Looking Back at 2016 – Resolutions

Now that 2017 has arrived, I want to take one final look back at 2016, and see how I measured up to the goals that I set for myself in the first week of the year.  Some seemed ambitious at the time, while others seemed like they would be easy pickings, but looking back, it was much more difficult to predict what would trip me up.

One thing about these goals – I’m going with a straight pass-fail.  I either accomplished the goal, or not; I’m not giving myself any partial credit.

Finish a Game Design Project – Fail

I thought this one would be ambitious, but doable, which is why it’s at the top of my list.  Mid-way through the year, I decided I was going to make myself a copy of the Dune board game; still a pretty ambitious charge, but it seemed doable at the time.

There was a lot of design work to do – I needed to make a few new decks, which meant organizing the art assets to make it happen.  I also had to get stuff together for the new factions, which was not as easy as I had hoped.  As the year came to a close, I have to admit to being very close on this one – I have all the design work done, all the decks ready to print…  …But I can’t seem to get any card stock to print it on (everyone seems to be out?).  I actually considered rushing it, and getting it done on what I could get a hold of, but I wanted to make sure that quality didn’t suffer, so I let it slide.  I’ll be finishing this one early next year…

Reading and Writing – Pass

I managed to blog twice a week, every week in 2016!  I feel pretty good about this one, as it seemed really ambitious at the time.  This resolution wasn’t just about getting a single thing done, it was about continuing to do something throughout the year, and so was probably the easiest to fail at- all it would take is to miss a post, whether it was written or not.  That being said, it shows that my pattern for writing appears to be working.

In terms of my reading goal is a lot less measurable than the writing part, but I did manage to do a fair bit of reading this year.  This is also the first year that I actually tracked everything that I read, and I also used it to fuel my blog and keep getting new things to write about.  Because of all that, I’m giving myself a pass.

Role-playing – Pass

In 2015, I managed two sessions of role-playing.  In 2016, I managed almost a dozen, and I also managed to finish a few session one-shot (three-round burst?) that I ran.  Because of both of those things, I’m giving myself a pass on this one – I technically ran “more than I did in 2015.”  On the flip side, I actually feel pretty good about this – I found some things that worked for me, and some things that didn’t work so well.

I played an online game this year using Savage Worlds.  I had high hopes for this game (maybe a bit too high), but it got waylaid by a couple of things.  First, I’m not convinced that online gaming is really going to work for me in the short term.  That’s not to say that online gaming isn’t good, it just that, for the things that I want to do, I don’t believe it works as well as in-person role-playing.  Second, I think I need to learn Savage Worlds a bit more, and run some shorter games.  I like the system, but I need to experiment a bit more to integrate it with my GMing style.

The game that I finished was actually a game at my local shop.  This is a big step for me as there was more players than I’m usually used to, and it was a bit out of my comfort zone as it was not my typical close knit group of friends.  Even though these difficulties, I feel like the game was mostly a success – not everything went according to plan, but I generally got positive marks afterward.

Painting and Assembling Models – Pass

This goal was a lot of different sub-goals, so I’m going to divide it out.

Assembly:

  • Warhammer – pass
  • Searforge – pass
  • Circle – pass
  • Leeman Russ – pass

These are all the models that I got in 2015 and didn’t get around to assembling, and my goal was to get them assembled.  There were other models that came in through 2016 (that I tracked on the right), but really, this goal was to get last year’s models assembled.  Overall, I did pretty good, with only one model holding me back…  …Until the last couple of days when I finally managed to assemble my Woldwrath.  It wasn’t so bad, just big, heavy, and with a lot of little bits.

Painting:

  • Aquan painting – pass
  • Leeman Russ & Guard – pass

Of course, my painting backlog is a lot shorter (because, for me, painting is a lot less fun and a lot more time consuming).  Still, I got the two things done that I wanted – Leeman Russ and his Wulfen Guard and my Aquan Firestorm Armada.  Both turned out reasonably well, and I’m proud to have a fully painted set of models as well as a pretty awesome army centerpiece for my Space Wolves.

Website Unification – Fail

This was at the bottom of my list, so I at least want to take credit for knowing that I wasn’t going to make a lot of time to do it.  At the end of the day…  …I didn’t.  I made time to update the code for my dice roller, which was super-fun.  While doing so, I decided to go ahead and go the extra mile to create a template so that it would match my wordpress theme.  Still, the wiki is a long ways off, even if I did look at it and say, “Yeah, that’s doable…  …It’s just going to take a lot of time that is better spent on other things.”

Verdict

Well…  …That’s three out of five – 60% – not so good.  That’s not to say that I’m not happy; I’m actually grateful that I had the time that I did to do the things that I want.  Some of these I will definitely be working on next year (and be joined by new resolutions), but to find out what my new resolutions are, you’ll have to wait for my next post.