The end and start of the year is usually a time for reflection and planning. In this post I wanted to try to put what I currently feel about RPGS into words. I go over where I am coming from, what I personally like, what I am lukewarm on and what I feel is bad for games.

Where I am Coming From

I was first exposed to RPGs in the form of 5e. Long ago when I was in highschool one of my friends ran me and some other friends through a combat using 5e. That night we created characters using an app on our phones and I think we only had one combat before having to leave since making characters took us a good long while. I was immediately interested but, I was never able to get into a group. The friend that helped us make characters did not want to GM and was a player in a full group. I did not know of any other folks that where into that so the idea of playing these games was put on the back burner for a long while.

2024 was a cool year and in this post I hope to go over it a little and also look forward to 2025. I go over the games that I played in 2024 and also look forward to games that I want to play in 2025.

Games of 2024

In short, I played a lot of Pathfinder 2e. I hope to keep playing it into 2025. I still have my Kingmaker campaign going and I think we will keep playing that into 2025. My group is actually moving along at a great pace and we might be able to get fairly close to finishing the whole module by the end of next year. If we do, that would be a massive accomplishment!

In a recent session with my kingmaker group, we all got a chance to use the Pf2e Research subsystem. I thought it would not be a good experience but was happily surprised with how enjoyable it was.

Me being me, I started to get ideas of how to use a variant of this sub system to explore a dungeon in a mapless fashion! The subsystem is very simple at its core and turning it into a mapless dungeon procedure is something I am sure others have done before me. However, here is how I would go about making a Pathfinder 2e Dungeon Exploration Subsystem.

One of the most interesting ideas that I have come across in the ttrpg scene is the idea of the mapless dungeon. The first time I heard about this more narrative form of exploration was from this video by PaladinProse. The procedure itself comes from Runehammer’s Crown and Skull system, tho it does not depend on any of the systems mechanics. This makes it possible to lift this procedure and put it in any system without issue. I later saw another implementation of this idea from the book The Perilous Wilds.

In this post I want to go over some of the principles of creating and running a proactive campaign as laid out in the book The Game Master’s Handbook of Proactive Roleplaying by Topix Media Labs. I am still reading this book and have not used these principles to create a campaign yet, but I do like the ideas discussed in this book and hope to use them in the future.

New and up and coming GMs can sometimes be a little worried about adventure writing. I myself am not much of a writer. I don’t make stories or even think I have the most creative mind. Ideas don’t just spring up out of nowhere.

One thing that has helped me a BUNCH is the idea of brainstorming before you get to writing. In this post, I hope to explain how to use brainstorming to help get Game Masters writing and game groups playing!

Pathfinder 2e is a crunchy, high fantasy role playing system that is similar to DnD but has a more concrete rule set. The system has a lot of rules for covering almost any scenario, but at the same time is intuitive enough that most people will be able to understand it after a single session. The system is also technically free. All the rules can be read online on officially sanctioned sites. Ultimately, its a system I highly recommend for groups that want to have a limitless set of character options and a rich set of rules and systems for simulating anything that could happen in a high fantasy adventure. Keep reading to get a more in-depth overview of this fantastic system!