Wednesday, December 31, 2014

A Year in Review: My Five Favorite Posts of 2014

Today is New Year's Eve, meaning another year has come and gone. Nearly two years ago I created Dungeons Deep & Caverns Old as a way for me to express myself and have some fun. While I've had some rough spots here and there, I think I've achieved that goal.

Although I'm looking for to the new year and seeing this blog grow more and more, I thought it would be fun to take a moment to look back on 2014 and some of the posts I made over the past twelve months. These are my five favorite posts of the year. They're not ranked in any particular order, they're just the posts I enjoyed writing the most and I felt deserved pointing out.

This November post is the newest post to be included on this list, but I felt like it deserved mention because I truly believe the message I was espousing here. While I have some serious problems and quibbles with Shadowrun 5th Edition's rules, I've managed to have fun running it due to my love of the setting and my decision to just go with the flow and ignore any of the minutiae that would normally cause the game to come to a screeching hault so we could look something up. It's a lesson I'll remember whenever I'm running another crunchy system in the future. 

Generally, I enjoy writing posts that take a look at some of the sacred cows of Dungeons & Dragons and similar games, arguing for or against them. I wrote a few of those this year, but I feel like my favorite has to be this piece about why I defend the decision to give the paladin an alignment restriction. Although I've recently lightened up on my stance on this topic slightly, feeling like paladins with a restriction of "any good" wouldn't be so bad, I still enjoyed writing this piece and felt like it belonged on this list. 

Anyone who knows me knows my utter disappointment with Paizo's Advanced Class Guide. I personally feel like it's the worse book Paizo has published, both in the rules and editing department, and I feel like the "hybrid classes" were either completely pointless and unnecessary (like the Arcanist or the Hunter), or poorly executed or hampered by the odd biases of Pathfinder's design team (like the Swashbuckler). This post details my attempt at reworking one of the classes, and I feel like I did a good job. This was also my first attempt at designing a class, so I have fond memories of it for that reason alone. 

This is one of the older posts on the list, having appeared on the blog back in February. Within the post, I discuss the sub-genre of "Dark Fantasy", how much I love it, and why many people seem to misunderstand it and let it devolve into a "grimdark" nightmare. The reason why I decided to include it here is because I believe it's one of my better post and it espouses ideas I feel more people read and remember when attempting to create dark fantasy stories or campaigns. 

THE HEROES OF SANDPOINT SERIES
Okay, I'm cheating somewhat here. This isn't one post, but a series of five posts detailing my unfortunately short Heroes of Sandpoint campaign. These were my first attempt at recapping my gaming sessions, and I feel like I did a decent job of that. While they were easily the hardest posts to write, since trying to make session notes entertaining to read is rather difficult, but I have a fondness fobr them and they bring back good memories. If I had to pick one, I probably would go with Strange Happenings at the Old Light, feeling like it was the best written and most entertaining to read. 

I'm truly excited for 2015. I already have some post topics lined up for the new year, and I have big plans for the blog itself. Hopefully some of those plans will come to fruition. I hope everyone has a good New Year's, and I'll see you all on Friday. 

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