Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Looking Ahead to 2024: It's Always Sunny in Baldur's Gate

Image by Freepik
Image by Freepik
I have yet to talk much about my plans for 2024; it is a big year for D&D. It is the 50th Anniversary, a new edition (well...5.x or 5R) is coming out, and there should be a lot of nostalgia and navel-gazing.

Incidentally, 2024 is also the Year of the Dragon.

Tentatively, I am looking at the following "theme months."

January will be part of TardisCaptain's New Year New Character challenge. Mine though will be delving into some of my favorite characters since I started playing D&D.

April is the A to Z Challenge, where I will write about D&D and its history.

May is Sci-Fi month and I'll do a deep dive into Gamma World, Star Frontiers, and the d20 Star Wars. I'll also looking into games with a solid D&D connection with me. 

June has typically been Basic-era month where I focus a lot on B/X, BECMI, and OSE/LL. I really want to be sure I do that this year.

August is Dave Chapman's RPGaDAY month. I pretty much do this one as is. But I might focus on D&D more than other games. 

October is "horror" month for me. I want to focus on Ravenloft. All my horror movies will also all be connected to D&D in some way. Either movies from Appendix N authors or horror movies that mention D&D or fantasy/horror. I'll start putting together my list soon.

Additionally, I have something else fun planned throughout the year that I am keeping close to my chest for now.

But the big thing for me next year is going to be my year-long exploration of the Forgotten Realms. 

New Forgotten Realms

The Forgotten Realms and Me

I was never a Forgotten Realms fan. I dismissed it in the 1980s as an "upstart," ignored it in the early 90s, and actively disliked it in the late 90s. But it seems my ire was misplaced. Around the time the 3rd Edition Realms book came out I was beginning to soften my stance. By the 4th Ed era I was considering moving a campaign to the Realms. In the 5th Ed era I made it official, more or less.

Honestly, my coverage of Ed Greenwood's work in the pages of Dragon magazine changed my mind. 

These past few months, I have been playing the hell out of Baldur's Gate 3, and my desire to play in the Realms has only grown. 

To this end, I have amassed a small collection of Forgotten Realms books. Nothing special, just ones that I have come by easily either at game auctions, Half-Price Books, or as in the books pictured above, Print on Demand from DriveThruRPG. So I will go over them in detail throughout the editions.

I'd like to run a Realms-based game someday, but I am still figuring out what edition to use. Part of me thinks I need to do it in AD&D 2nd Edition since that was the edition that was the most "Realms" to me. 

The Forgotten Realms to me was always viewed through the eyes of a character, whether that was Elminster or Drizzt or whomever. Likewise, I am going to look into the Realms through the eyes of a new character. Presently I am leaning toward my half-elf sorceress Sinéad. I know I want use someone that has magic, and someone that I can tie to the rich lore of elves in this world. She is also one of two characters I had specifically created for the Realms in all my years of gaming. I think I owe it to myself to actually give her a spin someday.  However, my wife reminded me the other night that Keller the Silent Monk might also be fun.

In any case, 2024 is going to be a busy year of posting here and I am looking forward to it.

6 comments:

Dick McGee said...

"May is Sci-Fi month and I'll do a deep dive into Gamma World, Star Frontiers, and the d20 Star Wars. I'll also looking into games with a solid D&D connection with me."

What, no Metamorphosis Alpha/Starship Warden? Buck Rogers XXVC? What about the multiple Amazing Engine scifi titles? TSR had lots of scifi over the decades.

And that's not even considering Alternity and d20 Future. :)

Timothy S. Brannan said...

Yes! I forgot about Alternity and certainly want to cover that. MA/Warden I'll cover as part of Gamma World and Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.

Dick McGee said...

That's good news, most folks just ignore Alternity IME. Which had its own Gamma World edition, while Amazing Engine had Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega and d20 Future had major nods to Alternity StarDrive, Star Frontiers, and IIRC some Gamma World inspired stuff.

TSR/WotC scifi is a tangled web of ideas being revived under different systems at this point.

PT Dilloway said...

I played the Buck Rogers TSR video game. That was fun. I got the D&D video games from TSR on Gog.com but they didn't have that one.

As far as that goes, the Forgotten Realms games were the first they made so not really my favorites. My brother and I started with the Krynn ones that were pretty cool. I liked the Savage Frontier ones too.

Brendan said...

This is more planning than I've ever done for my own blog! Looking forward to reading what you come up with, as always.

doccarnby said...

Very much looking forward to the Forgotten Realms exploration and Star Frontiers in sci-fi month. I never played Star Frontiers, but my dad always had fond memories of it.