Here we are, at the end of August, which was RPGaDay month. Yep, a month solid of RPG-related posts, answering these questions:

Today’s question, the final question of the series, is this:

What do you anticipate most for gaming in 2018?

Oh, well. I guess now it’s time to get down to logistics. 

I’m finishing writing a book this summer—by the time this is posted, in fact, my current draft should be finished and sent out to readers for feedback. By the beginning of 2018, the draft should be revised and sent out into the market, to see if I can entice anyone into publishing it, and I’ll be writing something else. What, I’m not sure, but I have a few ideas. 

I also hope to have been running a biweekly RPG game—likely traditional fantasy probably using Lamentations of the Flame Princess—from September to December. I’m planning to use that to playtest the project my friend Ahimsa and I currently are working on, as well as playtesting a project of my own if I have managed to do much development on that latter project by the time we finish playtesting the earlier project. If I can keep that group going through 2018, I’ll be happy. 

I’d also love to get some playing in where I’m not GMing, especially so I can try experience new systems I don’t know about—especially Gumshoe and and Apocalypse-powered games. I’ll be busier in 2018, of course: our son will be even older and need even more supervision and play time with me. But that doesn’t stop me having all kinds of one-shots and mini-series ideas I’d like to try, systems I’d like to try run, and projects planned as far as game dev goes. Some coding projects, an attempt to get my hands on something that’ll allow one-player games (probably Gumshoe One-2-One) so I can run a game for my wife, and exploring miniatures with her new 3D printer are all things I’m looking forward to. I’m also looking forward to seeing copies of my Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary edition Deluxe book, as well as the Yellow King RPG, assuming they both deliver next year. 

However, what I’m most excited about right now is something that seems pretty likely: that 2018 is the year my first professionally-published RPG project hits shelves, courtesy of Lamentations of the Flame Princess. It’s been a long process—one that started in late 2015—and of course a release date hasn’t been nailed down. But still, I’m hoping 2018 is the year it’ll drop. At least I hope so! It’s a weird historical adventure set in a monastic Abbey famed for its amazing beers… in the aftermath of something going terribly wrong within the Abbey. There’s lots of beer-related stuff; there’s a weird (ahem, non-collectible) card mechanic; there’s creepy body-horror; there’s a brain-bending antagonist; there’s bananas NPCs; there’s a creepy, heartbreaking backstory; alien weirdness; and even some tips on how to spin off a whole insane campaign off the events and stuff in the adventure. There’s a lot packed into this thing. It’s going to be a lot of fun, and the layout’s coming along well, with a wonderful illustrator lined up and ready to go. 

My wife and I also have plans for a lot of other things that will happen toward the end of 2018, of course, and those will also have an impact on my gaming hobby, but I’ll get into that closer to when it happens.