Year End Review?

Last year I did a "Best" and "Worst" of the year.

This year I have seen so much more that it is hard to quantify and qualify it all.
So here are some random highlights of the year.

D&D Essentials

D&D Essentials became basically what 4e should have been.  I think if WotC had waited and not done D&D4 like they did and came out with Essentials....well people still would have bitched and moaned cause that is how gamers are.

God we suck.

D&D Essentials boiled down D&D 4 to its, well, Essentials.  Presented in a format that certainly owes something to the old-school vibe (note I don't say Renaissance or movement here), Essentials does an end run around edition wars by focusing on being fun.
Interestingly enough WotC seems to be acknowledging the old-schoolers out there with the release of the Red Box Starter set and the revamp to their website.

DriveThruRPG Reviewer
I became a featured reviewer at DriveThruRPG this year.  My plan to have more reviews up next year.  At least a couple a week.

Blogs
Lots of great blogs out.  Just look down the side of my blog here.  Many of them have very interesting things to say.

Stats
I am a stats junkie.  I love seeing what people are reading here, what pages people go back too the most and which ones are the most popular.
While this will skew my data,  here are my most popular pages of the last year.

• Xena and Gabrielle, this one is due to some of the images on the page.
• Erzsébet Báthory
• The Hex Girls made it three times in the top ten, Unisystem/Witch Girls, Cartoon Action Hour, and Cortex.
• People also seem to like Succubi, as the hits on Sympathy For the Succubus Part 1 and Part 2 show.
• And Every Angel is Terrifying

My top referring sites were:

• RPG Bloggers
• The Underdark Gazette
• Eden Discussion Boards
• Destination Unknown
• RPGNet forums
• Asshat Paladins
• Daddy Grognard
• Risus Monkey
• Swords Against the Outer Dark
• Gothridge Manor

Games

A lot of really fun games came out this past year as well.  I have not had a chance to catch up on last years even yet though!  Pathfinder was a big hit this year in addition to all the new D&D 4 and OSR games I scored.

For me though the highlight was the release of B/X Companion.  A really well done book and a lot of fun too. Best release of the all the OSR games this year.
B/X Companion as well as some nice buys at this years's game auction at Games Plus, has gotten me really interested in Basic Era D&D again.  It is very much nostalgia, no two ways about it, but it is still very fun.





The Bad
Still no Ghosts of Albion in print format.

I guess the Worst part of the year, gaming wise, was getting hit by another driver coming back from Gen Con this year.  I on the plus side, everyone was fine and now the van is back to running fine too.

What will 2011 bring?