Review of my 2021

I did it last year, so I'll do it again.

How was 2021

With 14.9K views, it's fair to say that the blog has improved quite a lot. I'd say that the primary cause of this is my presence in a greater variety of groups, writing on it more often. These result in it being shared with more people, and more often. Compared to last year, I'll change up the structure and talk about each of the resolutions I made one year ago.

Homebrew

This year was a little more difficult on homebrews for me. I have made some, but I haven't made as many as I did some of my previous years, mostly because I focused on writing more stuff for the blog. Here are some of the brews I've published last year:

• The Roamer, an artificer specialization for lovers of bikes,
• Flatbread Specialization, an April Fools' post for an artificer who invited pizza and pizza delivery services,
• Minimus Magus, a rework of my fighter subclass that focuses on making the most out of their cantrips,
• Soulweaver and College of the Nameless, two undead-themed subclasses for the Playing Dead, a product I'll mention in a bit,
• 10 Guidelines to Moderating Magic, which is not a player material and more of a set of suggestions for DMs to consider when figuring out their worldbuilding,
• Inchlings, a race of cute tiny people inspired by the Borrowers,
• and several Devotees of the Kings and Queens, which I'll talk about in a bit.

There were fewer homebrews and further apart, but going back through them, most of them have been more popular than any previously released products of mine. It's not something I've intended, but I suppose I focused more on the quality rather than quantity of my products.

What's more, I've published two products, one of which can be bought, and the other can only be bought. Runehack: University's Pillars is a solo journalling tabletop RPG, in which the player must maintain balance in their personal, scholarly, and social life by balancing three towers of stacked dice. It was made as part of the One Page RPG Jam, and I am happy about how it turned out. The other project came to be when the small community behind the Mooncell subreddit, which I am a part of, has decided to put their heads together and make a compendium for players who want to play undead characters. Playing Dead is a fairly successful product, and I still find it hard to believe I became part of the team writing it just like that.

My goal of revisiting at least three subclasses or one compendium of mine was successfully fulfilled. The Trial of the Seven Queen is going to get reworked into a project I've hoped to make for a long time but got stuck on for a time. The Cursed Sovereigns Compendium will be... coming soon™, whenever the artworks for the rest of Kings and Queens get completed. Most of my brews do bear my brand, but I also forgot to post most of them to my blog. I'll consider this a success though!

Blog Posts

The only month, for which I haven't written an article this year, was November. The total number of articles I've published is 27, which is a lot more than the 18 articles I aimed for. I'll forgive myself for the November, NaNoWriMo was exhausting enough, even if I could have prepared myself an article to publish in November during October. Success!

Villainous Cookbook

I'm happy to say that the Villainous Cookbook is, for now, finished. The finale was a lengthy article about an infinite elven army, which I definitely want to have present in my future settings instead of the default "human is default" feel. Compiling them into a compendium will be a bit harder because some of them will require a rewrite - things I assumed would get from UA into a book didn't. We'll see what comes for this in the future, in the meantime, I will gladly announce this was a success!

Novel

Sadly, I didn't get to rewrite it through the year, until November came around. When I participated in NaNoWriMo again, I overhauled the novel, changing almost everything in it. I'd say the rewrite made it a lot better, as well as...

Runehack

Writing articles about my world was a difficult endeavor, but it was worth all the effort. After writing about the various cities in the world, I had a much easier time writing my novel. There are plenty of other details too that I discussed privately with my closest friends, which eventually made their way into the novel. This resolution and the previous one are both a resounding united success.

Feedback

While others had only small mistakes here and there, things are going to go downhill from here. Writing comments on every blog post I've read is a difficult thing to remember to do. I will say that when it came to smaller blogs like those of my friends who I got into writing these, I always left a comment whenever I finished an article of theirs. But as the year went on, I forgot more and more often to do it on blogs I don't have a personal connection with. I'll chalk this one up as a failure, but I think I'll keep leaving comments on the small blogs my friends have, and maybe on some others too every now and then.

Game

... yeah, about that. I did not start a new campaign at all. While I've participated in some as a player, I've run very few TTRPG sessions this year. I think... two of them? Yeah, this one is overall a failure.

I think I overcame my burnout, but then went into the phase of overthinking my next campaign. The 10 Guidelines to Moderating Magic were a good helping step for me to figure out what I want out of D&D, and my article on minimalistic worldbuilding is another great idea that I plan to use, but now the hard part is solidifying the rest of the world, getting a group together, and actually dedicating several hours of my time to them every week or two.

Unrelated to any of the above resolutions, there's one other dream of mine that I've had as a new year resolution for several years, but to no avail until this year. Some of you may have noticed that my Runehack articles have been brought to life by original artworks created by my dear friend Arell. Well, about two months ago, we have talked about something very important together, and I can gladly announce that our friendship has blossomed into an actual relationship. While I'm not going to edit the past articles, in which I've used artworks she has drawn just for me, I think it's only fair to credit her from now on as I should - as my girlfriend. I usually don't talk about my personal life on this blog, but this was fairly important to me and her.

Goals and Hopes for 2022

I think I'll write them in a bullet point list, otherwise, this article will get even longer. I wouldn't say that these things are all my new year resolution, the resolution is to fulfill at least one of these, but hopefully more than one.

• Vestigia. Write articles that would describe a total of 100 islands floating in my minimalistic D&D world.
• Runehack. Finish writing articles for all of the cities I have figured out at the moment for my Runehack.
• Novel. I'd love to get my novel published, but I have no clue if it'll be possible within one year. The second draft is done, now I just need to go through it, fix all of it, and then figure out how to do publishing. Sounds easy enough... for now.
• Cursed Sovereigns Compendium. It's not too high on my priorities list, since I'd rather let Arell work on potential commissions rather than ask her for more artworks of the remaining kings, queens, and other potential things in the book. But finishing and publishing this even just in PDF form would be cool.
• 10 kilometers. It might not be a D&D goal, but I would love to run 10 kilometers someday again. I did succeed at it a couple years ago, but relative to back then I got out of shape due to various forms of stress.
• Stream. I've started to do some more livestreams on Twitch last year, and I would like to do some more.
• Sprinters. I want to finish my TTRPG that takes place in the world of Runehack. More details on that in the future, possibly soon.

Of course, this is not everything, but it's everything I'd like to state on the blog. I will continue to leave comments on the blogs of my friends to help them out, 

Edit: I almost forgot about one of the resolutions.