This was the first year that I've properly tracked the games that I've played, but I'm pretty sure that this has marked an increase over previous years with 68 game sessions in total, roughly split between 75% online and 25% at in person cons, namely Furnace, Seven Hills, Northstar and Owlbear.
The standout hit this year has been Dragonbane which is just plain good fun with a great group of players. It's a simple D20 system and features some very nasty monsters with the twist that they are always going to hit and do something randomly nasty to you. Beating them takes teamwork (or just knowing when to run away) but the rules let this happen without too much crunch. I've played this both online and on the table, and the physical quality of the books, maps and table bling is of Free League's typical high quality.
In second place is Dungeon Crawl Classics which is more of a traditional Old School style dungeoneering game with some interesting quirks of gameplay - fortunately the dice roller on Discord copes with the weird and wonderful dice. The adventures are wild and we are playing on an adventure path that goes up to tenth level which I think will be enough to cross this one off the RPG bucket list.
Tied for third place are the hilariously gruesome Cy_borg and the hex crawling Forbidden Lands, which are both interesting uses of mechanics to tell emergent stories. I particularly like the rhythm of travelling in Forbidden Lands where you roll for daily weather and share the duties of keeping watch, hunting and setting up camp, and add to the feel of exploring an untamed wilderness.
The rest of the games were a mixture of one shots of various descriptions, with the standout being the intense and emotional Alice is Missing which was a unique experience to play an in person game with all interaction happening through text messages.
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