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!

Cypher Is Backed!

The new edition of the Cypher System -- now just "Cypher" -- racked up over ten times its funding goal. Can't wait to see the finished products in 2026!

Last Day

It's the last day of the crowdfunding campaign for the new edition of the Cypher System. The link to the campaign is here.

Heroes of the Borderlands

A new D&D starter set is out today!

Spinal Tap 2

This has nothing to do with gaming, but how cool is it that Spinal Tap returns to the big screen after over four decades! Spinal Tap II: The End Continues debuts today!

UPDATE

Okay, so the latest stretch goal for the Cypher campaign is a GM Screen!

Why No GM Screen?

I've backed the crowdfunding campaign for the new edition of the Cypher System, needless to say, and ended up splurging a bit. But as I was looking down the long list of items I'll receive, I was a bit miffed at first that there was no GM screen. And then -- duh! -- I realized why. IYKYK.

Cypher Campaign Underway!

The campaign for the new edition of the Cypher System is now live! Click here to check it out. I got an email saying the game was fully funded before I even learned that it had gone live!

Cypher Preview

The funding campaign for the new edition of Cypher System will begin soon. In the meantime, you can click here for a preview of the updates!

Random Retro-Gaming Thought

We'll never get old-school D&D games on Evercade because of the licensing costs -- but why not games from The Bard's Tale franchise? Make it happen, guys!

Breaking: Cats and Dogs Pull Trigger on Blockbuster Deal

It's the offseason for my historical Strat-O-Matic hockey league, but there's still plenty of action! Almost every team is wheeling and dealing, and the granddaddy of all deals is an absolute blockbuster between the Bearcats and the Bulldogs:

Bulldogs get:

• Hap Holmes (G)
• Joe Hall (D)
• Fred "Steamer" Maxwell (LW)

Bearcats get:

• Bruce Stuart (C)
• Frank Patrick (D)
• Riley Hern (G)

I'd have to say it's the most impactful trade in the history of this league. No other deal -- not even the one that brought Tommy Dunderdale to the Dogs all those years ago -- had such potential to reshape the entire league. How did we get here? 

The short version is that it's a trade of Holmes for Stuart. In Season 11, the Dogs were revitalized by the emergence of rookie center Jack Adams and they wanted to build around him. Goaltending has been a problem for this team, even when Hern came in midway through the season and carried the Dogs to the playoffs. Trading for Holmes gives the Dogs a young goaltender with an incredibly high ceiling, a guy who has already won two Goaltender MVP trophies in just five seasons of play. Even after a down year, Holmes has the second-best save percentage in league history (.922), leaps and bounds better than the other goalies in the Bulldogs organization (Hern with a career .904 and Paddy Moran with a career .902). The Cats, meanwhile, get a true number-one center in Bruce Stuart; BruStu is fifth all-time in goals (90) and fourth all-time in points (223). He will allow the team to maximize the effectiveness of superstar left winger Joe Malone, who has never had such a talented linemate. With Stuart feeding him passes, Malone might well take the next step to become the top forward in the game, and Stuart will rack up so many assists that he might finally win a scoring title. Season 12 can't get here soon enough!

Design Diary

Monte Cook is sharing an ongoing Design Diary as he and his team develop the new edition of the Cypher System. Articles can be found here.

New Edition

Not sure how I feel about this! The Cypher System is getting a new edition in 2026. Just when I was getting into a groove with the current rules...

More MM Thoughts

I'm about two-thirds of the way through the new Monster Manual. The more I read, the less I like! Here are some random observations...

• The organization is weird. All subtypes of mephit are listed under the main entry "Mephit," but most dragons, giants, and other creatures with variants are alphabetized by subtype (e.g., you find black dragons under "B", hill giants under "H", etc.).
• Lots of foes now inflict multiple damage types on a hit, with poison being the most common (huzzah for dwarf characters!). All hobgoblins, for example, now inflict poison damage on their attacks. It's rarely clear why, however, creatures are now inflicting these additional damage types. 
• Lots of creatures and NPCs now have a generic at-will attack (often a multiattack) that's identical for both melee and ranged. This approach is used for spellcasters, too, where it makes these characters seem bland and flavorless. In "classic" 5e, spellcaster stat blocks included complete spell lists, but now the design seems to drive DMs to spam these generic melee/ranged attacks rather make tactical use of the spells listed on the stat block. I guess it's easier for DMs to run encounters this way, but it feels kind of boring. There are still spells identified as once- or twice-per-day options, but no longer are there formal spell lists broken out by level. 

Mighty Crabjoys

Side-note: There's a ton of merch for Superman on the DC website, but why can't I buy a Mighty Crabjoys t-shirt?!

Look Up

So I ended up getting the chance to see Superman after all -- and it was pretty great! I really enjoyed it, but it definitely felt like an MCU movie from ten years ago. I still prefer the Snyderverse in all its epic, imperfect grandeur. 

I'm Prone to Exaggeration

I finally got around to buying the new Monster Manual and it seems...fine, I guess. Why is it, however, that just about every monster imposes the Prone condition when it hits?