As 2025 draws to a close and I take stock of the past year, I feel this year has been challenging. Nationally, internationally, the world feels on the brink of dark times. I travelled a lot for work and was away from my family way too much. I played mostly remotely but kept playing. I’m currently back home, with my family, playing in person with my friends. I’m going to focus on the positive and review my gaming year.
What did gaming look like to me in 2025? Since 1993, I’ve consistently run a weekly campaign for my group of friends. How much did we play this year? Let’s look at the numbers.
Of the 52 possible weekly sessions, we played 41. Of those, thirty-eight were of our long-running (three years so far!) Savage Fading Suns. One session of The Dare, a Call of Cthulhu adventure using the Eldritch Hack, and two sessions of The Quintessential Dungeon using The Black Hack.
I also played one session of D&D 5e 2014 as a guest PC for a friend’s birthday, Fabula Ultima, and various board games: Final Girl (Camp Happy Trails and Panic at the Station), Resist!, Moose Master, Bang! (the dice game), Card Against Humanity, Jenga, and Uno.
I participated in RPG a Day 2025, completing 31 posts shared on this blog. I was in Connecticut for Free RPG Day and enjoyed the experience there. I met in person friends I had only known online who shared a love of gaming. Both are amazing people; check out Mike Evan’s blog and Ivan’s YouTube page.
This past weekend, we held a holiday get-together for Puerto Rico Role Players at El Gremio, a local gaming bar and restaurant in Cayey.
As an aside, El Gremio is an excellent space for tabletop gaming; we played board games and role-playing games with great food and drinks. If you’re in Puerto Rico, the trip to Cayey to enjoy it is well worth it! Back to the review.
If you read my last post, you know I got to play with one of my original players, so this year feels a lot like coming full circle. We have one more session this week before 2025 ends and 2026 begins.
2026 will be a special year. Summer next year marks the 40th anniversary of my very first D&D session. My 40th anniversary of being a Game Master. I am planning to celebrate this benchmark. So, what are my plans?
I hope to continue and possibly conclude the Savage Fading Suns campaign. I want to celebrate the very first D&D game I ran by playing a special session. I don’t think I will play D&D Basic, but I’ll run the facsimile, Old-School Essentials. I still haven’t decided what adventure I’ll run. I thought about running the expanded version of the dungeon in the Mentzer Red Box from Dungeon Magazine #150, Kill Bargle—either that, The Keep on the Borderlands, or The Caverns of Thracia. I have not made up my mind. I’d love to read about what adventure you think I should run. Feel free to leave a comment.
Regardless of what we play, I would like to rent a place where we can go away and play all weekend long, until the wee hours of the night, as we did as teenagers. That’s aspiration #1 for 2026; I hope to make it happen.
What else do I want to do in 2026? I want to play more games. Over the last 39 years, I’ve played 98 games at least once. That includes 87 “different” games, with “different” in quotes, because the list includes some World of Darkness Games and Palladium games that use similar systems but are distinct enough to be their own games, and 11 different editions, variations, or flavors of D&D.
Aspiration #2 for 2026 is to play two more games, bringing the total to 100. I won’t be picky, and I’m willing to try any game, but at the top of my list for next year are Microscope, Alice is Missing, and Fiasco.
You may ask yourself, what’s Aspiration #3? Well, I want to publish a game. I have various ideas I’ve been working on, but I don’t want to jump the gun. I’ve toyed with creating games, with putting out a setting supplement for years, and it never happens. It would be nice to do that this year, finally. I’m going to work to make this happen!
At the end of the day, despite all the problems the world is facing, any turmoil in RL, gaming was good for me in 2025. Looking forward to 2026.
What was the past year like for you? What are your plans for 2026? I’d love to read that in the comments. Happy 2026!
