Thinking About 2006

First, a random thought, inspired by this:

I design games that I think will be fun to play with my friends. To the extent that I pay attention to games made by other people, internet forums, RPG theory, etc., it's basically all in the hope of coming up with more and more interesting stuff that'll help me have fun with my friends. While I like seeing other people making and playing games. I'm pretty sure that that falls somewhere between or outside of being either on the bleeding edge or having "sentimental reasons."

I started up this blog in December 2005, not too long after going to GenCon SoCal and discovering indie games. Being the introvert that I am, I can't really comment too coherently on stuff that happened outside of my own direct gaming experience.

• I started buying Japanese RPGs on occasion, first Beast Bind, then an anthology called TRPG Super Session Daikyouen, and more recently Maid RPG and Yuuyake Koyake. They've given me neat ideas and a fresh perspective on RPGs.
• Play in a friend's Truth & Justice campaign, and kept an in-character diary (posted here). The game is probably going to, at a minimum, go on hiatus or something.
  
• I created the thing called Mascot-tan, which seems to have a small following on RPG.net.
• I started work on my sentai RPG, Tokyo Heroes, and finished a first draft (which needs to be worked on more whenever I can find the time and inspiration).
• Worked a bunch on a Fudge-powered Halo adaptation, that I really should sit down and play some time soon.
• Two game companies I'm a little ambivalent about -- albeit for very different reasons -- had financial troubles. Palladium pulled through, with much discussion on the net about it, while Guardians of Order went under, after many months of abject silence.
• I did my first (and so far only) 24-hour RPG, Hikikomori RPG.
• The internet side of the hobby had lots of completely idiotic and nonproductive identity politics arguments, as though the hobby hasn't been big enough to encompass vastly different styles of play from its inception.
• I made some considerable progress but never quite got around to finishing up the first draft of Thrash 2.0.
• Wound up chatting online with Guy Shalev now and then.
• Began regularly visiting the Story Games forum.
  
• Purchased:
• The Mountain Witch
• Buffy Revised
• Exalted 2e
• The Mister Lincoln eXperiment (MLX)
• Timestream
• Panty Explosion
• Slayers d20 (for $5!)
• Hearts, Swords, Flowers (also for $5)
• Maid RPG
• Maid RPG In Love (sourcebook)
  
• Dreaming Maid RPG (adventure anthology, w/some supplemental rules)
• Yuuyake Koyake
• Don't Rest Your Head
• My Life With Master
• WEG D6 Ghostbusters (present for a friend)
  
• Possibly some other things I can't think of right now.
• Ordered
• BESM 3e (via Amazon)
• Dictionary of Mu
• Drowning and Falling
• The Shab-al-hiri Roach

The main thing I'm thinking about, game-wise, for next year is going to GenCon Indy. I've got some crazy stuff I'd like to run, people I've interacted with online that I'd like to meet, and (hopefully) there'll be plenty of awesome new games to check out.