The Holiday Feature: Wrapping up 2016, GrogHeads Style

Started by bayonetbrant, December 21, 2016, 09:20:39 PM

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bayonetbrant




  • What was the biggest 'story' in gaming this year?
  • What was the most fun you had playing a game this year (even if it wasn't a new game)?
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

JasonPratt

Biggest story in gaming: the ascension of the virtual tabletop -- now with VR capability -- which allows a way for old, out-of-print games to be republished in a feasibly playable format. Too bad the designers and right-owners rarely get compensated, so the massive influx of free fan-mods has become quite a double-edged sword. I feel pretty sure v-tables have been around for a year or two already, but this was the year they blossomed in potential.

Most fun I've had in gaming: gosh, it's been a lonnnng year! But I'm going to go with "getting into the survival-craft genre", a type I had never played before. This year I extensively played both Empyrion and Fortresscraft: Evolved, but despite being quite literally a nihilism simulator (how long can you stand to keep playing the game before you admit its ultimate futility and just let yourself die?!) I most played and enjoyed 7 Days to Die -- not only for the epic ambience, but in cooperation with fellow Grogs.  O0
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Cyrano

Awww man...missed a deadline and missed a lot.

Well, no one reads the MTF, anyway, so I'll write it here.

In ascending order, biggest trends in gaming (from my perspective):

3.  The Golden Age of the boardgame -- including the clankity consim -- continues unabated and, in fact, grows.  GMT is only the brightest light here and "Lock n Load", Mark Walker's shop, OSS, MPP, Decision Games, &c., all compete for the Grogbuck.

2.  Game designers and producers are still struggling make peace between Kickstarter the concept and the final retail market.  As long as folks want to offer games after they've been published, as I assume most do, they cannot screw later-adopters out of key content.  On the other hand, the allure of precious up-front capital has lead to some both magnificent and absurd KS campaigns that funded some truly terrific games on the backs of those of us who cannot and will not wait even for the on-line retailer, much less FLGSs.

1.  The Ubiquity of Borg.  You will be assimilated.  Richard is far more than the creator of C&C in all its forms which is mere inches from getting its Epic iteration out the door -- not to mention the recently-announced Medieval iteration which burned through its P500 like a rocket slet on rails.  He's also got the smash hit reboot of Siege of the Citadel (MOAR TOYZ!!!) and Battle of Britain following up on the lovely "Great War" with its tank expansion.  He is a grogfather.

PRIME GAMING EXPERIENCES:

3.  Fort Kick-Ass at Origins.  Any place where "Flick 'em Up" and "Operation Flashpoint: Red Storm" are equally welcome is fair near my idea of heaven.

2.  Rediscovering my love of hex-and-counter square button games.  With rounded corners on all the counters.  And using one of those games to run a KS right here on the Groghead fora.

1.  On a personal note, I turned 50 this year.  I wasn't too nuts about the notion, but decided, in the end, it beat the pants off the alternative.  My beloved did much to make it more merry, including scheduling two solid weekends of gaming.  Over those days I saw many friends that I had not seen in some time, many of whom came from very far a way just to spend time in my company.  Likely the farthest traveler was my friend Doug with whom I ate pie and wrecked ogres.  A pearl of great price for which I am grateful.

Truthfully, given all the angst-y FB memes, I almost feel guilty about how good 2016 was...
Sergeant at Arms of La Fraternite des Boutons Carres

One mustachioed, cigar-chomping, bespectacled deity, entirely at your service.

You didn't know? My Corps has already sailed to Berlin. We got there 3 days ago and we've been in the Tiergarten on the piss ever since. -- Marshal Soult, October 1806