Howdy! I was inspired by a similar post of a fellow blogger of mine to look back at how I did last year, so today it's time to do a more laid back relaxed post rather than something directly related to RPGs.
How was 2020
First up, some boring statistics. Last year, I've had 8,38K views on this blog, which is a surprise even to me. I remember how back in the days when I started writing here, I was happy that my total number of views was four thousand, so to see this number makes me pretty happy. The average number of views per post is 183,85, which I consider a whole lot, even if some of the posts skew this number. I think the number of views has increased thanks to three main reasons.
- I have shared my blog more often on discord.
- I have linked my blog with every recent homebrew I've done.
- One of my posts has been pinned on Pinterest, since the source of that particular photoshopped image is on my blog.
One of the cooler things that I've done this year was the beginning of my Villainous Cookbook series on this blog. It feels like I've found something I could really dig into and write about more than once. There seem to be people out there who have been inspired by these, so I think I'll try to come up with a few more.
When it comes to sharing homebrews here, I... still don't do on this blog as well as I hoped I would, and I feel like I should apologize for that. I've made 16 homebrew posts on the /r/UnearthedArcana, and out of those only one has shown up on the blog at roughly the same time as I've published it there. Then again, my blog features multiple homebrew ideas that are not featured on the subreddit just yet, some of which might never really appear there.
I have entered the year with a D&D campaign that was ongoing. Unfortunately, over the Christmas year ago, we've got all burned out on it, so we figured we should start anew. The new campaign has started shortly before the quarantines, and once those have started, ... the campaign has slowly begun to die out. None of us was really used to playing D&D online, it just didn't feel right. What's more, I have come to learn that it's a lot harder for the DM to prepare it. Over time, doubts in my own capabilities combined with prep crunch and some very underwhelming games caused me to announce to my players a hiatus. A hiatus that will probably never really end. I've been on this hiatus for a couple months now, I've already lost count of how many.
Due to that same burnout, I've also grown more curious about other RPGs. I've looked a bit into Fate, Amber Diceless RPG, a micro hack of Blades in the Dark, and most importantly since I have actually played a game in it as opposed to the other two, Tavern Tales RPG. There are more systems out there, and while I still feel that I'd enjoy more making my own than reading a new one, I've learned some new things by reading already existing systems others have made. I've tried to make some RPG systems of my own this year too, but I can tell at least one of them will get a complete overhaul in the near future written up.
To finish this part on an upside, I participated in the NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month. The goal for anyone participating in this challenge is to write a novel with more than 50K words over the month of November. Besides writing a couple of short stories and posts on this blog, as well as homebrews, I don't actually have experience writing long stories like that, but I figured after years of preparation, it's my time to attempt it. I can say with confidence, that I have succeeded, finishing the last of the words on November 23rd, one week ahead of the deadline. It was an exciting experience that I originally wanted to talk about more in-depth, but came to realize over time that there isn't all that much to talk about. Instead, I'd surely like to develop the world this novel takes place in, and maybe write more articles about it here.
Goals and Hopes for 2021
I want to improve, so let's see what New Year Resolutions I can make!
Homebrew. While I wouldn't consider it reasonable to put numerical goals on my own homebrews that are completely new, seeing how it's difficult to get new ideas on command, I would like to at least update either more than 3 subclasses or at least 1 compendium of mine. I'm kind of bad at returning to my old homebrews in a timely manner in order to update them, so we'll see how this goes. At the same time, the brews I make I would like to brand with my logo and repost on the blog if I remember to.
Blog. I want to make at least one post every month without counting the posts describing homebrews I publish. Hopefully, the total number of posts (including homebrew ones) is going to be higher than ever before.
Villainous Cookbook. I've got at least 4 ideas for the next entries in this series, so ideally I'd love to publish each of them, and then find some way of compiling all of these in a big compendium so that they're easier to read through and refer to in the future.
Novel. I would like to go through the first draft of my NaNoWriMo novel and fix up some of the errors, plus finish one of the chapters so that I could pass it to the proofreaders.
Runehack. I want to write some articles here about the setting my novel takes place in, as I've said before, in order to develop it further. Any potential spoilers will either be hidden or completely omitted. Another potential article I've considered is a preview of the novel itself, but I can't make any promises of that being ready this year.
Feedback. I know my blog has no comments, so I figured I should lead by example. When I read a blog post, I'll try my best to leave a comment on it. Unless I just have to make a completely new account to do so. I don't expect this to change anything about my blog, but it's a change that could hopefully make me personally better in giving feedback to others.
Game. I want to get back into playing a campaign. I could perhaps start writing a couple of articles on the D&D setting I've worked out, to describe the steps I've taken, and maybe even my sources of inspiration. One big thing I'll have to make up my mind on is whether I want to keep on playing with my current party or find a new one. Another is, what kind of system do I play this game in? My current party has told me they prefer D&D, at least over a system like Tavern Tales. But maybe a new party could be more open to something new.
I think that could do it, at least for my goals related to tabletop RPGs, homebrews, and this blog. I'm happy about how much work I've got done last year, and I feel like I could do at least some of these this year. I have several homebrews in my workshop almost ready for publishing, several villains to write up recipes for as I mentioned before, and a world that's almost ready for a campaign, with a very very basic concept of a game to take place in it (that could definitely use more details).
As a final note, I hope you'll accept my small gift to you all. Someone asked me the other week about why I'm bothering with writing a blog, and one of the reasons I gave was that I like to revisit my old ideas at times. One such article, the one that talked about the souls, has reminded me of a very old idea I had. Hearts, sources of magic for each plane of existence, as an alternative to the Weave. Since I wanted these to be extremely powerful, I figured I should make them so. Two days ago, I have posted one as a way of wishing the community Happy New Year, so it's time to present it to you all too. Please welcome the Heart of the Material, the source of the Material Plane's magic that grows more powerful the older it gets!
I hope you all had good Christmas as well as holidays in general, and I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year 2021!
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