Well, we’re leaving our enneadic era behind and heading into our tenth year. If you take OD&D as the starting point of the ‘modern TTRPG’ (although I’d recommend taking a deeper dive), that means we’ve been doing this for… ~17% of the medium’s lifespan? Which also means CHG has been active for longer than some editions of D&D?

Oh gods.

Well, let’s see what we did, and then look ahead to the final solar rotation of a decade of CHG.

This year we published 4 Glimpses Into The Vault, 1 Adventure Log, 14 Crowdfunding Carnivals, 14 Editorials, 1 Indie Frontier, 19 Level One Wonks, 2 Solitaire Storytellings, 7 System Hacks, 1 System Split, 6 Independents, and 51 Weekend Updates.

Our top ten most viewed articles, from least to most, were Solitaire Storytelling: The Librarian’s Apprentice, Lovecraftesque: Shadows Over Story Games, Are fewer rules actually less complicated?, It shouldn’t have been called Single Player Mode, QuestWorlds: Who wants a generic game?, Diegesis, Mimesis, and You, Coriolis: The Great Dark Review, A (snarky) review of every RPG mechanic, The three layers of Triangle Agency, and Is Grimwild the next Dungeon World?

We also released one more Cannibal Halfling Radio episode, through the grace of Sloane stepping in to taking over editing duties that I, frankly, dropped the ball on.

On the game design side there was indeed, as predicted, a bit of refinement. Tales from the Cockpit has its print version now, while The Cog That Remains is barreling towards the same with an actual-play log from Leslie Trautman, some more editing passes, and new interior art after a long itchfunding effort. A Stern Chase Is A Long Chase got some rules updates as well, with some darlings getting killed in the hope of resurrection for a supplement somewhere down the line. The NaGaDeMon got away from me unscathed this time, but I did complete another PocketQuest with Rustling Electric Sheep, and on the supplement side I created a free colony drop mission for The Mecha Hack.

To review the year overall, it was… you know, 2025. Personally I busted my ankle in July and only started walking without any sort of attachments about a month or so ago. That sucked, but it’s also the worst thing that happened to me this year, which leads to a lot of cognitive static because here I am doing, y’know, relatively okay while all over the place it’s hardship and genocide and fascism. Creatively I fell short of many of my goals  (which maybe I should just start referring to as aspirations, that feels better) but I’m pretty happy with what I did accomplish.

All of that has me thinking about the ‘why’ of it all. Why am I doing this? Why do I try to make games? Not in a ‘what’s the point of all this when the world’s on fire’ way, because you still need to try to live, if only to spite the bastards. More like in a ‘what’s the goal aspiration I’m trying to reach?’ sort of way.

Ironically, seeing as how I feel like CHG is where I fell the shortest, writing stuff here is the easiest place to answer the question in the short term. I want to share cool things with people, help them find something fun and/or meaningful. In terms of making games… I’m still working on that one. As for what I’m actually going to be doing:

Design wise, there’s finishing up The Cog That Remains for good – I think I can reasonably say that’ll be done in January – and I have another Mecha Hack mission in the pipeline. After that… well, there’ll probably be another PocketQuest, and I had an idea for NaGaDeMon, I just didn’t have the energy for it. Otherwise I’m content to read and try to learn more and wait for the next lightning bolt.

Here at CHG I just want to be more regular. Aaron has yelled at me about trying to crunch in too much stuff at the end of the year, which I’m grateful for, because it’s not healthy. I’m not going to set any goals for 2026 aside from ‘maybe do a bit more than you did last year’. My drafts pile and the number of games on my shelf that are owed some eyeballs are large enough to last me a good long while if I can just keep steady. Maybe I need to spend even more time at the library.

Oh, that’s one thing that went very well this year, I got to the library and read a lot more, from a widening pool of authors. I also played some more video games the last few months – Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog , Slay The Princess, and Dispatch stood out. Generally, I’m trying to keep my free time on a more even keel and consume more media that’s just for fun, which I think will help with… everything, really!

I hope to return to the various PAXi and Games on Demand, but I’m also going to be at another convention next month – with a speaking role! I was invited to be part of a panel at the second SomerCon here in the Commonwealth on January 25th, where I’ll join Kay Marlow Allen and Brian Liberge to talk about How To Publish Your Game! I am killing imposter syndrome gremlins all over the place here, but I’m really looking forward to it.

Maybe that’s an aspiration for 2026: talk about games more. Like, with people, you understand. Build more connections and friendships and such. Despite everything I don’t feel particularly qualified, and I often feel like I’d just Be Bothering People, but that’s no fun and isn’t fair to the People either now is it?

As for the rest of the world… we do what we can with what we’ve got. There are some charity bundles coming down the pipeline at least, and if nothing else can provide an answer for the question of ‘why’ then putting my games into those makes for a pretty good one.

Well, here we go, nine years behind us and diving into the tenth.  It’s kind of hard to believe we’ve made it this far, and yet in some ways it feels inevitable. For sure, though, all of you (my fellow contributors, the creators, and the readers) have made it worth it. Thank you for reading, stay safe out there, play some games, and let’s all work to have a Happy New Year!