I had a wild and crazy New Year’s Eve. My wife and I went to a local Indian restaurant and then hit up a Korean bakery for some weird sweets. We went home and simply out of habit, watched part of “Dick Clark’s Death Watch” (formerly “Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve). All of these random celebrities, most of whom had never heard of, were wandering the crowd at Times Square and asking what everyone’s resolutions were for 2009. It was the usual fare- lose weight, stop smoking, lay off the heroin- but it made me think about how I don’t usually have any resolutions. So while sitting there watching the very expensive-looking Jonas Brothers tickle the fancy of many a preteen girl and waiting to see if Clark finally admits that he passed away in 2001, I started thinking about my 2009 resolutions for gaming. And they are as follows:

1. Play the games I already own more often.



This is probably the hobby gaming resolution equivalent of “lose weight”, but nonetheless it’s on my list just as it is on everyone else’s. But this time it’s something I really, truly aim to do in 2009 since I failed to do so every year since about 1992. This year, I really mean it. I’m looking over at my game shelf as I write this and I’m seeing games like UP FRONT, GUNSLINGER, HERE I STAND, and MARE NOSTRUM and I’m thinking “why the hell am I not playing these awesome games more often?” And the answer is in part because it seems like there’s always something new that’s come out that everybody wants to play on game night or I’m anxious to get whatever that new hotness is on the table myself.

It gets easy to forget how much you love the games you already own- and how much there is to explore in them- when there’s always something fresh catching your eye. I think 2009 is going to be the perfect year to make good on this resolution because for one thing, I’m starting the year unemployed and for another, I have such a great back catalog of incredible games at this point that I could probably never buy another new game again and be completely satisfied. But that won’t happen. There sure are some mighty fine looking new releases coming out soon...

2. Buy fewer- but better- games.



My second resolution ties into the first, naturally. I plan on buying a lot fewer games in 2009 than I did in 2008, when I bought fewer games than I did in 2007. Looking back before 2007, I was buying five or six games a month. And of course, when you’re going broad like that, the number of crap games you wind up selling at a loss on Ebay or trading away for something else crummy is awfully high. The worst though is the garbage you get a hold of that winds up lingering on your shelves for years, collecting dust and wasting space until you wind up giving the damn thing away or tossing it in the trash. The fact of the matter is that out of the hundreds of releases each year, there are probably just a very small handful of games that I think are truly worth owning. Of course, there is a degree of triage involved wherein you have to kind of sort out what belongs in your collection and what doesn’t.

Thanks to the internet, reading rules and checking out components before you buy is a lot easier and I plan on doing more careful pre-purchase research than ever before to make sure that I’m buying a game I really want and not something that we’ll play once or twice before being forgotten. I’m going to be doing away with “impulse” purchases altogether and any game that is on my “kind of want” list is hereby stricken. I’m going to buy less games in 2009, but the games I buy are going to be the ones that I think are going to have the right stuff to be permanent, meaningful additions to my collection. So no more buying the RACE FOR THE GALAXYs or TOMBs- I just want the BSGs and WORLD CUP GAMEs.

3. Get rid of a lot of crap.



The dovetailing continues in my third resolution. I’m going to be jettisoning a large portion of my game collection in 2009. I’ve already started the Ebay push and I’ve unloaded a lot of titles that I either had no interest in keeping, didn’t think would get much play any time soon, or that I was just plain sick of seeing laying there gathering dust. I’ve even gotten rid of games that I really like (like PATHS OF GLORY) simply because I can’t justify keeping a game that may not see play again until 2010 at the earliest. I’ve dismissed games that have been sitting in my basement storage (the last refuge of the damned rather than keep them around any longer, and I’ve let go of pretty much all the various collectible card and miniatures games I have for which I no longer have opponents for.

I’ve been a gaming packrat for most of my life, but I’m at the point now where I can’t justify having a ridiculously large game collection full of filler and fluff when what I really want is a lean, mean, and compact collection of only the best games. So goodbye, MARVEL HEROES. The charm of seeing Spidey and Elektra on the side of a game box on my shelf is no longer enough to justify your presence after nearly two years of negligence.

4. Reconnect with a lot of gaming friends.



In 2008, my ban on playing games with anyone outside of a select circle of people and the collapse of the larger, public game group I was a part of wound up isolating me, making me a gaming hermit. As a result, I wound up kind of losing touch with some very cool people with whom I really enjoy gaming. A lot of the old AGF crew are still around and they call me from time to time looking to play games and I’m always either too busy or involved in another gaming opportunity to meet up with them. In 2009 I intend to re-open my gaming network and get on the horn with some of these folks with whom I’ve kind of lost touch. It’s hard to break away from my core game group since it is arguably the mightiest and most amazing game group ever assembled (and that’s just our ROCK BAND 2 prowess), but if you’re one of my long, lost gaming buddies that thought I disappeared off the face of the earth in 2008 be prepared to hear from me soon.

5. Finally learn to play MAGIC REALM in real life.



OK, here’s the deal. I know how to play MAGIC REALM. Well, most of it at least. It is one of the most notoriously complex and difficult to play board games ever published but it is also one of the richest, most detailed attempts at translating the comprehensive experience of pen-and-paper RPGs to a board game format. It’s an amazing, elephantine design and I’d rank it in the top ten games of all time, easily. But I have only been able to play the game via REALMSPEAK, a brilliant Java implementation of the game and I’ve never been able to actually get other people to play it with me nor have I ever played the game with the actual paper and cardboard components.

I tried with some friends once back in 1998 or 1999 but we just couldn’t do it and if I remember correctly we wound up ditching the game in favor of TALISMAN- a move kind of like eschewing a chef-prepared filet for a plate of greasy sliders. So in 2009 I’m looking forward to buckling down, hitting the rulebooks (all three versions of it and their attendant FAQs) and learning to play the game with enough authority to round up some friends and get the game running in real life, away from the crutch that REALMSPEAK ultimately represents. I’d probably better go ahead and start setting up the infamous treasure sheet, a process longer than most Eurogames.