Season 12 at the Halfway Point

With a lot of not-so-great stuff going on personally and professionally, I haven't been able to jump into fun stuff like Strat-O-Matic with the same time and energy as in years past. I am, however, chipping away at Season 12 in my historical hockey league. It's shaping up to be a really fun season!

The biggest story at the halfway point (each team having played 10 of their 20 regular-season games) is the resurgence of the Millionaires, who've finished dead last for three straight seasons. As of today, the Millies are sitting in first place at 6-1-3 and have already surpassed their Season 11 win total. Their years-long string of futility has allowed the them to draft high-end talent, and those young players are starting to come together here in Season 12. With a league-best +11 goal differential, the team's success seems legitimate and not the result of a lucky streak. With a deep roster of forwards who play a relentless attacking style, the Millies are fun to watch. It's too early to say whether they'll hang on to first place, but a return to the playoffs appears to be a certainty. 

How about the rest of the league? The Victorias are a well oiled machine and running a strong second, followed by the Bulldogs and the defending Creighton Cup champions, the Comets. With a -5 goal differential and many underperforming players, the Comets are really suffering from a post-Cup hangover. The Bearcats and Thistles will likely be chasing them for the fourth and final playoff spot.

As for individual players, the league leader in points is a flashy, high-scoring defenseman -- but it's not Cyclone Taylor! Harry Cameron of the Millionaires, in his fifth season, has unlocked his full potential and is having an incredible year. With 17 points (6 goals, 11 assists), Cameron is the only defenseman other than Taylor to lead the entire league at the midway mark. (Even more impressively, he's rocking a +13, also tops in the league, proving that he's elite at both ends of the ice.) Taylor is right behind Cameron with 16 points, so it's also the first time in league history that two defensemen have stood atop the leaderboard so late into the season. Right behind them are two Millionaires forwards, Mickey MacKay and Frankie Foyston, each with 15 points. That's right: The Millies have three of the top four point producers (and four of the top ten). 

Remember that big trade I posted about? Six players were involved, but it really came down to number-one center Bruce Stuart going to the Bearcats in exchange for superstar goaltender Hap Holmes heading to the Bulldogs. Thus far, the trade has worked out well for both teams. Holmes is allowing 2.20 goals per game and has a .932 save percentage that will keep him in the running for Goaltender MVP. He's a big reason why the Dogs are in playoff position despite a roster full of underperforming forwards and an offense that's tied for the league's worst. Over on the Cats, Stuart is putting up great numbers (5 goals, 7 assists) alongside Joe Malone, the league leader with 7 goals. Interestingly, Jack Adams -- the sophomore pivot who has taken on Stuart's former role as the Dogs' top centerman -- has the exact same goal and assist totals as the man he replaced.

A final theme for Season 12 is that many star scorers are scuffling. Newsy Lalonde, the reigning Forward MVP, has 2 goals in 10 games, and Tommy Dunderdale has just 1. Offense is down across the entire league, in fact. Teams are averaging 2.45 goals per game to date, down from 2.76 last season. On the flip side, goaltenders are having a season for the ages. The starting goaltenders on all six teams have a save percentage of .900 or better (with Bowse Hutton of the Vics leading the charge at a whopping .942). I was curious about how their stats compare to recent seasons, and the numbers are pretty interesting: Goalies are averaging .918 this year, compared to .908 in Season 11 and .911 in Season 10. Will goalies continue to rule, or will scorers get their revenge? Can't wait to see how it plays out in the second half!

Another Grand Champion!

Nathaniel's custom character Grandpa Nuker is now the second NBA Hangtime grand champion of our household!

Darkwater

I've had this strange feeling in the back of my head for the past several months.

It's been a while since there was a new Warhammer Quest game...

Well, a new entry in that series is on the way. It isn't a second edition of Blackstone Fortress, alas, but Warhammer Quest: Darkwater sounds like a lot of fun!

Torchlight 3.5

As I've probably shared in the past, the Torchlight campaign setting -- originally known by the more evocative title Woden's Gallows -- was my submission to Wizards for their big contest to create a new D&D setting. (Ultimately, the winner was Eberron. How could anyone top magic robots?!) I'll call that one Torchlight 1.0. 

A few years later, I ended up using Torchlight as the setting for a couple of early 4e campaigns, one in-person and one chat-based. This world was not a great fit for 4e, however, because of the new dragonborn and tiefling PC races introduced in the PHB for that edition. Incorporating those races and their cultures into the world resulted in Torchlight 2.0, which I felt was a pretty boring place. It had lost much of its unique Anglo-Saxon flavor. I didn't use Torchlight at all in the early days of 5e, since by that time my kids were  already playing in the Shattered Realm setting. 

In 2020, when we were all spending a lot of time by ourselves for some reason, I decided to resurrect Torchlight. I did a lot of world-building, but it was not system-specific. I scrapped all the D&D 4e nonsense and got back to the setting's roots in Anglo-Saxon poems like The Battle of Maldon, The Wanderer, and, of course, Beowulf. Now I had a great setting again -- Torchlight 3.0 -- but with no real plans to use it in a campaign, primarily because it still just didn't feel right as a D&D setting.

Enter the Cypher System. That was really the (Torch)light bulb moment in which I realized that Cypher was a far better system for this world. It quickly became the default fantasy setting in my growing Front Porch Multiverse spreadsheet that brings together all the (non-Druid Cycle and non-Shattered Realm) campaigns of my gamemastering career. Recently, I felt inspired to flesh out the world even more, adding a whole new continent and hundreds of new characters and locations. It's not a revamp of what preceded it, but there are some pretty big geographical and historical changes, so I'm calling it Torchlight 3.5. I can't wait for an opportunity to bring it to life with players!