2021: A Year of Legacy

Despite the pandemic — or more likely because of it — I played more role-playing games in 2021 than any other year since I started logging my games back in high school. It’s a fact.

Playing online via video chat used to seem like a pale imitation of face-to-face gaming, but for logistics it can’t be beat: distance doesn’t matter so you can game with anyone in the world, there’s no picking a venue, no travel time, etc. Even without a pandemic, it’s kind of a great fit for busy adults.

A big chunk of those games were Kingdom. Lots and lots of Kingdom. 71 sessions total. And almost all of them were the new Legacy rules from the second edition. I came from an old school D&D background ages ago, and while I love one-shot (or short arc) story games, there have been times I missed the immersion and involvement that comes from a campaign you’ve been playing with the same people for months or years. But before now there have been, as far as I know, exactly *zero* GMless games that really work for long-term campaign play — I’m talking about campaigns that run thirty, forty, or (ahem) seventy sessions.

But now with Kingdom Legacy we’ve got long-term campaigns again and it’s fantastic.

In 2020 we started our Kingdomon “collect all the pocket monsters” saga with Al, Caroline, and Marc, and it’s still going strong two years in. It was the very first Legacy game I ever played, before the rules were finished and I knew how awesome it was going to be.

Then in 2021 I added a second campaign, the Department of Witches Kingdom with Ace, Ashley, and Joe. And just like Kingdomon, it was originally a one-shot Kingdom game that grew out of control and is now over 30 sessions in.

And what’s better than two Kingdom games? How about three? The Ozari Traveling Circus, with Haskell, Jem, Mike, and Seth, complete with clowns, lion tamers, and trapeze artists. It’s still a “normal” Kingdom game so only time will tell if it will make the jump to Legacy too.

And yeah, I did squeeze in a bunch of other games that weren’t Kingdom: Caroline’s awesome Fedora Noir game, two Fallout campaigns (great players and not-so great rules), some Microscope, Follow, and Downfall, a few games I hadn’t tried before like Incarnis, i’m sorry did you say street magic, and Paninaro, and even a West Marches D&D 3e game that someone else is running so I get to just kick back and avoid getting eaten by wolves for a change.

As always, the key ingredient is great players. I am very, very lucky to know a bunch of people are a lot of fun to game with over and over again.

Cherish your peeps. And cut them some slack when you have to. It’s rough out there.