Thoughts on the New Year 2018

January 03, 2018

Well, here we are. 2018. I was born in 1982, so 2018 will mark the point where I have lived half my life on this side of the millennium. I also graduated from high school and turned 18 in the year 2000, so that means I will also have effectively spent half my life as an adult. Most of that adulthood was spent in college - roughly 15 years, which is a silly amount of time. I'll be the first to admit that. It seems now, though, that once I was able to break free of grad school, my career as a board game publisher has taken off very rapidly. Did you know that Gloomhaven is ranked the #1 board game on BoardGameGeek now? That could be a whole post to itself, but, wow, I did not ever expect that to happen so quickly. That was always an unattainable goal at the back of my head. Maybe one day, far off in the future, one of the games I designed will be #1. Now that it has been achieved, where do I go from here? Well, I guess the answer is that I just keep doing what I'm doing, and see where that takes me. Honestly, other than that, my expectations for the next year are fairly minimal. Of course, the main goal is to continue to work on the Gloomhaven expansion, but that is a giant affair. I want it to have as much content as Gloomhaven - a full new campaign, plenty of new character classes, monsters, and scenarios, plus a lot of new mechanics I'm excited about. I'm still not ready to go into more specifics than that, and that is largely because I am only just getting started. I don't expect it will be finished even by the end of this next year, so I don't think there's any reason to stoke people's anticipation now. I do have other stuff in the works that is closer to completion, and will probably see the light of day in one form or another by the end of the year, but, for various reasons, I'm not ready to talk about any of them yet either. Man, due to all this secrecy, I've turned this post into a rather boring one, haven't I? It's kind of funny, really. Years ago, when I started this blog, I felt very free to say whatever I wanted, because a lot of the time it felt like I was writing to no one (though I absolutely appreciate all the people who did read my blog back then). Now when I write something important, it immediately gets announced on BGG, and then I start getting emails, and, well, I guess I have to be a lot more careful about what I say. Being more well-known is great in a lot of ways, of course, but, in a lot of ways, toiling away in obscurity is a lot easier. Anyway, exciting things will be coming later this year for sure. Hopefully by Gen Con, but we will see! Oh, one thing to look forward to that I can talk about are the extra community-driven campaigns for Gloomhaven that I will be running in another couple months. The campaign during the second printing Kickstarter was by far the most fulfilling thing I did last year, so I am looking forward to doing more of that. I'd like to wait until at least a couple months past the retail release date of the second printing, just to give people plenty of time to get settled with the game, and then we'll have two separate 10-scenario campaigns. I have no plans for what the campaigns will entail, and I probably won't make any either. I'm just going to sit down, start writing, and see where the community and my imagination take me. Should be fun! And, of course, Founders of Gloomhaven should be coming out in a couple months, which is also exciting. It's kind of weird. I have very few expectations for the game. Not that I think it will do poorly, but I guess I don't feel quite invested in how well it does. Maybe it's just a numbness caused by the whole Gloomhaven #1 thing. I mean, I can't really do better with my next game, now can I? I don't know, when I think about it, I realize that I made the game for myself. I really enjoy it, I am already proud of how it turned out, and that's really all that matters. If other people enjoy it, well, then good for them. On a more personal level, I am very happy with my life and my marriage, and I am looking forward to another year of just continuing to be happy. I'm definitely planning on slowing down this whole "work non-stop" mentality and take some more vacations with my wife. These last couple weeks at home over the holidays have been nice, but I am also looking forward to going on the BGG Cruise up to Alaska, and we'd also like to take a long vacation in England around the time of the UK Games Expo. And I am, of course, looking forward to all the conventions and all that those entail. My wife seemed to have a really great time at BGG Con and now wants to go to all the conventions with me, or at least the ones where I am not working the whole time (I'm looking at you, Gen Con and Essen). I'm going to try and add Heavy Con and UK Games Expo to the docket this year, as well, but they are so close together, I'm still not sure I can make it to both. Oh, and also PAX Unplugged now that it isn't the same weekend as BGG Con. Convention season is starting to look a little scary, if I'm being honest. But scary in a good way. I think I've got a handle on things. I've made many mistakes over the years, but I learn from all of them, and so I am going into 2018 with the confidence that it will be great. I'm sure I'll make more mistakes, but I'll figure it out as I go. Yeah, it's gonna be great.

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