As we rapidly close in on the end of 2025, and I emerge from a festive haze of meat and alcohol consumption, I figured it would be a good idea to reflect on the year that was. I will talk a bit about D&D, but this one will also have some reflections on life, and a lot of writing about other media, mostly because I don't have another outlet for that at the moment. For those not into that, I'll see you in 2026. For the rest of you, let's continue.
2025 was, in many ways, a year for regathering strength. I didn't embark on any major new ventures, or start any new projects, or learn any new skills. There were losses, one felt very deeply; but there were also gains, and new starts. As I approach 50 (I'll turn 47 on New Year's Eve), I'm finding that life is more and more about weathering those losses, and learning to appreciate what you had and still have. I managed to get through my first 40 years without being deeply affected by much of anything, but I'd much rather be the person I am now than the one I was before.
What I'd also rather be is a person who plays a lot of Dungeons & Dragons. Alas, I haven't managed that this year, which is entirely on me. I don't have a particularly hectic life, so I should be able to fit it into my schedule. But I have low motivation and bad time management skills, both of which I need to work on. I do feel like I've been working towards a deeper understanding of the game, however. I hope my posts have reflected that, and will continue to reflect that in 2026. I have plans...
It's been my most productive blogging year since 2020, but 13 posts is nothing to brag about. Right now I'm trying to write a post every Sunday night, which is as good a New Year's Resolution as any. I'm not sure if anyone will read them; I've always been on the very outer edges of the D&D blog-o-sphere, which is a real feat considering the blog's early start in 2007. But writing is good for me, so I'll make the attempt.
I don't have a long list of inspiring D&D content like I did last year, but there's still stuff out there that I'm vibing with. BXBlackrazor has become the blog I enjoy most, especially when JB is writing about AD&D and adventure gaming. His posts have been especially enlightening of late. Tao of D&D remains the D&D blog that I admire the most. Alexis, while often prickly, is always thoughtful, and I find a lot of value in the way that he challenges how I think about the game. If only we had more blogging Dungeon Masters like him. I listened to a lot of Ben Riggs podcast Reading D&D Aloud, which has morphed from a show where he and co-host Scott Bruner would literally read the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide aloud, to a roundtable discussion with different guests each week. I preferred the old format, but it's still a good show depending on the guests. But on the whole, I'm finding less D&D stuff of value to me on the internet. Possibly that's the curse of being someone who prefers written content to video.
That's enough about D&D, though. I'll be writing plenty about that next year. To wrap up, I'm going to do a round-up of various media, and the things I've enjoyed most in 2025. Here goes!
Books
I did not read enough books this year. My Goodreads summary came through today, and it shows that I only got through 12. A big chunk of that was a Tolkien reread. I read The Silmarillion, as well as annotated versions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Both were fascinating, especially reading the original version of The Hobbit for the first time. But I probably don't need to revisit Tolkien for a good long while.
I also knocked The Great Gatsby off my list of classics to be read. (Spoiler, he's not so great.) In terms of fantasy classics, I read The Last Unicorn, which was my favourite novel of the year. Such a beautiful book. It's from an alternate strand of fantasy that I feel didn't much influence D&D, but it's better than most of the things that did.
As for non-fiction, the best book I read was Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America. McMahon (long-time head honcho of the WWE for those who don't know) is probably my favourite TV character ever, and is just as interesting in real life in spite of his many heinous activities. This book does the best job of pinning down his mercurial character that I've ever seen. It's a shame it cuts off the story in 2000 or so. And that it was written and released before the Janel Grant case that's still ongoing. It's still the best McMahon biography I've encountered.
Pro Wrestling
While I'm on the topic... It's been a weird year in wrestling. To be honest, it's always a weird year in wrestling, but this year has felt like the end of an era more than most.
It's been a year dominated by the wrestling retirement of John Cena, who has said he'll never wrestle again. Unlike many other wrestling retirements, I think this one will stick. I've had a troubled relationship as a wrestling fan with John Cena. I think most fans who didn't grow up with him had a similar experience. I came back to wrestling around 2005, at the start of his rise to stardom, when he was saluting the troops and playing the ultimate American good guy. I hated his character, especially because he would win all the damn time. He's probably the biggest reason I barely watched from 2007 to 2014. Then, somewhere around 2016, a shift started. He wasn't the top guy any more, and while he'd still win most of the time, he was losing when it mattered and putting on better matches. That year turned me around on him, and I became a fan. It probably also helped that he went part time not long after.
His retirement year has been a really odd mix of ups and downs. I thought he'd just coast his way through on goodwill, maybe win the title one more time, and lose to the next top guy on his way out. Instead, he turned heel in March, something fans had been begging for for years. And it was a great moment. He cut some great promos afterwards. The matches were rocky to start with (he was deliberately wrestling a boring style). The teased involvement of The Rock and Travis Scott (some rapper, I dunno) amounted to nothing. Things improved with a feud with longtime foe Randy Orton, and then CM Punk. Then the heel turn just ended with Cena shrugging his shoulders and going back to his old self. It was hard to be upset, because he put on some of the best matches of his career towards the end. His match with Cody Rhodes at Summerslam was probably my match of the year. But I feel like a lot of storytelling potential was left off the table. Wrestling really isn't the place to go for quality storytelling, but there were so many wasted moments.
The one thing Cena's retirement has highlighted is that there are a LOT of great wrestlers nearing the end of their careers. Edge, Christian, AJ Styles, CM Punk, Brock Lesnar, Randy Orton, Rey Mysterio... I feel like most of WWE's top card are 40+, and there aren't a lot of prospects coming up that I'm a fan of, aside from Dirty Dominik Mysterio and Bronson Reed. AEW has a roster that skews younger, and has more wrestlers I like. As usual, there's always great new talent filtering in. But I think there's going to be a big gap at the top end in a few years.
Aside from Cena's retirement year, it feels like WWE has been in a holding pattern, retreading a lot of the same old feuds. With literal madman Vince McMahon out and his son-in-law Paul Levesque running the show, it's been a much steadier production, but that's come with a price. Nothing's been surprising, aside from Cena's heel turn. Oh, and the Paul Heyman story that culminated at Wrestlemania was very good. But since then it's been very staid, and a tad boring. I miss Vince's crazy bullshit, as nonsensical and out of left field as it often was. Note that I'm not advocating for the man's return; that ship has sailed. But some more of his brand of insanity in the storylines would be welcome.
Outside of WWE, I've only really been following AEW, which has been very much a year of two halves. The first half, where Jon Moxley and the Death Riders were running roughshod over the promotion to the point of tedium, almost had me tuning out. The second half, since he lost the title, has produced some of the best wrestling I've ever seen, and a run of pay-per-views that is very hard to match. The booking may be a bit haphazard at times, but in terms of match quality AEW is killing it every week.
TV
Look, I watch a lot of pro-wrestling, current stuff and old stuff. It doesn't leave a lot of time for regular TV shows, and I only got through the new seasons of three shows: Rings of Power, Doctor Who, and Cobra Kai.
I don't know why I watch Rings of Power. There's no respect there for the world that Tolkien created. And yet, I get all the choices made. I get why there's a greater emphasis on diversity than Tolkien's writing would suggest. I get why they're condensing everything that happened in the Second Age into the span of a few months. I don't necessarily like it, but I'll probably be back for season 3... At least the reveal of Sauron as Annatar, Lord of Gifts looked cool. And I am amused that Elrond looks exactly like legendary Australian wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist, so that's something.
Doctor Who is my favourite show, ever. Since 2018, it has been a show I genuinely do not enjoy. The Jodie Whitaker/Chris Chibnall years where tough to get through. The recent seasons with Ncuti Gatwa and the return of Russell T. Davies have been more interesting, with some episodes I've really loved. But they've also highlighted the aspects of Russell's writing that I hate the most, leaning into a brand of silliness that I don't care for. Don't get me wrong, Doctor Who should be silly... but it should also strive to be clever, and Big Russ leans too far into childishness for my tastes. The show's on hiatus for now, returning for a Christmas special in 2026 (seemingly without the backing of Disney this time, but with Russell still at the helm). I'd dearly love it to be my favourite show again.
The show I enjoyed most was Cobra Kai. Yes, it's blatant fanservice, and teen melodrama where karate is the most important thing in the world. But it's also teen melodrama where karate is the most important thing in the world. It's a show I found to be endearingly earnest, and I was really happy that the final season stuck the landing, and managed to give a satisfying payoff to every character involved. Now, please let it rest. (I know they won't, they gotta strip-mine that IP for all it's worth.)
Video Games
I did very little gaming this year. My quest to finish the Ultima series continued as I finished Ultima VI and started Worlds of Ultima: Savage Empires. They're both good games, but neither are series high-points for me. The game I'm currently playing, though, is incredible: the long-awaited sequel to Hollow Knight, Silksong. What a game. Playing it is just about all I've done since October. I think it might be the best game of its kind that I've ever played. Previously I'd have given this accolade to Super Metroid, or maybe Hollow Knight... but I think that for sheer scope Silksong trumps them both. Yes, it's a difficult game. I've had many frustrating nights stuck on a single boss fight. But it's never been too hard, and it gives me exactly the kind of open world exploration that I crave. I haven't loved a game this much since Breath of the Wild.
Comics
It's been a really down year for comics. Do keep in mind that I pretty much exclusively read Marvel, which has no doubt contributed to my ennui. Also keep in mind that I am an X-Men tragic, and the X-Men titles have been uniformly tedious since the 2024 relaunch. I've been reading the X-books since 1991, and no matter how bad they got there was always a book or two I was really excited about. I was hugely into the Krakoa era that lasted from 2019 to 2024. It was a fresh take that treated the X-Men more like sci-fi characters than superheroes, and aside from a few missteps I loved it. Even after the era's mastermind Jonathan Hickman departed mid-story, I still really enjoyed the Kieron Gillen and Al Ewing books that followed. But post-Krakoa, with a more traditional relaunch, I just haven't found much to like. The flagship books by Jed McKay and Gail Simone are okay, but unexciting. I'm starting to think maybe I've just been reading them too long... but it was only a little over a year ago that I was really excited about them, so who knows. Alas, the future plans don't look any better than the current books, and there aren't any writers waiting in the wings that would get me excited (unless Al Ewing makes a comeback).
The rest of the Marvel line has been a little better. Fantastic Four is a standout, with Ryan North creating great one-shot scifi stories full of big ideas. Jed McKay's Moon Knight is still solid. Thor by Al Ewing is an amazing blend of actual mythology and Marvel mythology, but Al Ewing is pretty reliably my favourite writer in comics today so that's no surprise. Overall, Marvel's in a slump though.
Movies
I left movies until last, because I go to the cinema every Tuesday. So I've seen a lot of them this year, and of all the things I'm covering here it's the one in which I most venture outside of my comfort zone. It comes with going every week, eventually there are times when there's nothing on that I want to see. So I take a chance on whatever looks most interesting, and sometimes those end up being the movies I enjoy the most.
I don't think I had a standout favourite for new movies this year. Sinners was great, especially because I had no idea going in what kind of movie it was going to be. I loved Mickey 17, despite some rough edges; it's the kind of non-franchise sci-fi that I wish there was more of. The Phoenician Scheme was another Wes Anderson movie for those of us that like that kind of thing. I loved The Surfer, because I'm always up for a slow-burn Nicolas Cage freakout.
As a fan of superhero comics I'm always paying close attention to the superhero movies even though I'm thoroughly sick of them. This year was more of the same middle-of-the-road fare. Captain America: Brave New Dawn and Thunderbolts came and went without leaving much of an impression. I had high hopes for Fantastic Four: First Steps, but not even Marvel could deliver a great movie with those characters (although I did love the retro-futuristic designs). I fear that this might have been the last chance for someone to knock it out of the park with the FF... Thankfully, James Gunn did knock it out of the park with Superman. It's exactly the kind of bright, hopeful Superman movie I've been waiting for. If you're not happy that Superman saved a squirrel, I don't know what to say to you.
Some other movies I liked... The Naked Gun was surprisingly funny, in a landscape where genuine comedies just don't make it to the cinema any more. Spinal Tap II: The End Continues was a good enough sequel to one of my favourite movies, and I'm not mad that it exists. (Sometimes that's all you can hope for.) Predator: Badlands did a bunch of things with the franchise that I thought I'd hate, but it was surprisingly fun. The Running Man was a good adaptation of the book, even if it shied away from the ending where the hero flies a plane into a skyscraper. Wake Up Dead Man was another enjoyably twisty-turny Benoit Blanc mystery.
I have to end by mentioning the Minecraft movie. I don't know what to tell you, I enjoyed the hell out of it. It's so, so stupid. But I grew up in an era where movies based on video games were very much not based on the actual video games. You never knew what you were getting when one came out. But this was a goddamn Minecraft movie, and it never let you forget that for a second, and I loved it in all of its glorious stupidity. I'll probably never watch it again.
So, that's a wrap on 2025. Who knows what next year will bring? More movie watching certainly. I have got to read more books, and I'd like to write more. I've been finding time to play some board games, so I suspect more gaming in my future. I suspect that in early 2026 my life will continue to be dominated by Silksong... But most of all, I want to play more D&D. I know I said that last year, so I can't guarantee that it'll happen. I don't really make resolutions anymore, but I did make one earlier in this post: more blogging. Shouldn't be too hard to beat 13 posts, right?
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