Goals for 2009

I wish all my readers a (belated) happy new year 2009! Currently it’s pretty cold outside (around -9°C) and I am still fighting with a severe case of writer’s block. But I finally managed to think about my goals for this year:

Gaming:

• Dark Heresy
  On New Year’s Eve we started playing the Warhammer 40,000 roleplaying game Dark Heresy and it was pretty nice. The character creation took much longer than I expected but things went pretty smoothly and we all had great fun. As soon as my group has some free time, I plan to bring our current adventure to an enjoyable end. We still have to discuss if we want to turn it into a fully-fledged campaign but I think the chances are not so bad.
•  Call of Cthulhu
  Our CoC campaign (we were playing “Horror in the Orient Express”) came to a sudden hold as our beloved GM moved to Munich. But he will probably visit us on a regular basis (several times a year), so chances are good that we can continue the  fight against the minions  of the Mythos! If this doesn’t work out, we can always try out running the campaign over the internet, although I fear that a lot of the atmosphere will be lost.
• Pirates of the Spanish Main
  This year we started playing PotSM and everyone had a blast. At the end of our first adventure I offered my players to turn it into a sandbox-type campaign and everyone was happy with the idea. But since the Pirates group consists of the same people I played Dark Heresy with, I am not sure which campaign we’ll focus on.
• D&D 4th Edition
  A friend of mine had been running D&D4E during the second half of last year and we liked the new rules a lot although we had some problems with our characters. After two sessions I decided that I am not really a Warlock guy, so I tried out a genasi  swordmage which suits me better. And we found out that using a battlemat and miniatures makes playing a warlord much more enjoyable. I am pretty sure we’ll continue our campaign in the coming weeks.
• Other Systems
  During the last year I have got my hands on a couple of interesting games like True20, FATE, Fudge, Monte Cook’s World of Darkness, just to name a few. I am not sure how I will fit them into my already tight schedule, but I want to try out at least two or three of them. 

Real life:

• Weight reduction
  Last year I already managed to reduce my weight a bit, but at the end I also gained a few back, so that I am almost at the weight I started … bummer! This year I will try to do it right.  Wish me luck!
• Turn my cave into a proper home
  My girlfriend usually calls my home a “cave”. And I have to agree that it sometimes looks a bit chaotic to the unprepared observer. So I’ve decided to finally put some time and effort into cleaning out and redecorating the place. And if everything goes as planned even my girlfriend will admit that even a techno-caveman like me can turn his domicile into a proper home. 🙂
• Move together with my significant other
  As soon as the “cave” is refurbished, we plan to move together. And 2009 seems to be the right year to do so!

Blogging/Writing:

• Overcoming the blogger’s/writer’s block
  Although there are hundreds of thousand ideas in my head I just can’t put anything to paper or post it in my blog. And usually I end up playing some MMO or watching Doctor Who or another great show. So I plan to return to a more regular blogging. Not necessarily on a daily basis, but at least two times a week would be fine in my book.
• More advertisment
  Don’t worry! I don’t want to put more ads on the site, I want to advertise the blog itself. In the recent weeks I have noticed declining interest in the blog and I want to fight that by blogging more regularly and advertising my blog all over the place. If you have any ideas on how to do so (without paying for ads of course!) please let me know! 
• Asecia
  My work on my steam-fanatasy setting Asecia stopped shortly after I decided a complete reboot was in order. I currently have a lot of small notes, fuzzy ideas, a couple of blog posts and even a short story set into the world of Asecia but I still haven’t started on writing down the setting in a proper form (like a wiki or book). Perhaps 2009 will give me another chance to finally finish my initial work on Asecia, so I can start running games using my own setting.
• SF roleplaying setting
  For a long time I dreamt about writing my own SF setting. And by SF I mean Science Fiction and not Space Opera or something like that. I am still not sure if I should go the Hard SF route or if I should choose the more popular route that allows unscientific elements like reactionless drives, ESP and FTL travel. As soon as this setting starts to take shape, I will of course blog about it. 

These are my current goals for 2009. Probably I have forgotten a few and I am sure I won’t be able to meet every of them, but I am sure I will at least try! So stay tuned!

UPDATE: I just noticed that this post fits this month’s blog carnival hosted by Uncle Bear. So consider this my contribution!