as some nice metrics to keep track of who dies by the creature next. It is not afraid to put a lot of text in a small space, and it (smartly) puts black text on a yellow background, which is far more readable than blue text on a black background. Little things like this are important! 

At every point of design the Haunting module extrapolates just a bit more detail, and provides it in a succinct, often bullet-point like manner, giving the Warden what is needed without burdening unnecessary additional details. The Tombship module in contrast uses a much larger font, skims over some conceits that would be useful to have clarified (at a certain point it becomes unclear why the party even needs to board the Tombship when they could arguably maneuver their ship to "throw" the quantum payload in to the warp) and honestly, my players were just being good spirits about it and didn't start questioning some of these detaile (even as I was pondering them and working out arbitrary excuses in my head). 

This has got me to thinking: I should review some of these! There are good tri-fold modules and bad. Another good one: Dinoplex Cataclysm. I think maybe this is a new thing I can do on the blog to have fun with. More to come!

The Value of Dynamic, Speedy and Unpredictable Action and Combat

 My group is fizzing out a bit on D&D, and it's probably because the new edition (5/75 or whatever version # you want to give it) is mainly a continuation of standard 5E, which is easily the least exciting version of D&D when it comes to dynamic combat and variables. While it is true that 5E spun out of the 3rd and 4th edition eras where the amount and volume of combat mechanics was either so overwhelming or so procedural that it led to an arms race in rules mastery and tactical acumen among many gamers, the 5th edition response is to create a tepid experience which is fun for a while but eventually it all starts to feel very much like the same thing, over and over again. This might be forgivable if it was quick, but D&D combat is often anything but, even when it is sufficiently simplified that you basically have combat down to a basic roll to hit or save, deal damage, repeat process.

Other game systems manage to do much better and more dynamic combat, but not too many manage to hit the perfect trifecta of being dynamic, speedy and unpredictable. As it happens, perhaps one of the best game systems of all time for dramatic, fun and fast combat comes from the Fast! Furious! Fun! RPG itself: Savage Worlds. Indeed, Savage Worlds is so fast that if you are too used to running typical combat and pacing modules in D&D style format, then it can be a bit shocking to watch Savage Worlds compound the same experience in to less than half the time, leaving the GM scrambling for more content.

This is a roundabout way of me saying that Savage Worlds is back on the menu in my game group, and we will be playing it again, perhaps as early as this weekend, although I have also promised Mothership (which is also engrained with a fast, furious and fun approach to combat!) I'm just so very, very tired of the distinctly samey feel of all things in 5E/5.75E these days, but at least I can identify the burnout as being system-based, and not idea based!

Savage Worlds and Mothership both fit the bill for this sort of more engaging and dynamic but very fast combat approach. I think Mork Borg fits in well, and if you go back to the OSR era then any number of classic OSR games can fit this bill as well. Among more contemporary systems we can get quick and dynamic combat out of Cypher System, too. I'll have to try Dragonbane eventually and see how it feels as well.....I am sure it will be dynamic and unpredictable, but not so sure how speedy it will be. 

Return of the Living Dead RPG Announcement

 So this is kind of exciting: Evil Genius Games is partnering with Living Dead Media, which I guess owns the IP on the Return of the Living Dead films to make an RPG. Announcement here!

On the one hand, I love the idea.....and unlike some other zombie franchises (Walking Dead and so forth) I happen to have a real fondness for the "Return..." series of films. So for me, I would definitely look forward to this. The only problem I foresee is that I worry a bit about the likelihood of this happening, if only because there has been a fair amount of behind-the-scenes dirty laundry aired on Evil Genius Games and its business practices (as well as its connection to bitcoins). How much of that is substantive vs. merely some internal politics is more or less uncertain, best as I can tell....so I will optmistically go for "hopefully any issues have been sorted out over the intervening months," thus explaining this recent announcement.

Evil Genius released Everyday Heroes, a 5E-based reimagining of the original D20 Modern RPG, and then pumped out a bunch of sourcebooks based on classic films of the last several decades. Their treatment on these have all been surprisingly good, managing to make me consider the possibility of running a campaign in the universe of Universal Soldier, a film I utterly derided when I saw it in theaters an eternity ago. They have released movie tie-ins for Rambo, The Crow (original movie), Kong: Skull Island, Total Recall, Escape From New York and Pacific Rim, so if anyone can do this, it would be them. Their release of a Return of the Living Dead RPG would fulfill one of the items on my wishlist, which also includes a "The Thing" RPG spinoff. If you haven't checked out Everyday Heroes, happen to like these movies, and are not burned out on 5E based mechanics, you should take a look!