And So a New Year Begins

Hi, it's been awhile. 

Shortly after my last blog post, real life started to rear its ugly head. I will admit it was a tough summer with work and life colliding. Things have settled a bit for the most part and I'm hoping to start posting again. Starting with this (short) blog post. 

Conventions to look forward too...

I bought a day badge to attend KublaCon 2026 at the Hyatt Regency SFO Airport Hotel in Burlingame, California. Exciting! I will admit I was not sure how I felt about using Cardboard Connect for registration this year. My initial thought was "I have to make another account?" Maybe I'm getting account creation fatigue for having to create another account for convention registration? Is that such a thing? Or am I beginning to becoming the old woman who screams at clouds?

Also, I'll definitely be checking out the Flip 7 Tournament ! Been playing on Boardgame Arena...and I honestly love it. It's a fun push your luck card game. 

Also, I'm going to San Diego Comic Con this year! This will be my first SDCC and I'm super excited. I am curious to see how the gaming scene is there. Granted, I know its more about comics/pop culture/etc... but the game schedule from last year sounds promising. Maybe I'll finally get to join a game of Daggerheart? Maybe? Please?!

KublaCon Blues

 

Photo Credit: KublaCon Website

Feeling the Blues 

I am still feeling the post KublaCon blues weeks later. I do wonder if it’s similar to how people feel when they come back from vacation or coming home from Disney World. Being with others who are interested in the same hobby as you, talking about backing crowdfunding campaigns for games, playing at an in person table – I really love that feeling. When I got bored waiting for the Running TTRPGs for Kids seminar, I’d walk around and see what others were playing. It’s one thing to read online what people are playing, but to see people IRL playing really solidifies it. 

Food Menu - Photo taken by me

I will admit I wasn’t too crazy about the food options this year. I know convention food can be hit or miss-but the theme food didn’t appeal to me in the slightest. I had Kubla Curry with rice and…it was fine. Anyways on to the good stuff–some of the highlights of the convention for me this year include:

• Playing Interns in the Dark with the games designer Adam Yee. Shout out to the 10:00 AM group I played with-ya’ll were awesome. 
• Visiting the Free League Publishing booth and talking with the lovely folks there. I was able to get the Dragonbane Core Set while my Uncle bought the Twilight: 2000 Core Set.
• On a side note the person working the booth showed me the Blade Runner Core Set and I was blown away by the handouts and stuff included. I love when games make in-world artifacts. 
• My Uncle came down at the last minute to hang and check out the convention! 
• I also attended The Running TTRPG for Kids seminar. I did leave with some food for thought such as streamlining rules for kids and having resurrection options for kids who don't want their characters to die. It also gave me some things to think about when running TTRPG for kids/teens in the future in a library setting. How do I make sure kids/teens don't hog the spotlight? Will teens play a lone wolf character? I will admit I don't have these answers to these questions today but it does give me something to think about. 

Books! Books! Core Set! - Photo taken by Me

Overall, I had a lot of fun. Maybe next year I’ll get a 4 day badge. Don’t know if I’ll be able to make it to Kubla Fall but we’ll see. 

It's Gonna be...May?

Time flies!

The last two months have been interesting.

Me on my laptop 

I was bummed that the PbF I was in over a RPGGeek for the 2025 RPGGeek New Player Initiative fell through. It made me wonder if there are some ttrpgs that don't translate well in PbF or PbP settings. Granted, the one we played did have online play materials but for some reason the session just didn't flow well. I will admit...I struggled with improv and it was a improv heavy game. I do wonder if having an in person session of the game would have made it easier in that we could actually talk to each other and we could play off of seeing each other's actions

Also, it dawned on me too that doing a PbF game meant that everyone online could read and follow along. Usually, on discord a PbP would be in a dedicated server and only people in the server could read and interact with it. However, I do see ttrpg games being played by voice in discord servers and most of the time no spectators are allowed. Though sometimes people accidentally/mistakenly (?) join them (and then server wide announcement of no spectating is politely reminded).  

Overall, it was a fun experience and I would do it again. I got a micro badge for participating so that was cool. 

JP Coovert's Patreon Page

On a whim I ended up joining some Patreon's this month. 

First was JP Coovert's-I like that at the $6 tier you can get access to digital copies of zines/adventures/games he's released. 

Mythworks Patreon Page

The second was Mythworks- their $5 tier gives you access to the digital vault of their games, comics, and extras. I highly recommend checking it out for a month or two-especially if you're running (or thinking about running The Wildsea). There's a ton of extras to explore. And yes, for you Slugblaster fans' the vault includes the recent update of the core rulebook. 

Well, I'm off to check out the tulips! See ya. ✌

It's February Already?!

Doing Some House Cleaning

Not in my physical house (though I probably should do that too-after all it’s Lunar New Year.) 

Me celebrating Lunar New Year and not cleaning my room 

Since my last post I did some revamping/clean up of my blog. I’m happy with how it looks now. I had to do some tinkering to get the navigation bar juusst right. I also discovered a cool lil widget from RPGGeek that can show the TTRPG books I own-neato! I do like how all the squares fit perfectly on top of one another. Took me a bit to figure out how to configure it…but I did it. 

Speaking of RPGGeek…

Credit: RPGGeek 

I discovered through a post on r/rpg that there’s a cool event happening on RPGGeek’s Play by Forum called 2025 RPGGeek New Player Initiative. I can’t do it justice to explain so here's a quote from the post on the 2025 RPGGeek New Player Initiative on what the goal is:   

“The goal of this initiative is to help bring people into (or back to!) the RPG hobby and to get them active in the RPG Geek Play-by-Forums. We play hundreds of games in the forum every year and our numbers continue to grow! Many of us found our way to RPGG through these New Player Initiatives and we hope you'll do the same.”

I think it’s pretty dang cool. I’ve signed up to play Fae's Anatomy.  I’ve mostly done PbP on Discord so I’m curious to see how the Play by Forum (PbF) shakes out. As of this typing, only those new to PbF games on RPGGeek can sign up for one (1) game, then starting February 7th users can sign up for one other game, and finally February 10th players can sign up for any remaining games if there are seats available. 

So, How’s that New Years Resolution Coming along?

Well…

It’s going I suppose. 

Teatime Adventures Box Set

I received the The Wonderful World of Tea Pets Box Set in the mail recently from Snowbright Studio. I will admit, I thought I missed out on getting the Box Set since I pre-ordered on Backerkit. Getting the box and the mini poster was a nice surprise. I’ll make it my goal to GM a Teatime Adventures 2E game this year - a cozy mystery game is just what everyone needs right now…ya know?

Teatime Adventures 2E Core Book

I started reading the core book and it was so breezy and nice. I’m hoping to start the solo mystery that came in the core book this week and start planning my first game in a couple of weeks. The way things are going, though, that game probably won’t be off the ground until Summer. But I think it’d make for a fun Summer game. 🌞 

A look back on my first year in the hobby + Goals for the new year

Wanna play a game?

Looking back on my first year in the tabletop game hobby, it was interesting experience-even it was more on the virtual side. I was able to play a couple of sessions of a Dungeons and Dragons adventure, played a Call of Cthulhu one-shot, and joined some fun discord servers where I got to meet some fun people! Shout out to the people I've talked too-you know who you are ☺.

One of the many signs at the convention

In the distance I hear someone shout "KUBLA" and the other people shout "COOOON!!!"

I even discovered a local tabletop game convention near me and was able to attend for a day. I got to paint my first miniature (albeit very badly), buy TTRPG books from Three Dog Quest/Indie Press Revolution, demo games such as Cyber Pet Quest and Burn the Witch that funded on Kickstarter, buy a d6 dice set (which I later discovered glows in the dark), and got myself a dice mat! Oh, and I got a collectible pin too-I believe the proceeds went to charity. 

Cyber Pet Quest 

Burn the Witch 

What's Next?

I do have some goals for the new year which include:

• GM a TeaTime Adventures one-shot or a Call of Cthulhu one-shot (I should really dig into the starter set I got from humble bundle last year...)
• I'd love to practice my skills for in-person gaming too. My long term goal is to become confident enough to be able to host a game either at ttrpg conventions or be able to DM a ttrpg game for a library program. 
• Visit Gamescape SF in the city and use that 10% off coupon I got from KublaCon.
• Start blogging my TTRPG game experiences, thoughts on TTRPG books/TTRPG podcasts I've been reading/listening too, and write consistent blog posts. 

If you got this far, thanks for reading! What are your TTRPG goals for the new year?