Resolutions: Year In Review

Last year I made a whole bunch of lofty resolutions for myself as a writer, a game designer, and as a GM. Today I want to look at my resolutions as a GM and see how I did. This will be the first step towards making new resolutions for going into the new year. Let's get going then, shall we?

#1 Better Portrayal Of NPCs
While I still need a lot of work here, and I still get trapped in my head a lot when GMing, I feel I have improved at this this year. I've had more comments on my NPCs being good, solid, or present in the game and it has worked out for the better of things. This is something I think I'll always have to grapple with, but at least there is positive movement on it. Hopefully next year will see even more varied and better NPCs.

#2 Old School Stylings
One of the things I thought I'd lost was a bit of the old school stylings and feel to games. I've run a Shadowrun game for most of the year and it has been going well. The game is bringing back some of the old school mentality and it has done a damn good job of highlighting things I like and things I don't like. I've long said that failure was needed for victory to have meaning, and Shadowrun has shown that the increased stakes of failure can make success that much sweeter, but losing still sucks. I have a lot of thoughts on this, including lessons learned, maybe I'll turn it into a blog post in and of itself.

#3 Help My Players Improve
I'm honestly not sure how I've done on this. I've challenged my players along new lines in some games, but how much it has helped I can't be sure. The introduction of some new people to the gaming group (at least some of them) has been a welcome breath of fresh air. In the end, I'm not sure how possible this really is with groups as seasoned as what I play with. Most of us are fairly set in our ways already.

#4 Better Preparation
This was hit or miss depending on the week, but mostly a hit I think. I had better mental readiness for my L5R game and for my Shadowrun game which helped keep things going. Like with my NPC portrayal I still have a lot to work on, but at least movement is going forward.

How about you? How did you do with your gaming resolutions? You have any cooking up to attack next year?