My group finished up what is quite possibly the best campaign we've ever run. We ran it using a heavily house-ruled Iron Heroes system in a steampunk fantasy setting. The first half or so of it is posted on theRPGsite, but once they took down the blogs the guys in my group stopped doing write-ups.

We then jumped from that into a really strong first-time-playing-the-system campaign of 4e. We played it a little conventionally at first, but time-travel, PvP and party-splitting have once again cropped up. An alternate-history version of one of the PCs is the current big bad (the Chronolich!), the party warlord hired assassins to kill the family of one of my PCs unless I captured the party warlock for him, and we now have PCs in two different time streams potentially working at cross-purposes to recover a Macguffin.

I only bought three game books this year, but I really liked all of them.  Two of them were new games (Mongoose Traveller and Thousand Suns) while one was a book that I just got around to buying this year (Tome of Corruption for WFRP).

In non-game-buying coolness, I loved seeing the Old School movement really get going this year, along with all of the sites focused around it (especially not exclusively Grognardia).  I also liked the continuing awesomeness of the various game blogs I read -- Lair of the Evil GM, Jeff's Gameblog, I Waste The Buddha With My Crossbow, and many more.

I didn't do much gaming, what with a con game that I was going to run but had no-shows, and a pair of D&D one-shots (3.5 and 4e), though it looks like I will get to try out Dread next weekend.  But I'm going to try to get a PBEM off the ground before year's end; probably Traveller.

Let's see. I unintentionally ran a "pulp" game - Six Guns & Sorcery (Good Night and Good Luck) - which was cool because that's the one genre I have trouble running.

My Aces & Angels (Redtail Blues) campaign was the first authentic historical Flyingmice game.

Was blown away by my players commitment to campaign prep and by their role playing in my OtE (Day of Living Dangerously) campaign.

Regards,
David R

Mongoose Traveller and Cthulhutech were stand outs this year for me.
i also got a copy of Savage Worlds that im currently prepping a homebrew game from as i type this.

oh and Baron Munchausen was another big release for me since i finally got to run a new game off the back of a drinking session where the barons game featured heavily

D&D Miniatures. I cannot believe I waited until this year to start purchasing them.

Along with that, Dungeon Tiles, and the Warhammer Quest rules, I am in gaming nirvana.

For me that would be...

• browsing the shelves at Yellow Submarine and Roll & Roll Station in Akihabara, Tokyo
  
• the whole old school movement (small as it is)
  
• the comeback of Dragon Warriors
  
• the German Fight On! equivalent, Abenteuer•
  

...and most importantly...

• finding the movie Astrópía, convincing my boss to make an offer for the German licence, getting the licence and being responsible for the preservation and/or location of all RPG references in the translation.
  

It was a good year!

In the RPG world Dark Heresy takes the cake for my year
Video games - Fallout 3 completely delivered and then some.
Movies - Dark Knight
Music - Metallica finally put down some glory again.
TV Shows - True Blood.

I've certainly been excited by these things...

Duty & Honour by Neil Gow is a top contender for my new game of the year. Swashbuckling Napoleonic adventures in the style of Sharpe. It handles the problems inherent in military-style games really well and combines tactical and roleplaying elements into a really, really fun game.

Empire of Dust by Clint Krause and Amy Garcia. Traditional gaming but with lessons learned from other styles and a larger-than-life, Dune-inspired setting.

Who could avoid mentioning 3:16, the brilliant take on SF carnage and war.

The Collective Endeavour continues apace, despite some growing pains. This year saw some great efforts at UK conventions.

KapCon 2008 (yes, I know the site is for the 2009 con), New Zealands biggest RPG convention. 2008 was my first time there. Great fun.

The Play Collective enjoying its second year at Gen Con Indy.

And, of course, I'm tremendously pleased that Paul and myself completed and published Hot War!

So, 2008 was a pretty good year for me personally. Quite a number of new games that I really enjoyed, some great conventions and some fun play.

Cheers
Malc

The Savage Worlds of Soloman Kane
D&D 4e

Two Fisted Tales - Just well written and well playing Pulp fun!

Mongoose traveller - My first foray into Traveller and I've loved every minute of it!

Hunter: the Vigil - Really like the fridge full of ingredients for a monster hunter game this book is.

Palladium - I never played a Palladium game until this year... and it was totally awesome! TMNT&OS has become an instant favorite game of mine. I'm currently putting together a short Robotech campaign.

FFG's "Descent" became the perfect gaming solution for my one group that only gets together every month or so.

Playing D&D 4e made D&D my high fantasy game of choice for the first time, well, ever.

Too early to tell, but "Dragon Warriors" may rock my 2009 with its atmosphere.

-Matt

4ed.  4ed rocks on fucking toast.  Better than I hoped it would.

Beyond that, umm..did nWoD Changeling come out this year?  Cause that was f-in cool as well.

Quote from: Malcolm Craig;273399Empire of Dust by Clint Krause and Amy Garcia. Traditional gaming but with lessons learned from other styles and a larger-than-life, Dune-inspired setting.

Sounds interesting. Definitely something I'm gonna' check out.

Regards,
David R

Stuff I already owned and got a chance to play and was cool:

• Spirit of the Century
• Mutants & Masterminds
• Hollow Earth Expedition
• Spycraft 2.0 (and the Fragile Minds horror gaming supplement)
• City of Brass and various Goodman Dungeon Crawl Classics for D&D 3.5.

Cool New Stuff I hope to use soon:

• Mongoose Traveller
• Starblazer Adventures

Swords & Wizardry
Fight On! (issues 1-3)
Castle Zagyg: Upper Works

I'm looking forward to checking out Dragon Warriors once it arrives at my FLGS.