I'm back at it again!
2020 | 2021
How was 2022?
The number of views my blog has earned itself is a little more than 10K. Not too bad, but it's not as great as I did last year. I would guess that is because of my relative lack of activity on it, at least in comparison to the last year. That in combination with the discomfort I feel about self-advertising my blog (unless it has something new, or it's relevant to a discussion I'm having with someone) is definitely a factor.
There are a couple of reasons for my relative lack of activity on the blog, which I'd boil down to my personal life and my thoughts about D&D. My life got rather busy this year, and while I recognize it can get busier, I didn't have enough time to think about things I could write here. Honesty can hurt, and facing my idealistic new year resolutions, I can tell it's going to be a tough one. I'll go out of order for reasons you'll see eventually.
D&D Goals
Vestigia and Cursed Sovereigns Compendium were two of my resolution I can admit I couldn't get myself to finish, and the reason is simple: D&D burn out. I know, it's been way too long, I thought I got through it, ... but I've given it a lot of thought, and it's fair to say that Dungeons and Dragons simply isn't for me. Sure, not a cheerful way to start the article, but I should be more open about it, and couldn't find a better opportunity to write about it last year, so here we go. Here are six reasons why I personally don't really feel like DMing a long-term campaign of D&D 5e much anymore:
- Unbalanced pillars of experience. "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Ever wondered why there's a stereotype of barbarians being bored of social interactions in D&D memes? It's because they have basically no features for it. I'm not talking just about a high Charisma score, or a skill proficiency. This isn't an issue that can be resolved by letting the barbarian use Strength for their Intimidation (mini-hot take: Intimidation and Performance should be usable with any Ability Score). Anyone in 5e can roll the dice and try to get a success. But Barbarians and Fighters lack a support in things they can do in a social interaction that aren't doable by literally everyone. Look at the wizard spell list and tell me what things in it could be useful for social interaction. Comprehend languages, detect thoughts, message, disguise self, alter self, invisibility even, and so many more. It's a flaw I can't unsee ever since I started looking into the Tavern Tales RPG - some classes get pretty much no support for one or two pillars of experience, and it... saddens me.
- Adventuring day. DMG recommends 6-8 combat encounters between two long rests, with one or two short rests inbetween. On paper it sounds like a good goal, but in practice... it's a goal that a group will rarely be able to achieve. If it's not achieved, the group will get an impression that classes relying primarily on long rest resources are way too powerful, and classes that rely either on short rest resources or no resources are too weak. I've actually tried DMing a three sessions long mini-adventure this year, in which my sole goal was to attempt achieving this, and... honestly, it felt kind of tiring to me. I can't imagine doing this every time. And while suggested solutions exist, like longer rests, ... I don't know if that would be enough for me.
- Magic system. It's too high magic. It's a matter of preference, but that's this whole list. Way too many things are possible in the system for me to reliably create a believable world, unless I invest way too much time and focus into it. And while going "for this campaign, I permit only cantrips" or "this campaign will be restricted to using only spells of illusion and enchantment schools of magic", ... I doubt too many players would enjoy it, and it would be cutting off way too many rules.
- Rogue. Yes, one whole class is an issue for me. This will likely be the most unrelatable point to the majority of readers. Believe me - I have a love-hate relationship with the concept of a rogue. Being excellent at a couple of skills sounds good in theory. It feels bad when a rogue chooses to drop one of their expertises into a skill that another player wanted to be "their thing", making them feel useless in comparison thanks to a much bigger numerical bonus. Honestly, expertise overall just feels like a very strong feature, way too good since skills can influence any pillar of experience. My strong stance on the issue is: either everyone should get at least one Expertise, or nobody should. Maybe as part of the backgrounds?
- Mismatch of ideals and design. A fancy name for a simple thing - these days, it's popular to have media that advocate for pacifism, avoiding violence, and relatable villains. D&D is focused on combat. Thus, if you make the players feel too guilty over some combat encounters, they'll start avoiding them, or trying to talk it out with the enemies, or even trying to understand the enemies and reason with them. That wouldn't be bad, but the bulk of game's rules is about combat. Avoiding combat in a game in which two thirds of the rules relate in some way to combat is like entering a candy store, only to avoid looking at or tasting anything sweet.
- Combat burnout. It's in so many places. So many TTRPGs, video games, movies, shows, etc. chooses combat as a focus, and I can see why - it's exciting, it's high stakes, and it's something pretty much everyone can understand when done right. Sometime in the spring or summer of this year, I realized that when browsing TTRPGs, I get a little more tired when I stumble upon the "combat" section of the rules, skipping it to see if there's anything else that could excite me. I don't care as much about what kinds of armor there are, how a player character can reduce damage, or how many dice do they roll to damage their foe.
Then the announcement of One D&D came, and... frankly, I wasn't surprised that this is what Wizards of the Coast want for D&D. None of my issues with the system will be fixed by it, unless they surprise me by doing something about point one. What's more, ever since its announcement I don't really feel like making homebrew for it. While 5e will be around still, and WotC promised that the systems will be compatible, ... why bother brewing right now for either? I may as well wait two years and see how the playtests and release go down. I'll also find out in the meantime if I even want to make more D&D 5e homebrew materials.
All in all, that's kind of why I didn't finish all hundred islands of Vestigia (I got the first 10, though!), or the Cursed Sovereigns Compendium. Funnily enough, at least one of the island ideas from Vestigia I want to reuse for a future article, and the Cursed Sovereigns Compendium... might be getting its own rules light TTRPG system.
Runehack
In 2022, I wrote a total of two articles about Runehack cities, the latter of them being published on April Fools with a twist of it actually being an in-world piece of fiction. Most of my year after that point I've spent mulling over ideas regarding Everling, a completely digital yet real city of Runehack, because that felt like a very strange city that I want to describe next to show how much of a contrast can be found in the world. So as you may have guessed, that's hardly the full list of cities I wanted to finish this year. In fact, my full list of ideas hardly grew this year. On my to-do list are the following cities (in no particular order):
Bedenblume, Moorwell, Everling, New Fractalis, Amberwatch, Grand Republic, Silvercove, Caldfort, Ashington, Wondermire, town, Hollow End, and two cities that have no name as of today.
Of course this is not the exhaustive list of all the cities in the world. There's more of them, but I don't feel like listing that many things about the ones that are more generic. I'd rather just summarize those in one fell swoop of an article at the end, once my to-do list is finished. While I didn't manage to fulfill that goal, though, I did write a couple of miscellaneous articles about Runehack, so that's neat!
In regards to my novel-writing, this year was rather bad. I didn't manage to make any progress with publishing my last year's novel, I didn't manage to finish this year's NaNoWriMo due to real life stresses, and I've only barely done research regarding how I could publish the first novel. I still hope to publish it, but I don't know when or how yet.
Here's a curious way to finish this section of the article: while I didn't manage to make progress on my Sprinters tabletop roleplaying game, I did make something that was inspired by it. Runehack: Fairy Heist is a game, in which players play as a group of fairies who break into big folks' houses to steal their stuff without getting caught. It started as my project for One Page RPG Jam 2022, but over time I grew fond of the system and expanded it. A couple days ago, I released a new version of the game, including several more pages of rules, expanding the game's long-term potential greatly. I even started running a campaign in it in August that's still going strong now. So even if it's a stretch, I'll consider this resolution a success.
Personal Goals
Wrapping the last two goals briefly: I didn't manage to run 10 kilometers, but at least I walked 10 kilometers a couple days ago, so that's a partial win. As for the streams, ... I've hardly managed to stream at all this year.
Hopes and Goals for 2023
Looking at my personal track record from last year, I feel rather hesitant about this section. Even if technically I fulfilled one more goal than I hoped for last year, I saw a lot of change in the way I think and feel about some of the items on the list. Hopefully, this year my list will see fewer "technical successes". I'm not sure if I'll be able to prevent those. I don't care about how many of these I'll manage to accomplish, but I'll certainly try to fulfill at least some of these goals.
Runehack: The Asterists. This is something I've been working on ever since July or August of 2022. What originally started as just another TTRPG, and another piece to a bigger system I hope to complete one day, has sort of become a video game. During my winter vacation, I took the idea and figured maybe I could do a tutorial for the game playable right in the browser to sell people on its premise. I want to finish both the TTRPG and the video game that goes along with it and publish them at the same time. The video game is in a playable state, by now it just needs polish, such as UI, possibly sound effects, and more. I plan to give the TTRPG another rewrite, hoping to both minimize the page count, but also to flesh out the setting of the game a little more, and then also give it some visuals.
I've listed the cities of Runehack above, I'd love to finish a couple more of those. Other articles about Runehack would be nice as well. Finding a platform, where I could publish my novel, would also be nice. Wattpad is an option I want to look into.
Streams will hardly be possible within the next six months. And even after that, the future is uncertain. I feel like I'd much rather start a Youtube channel, but I'm afraid of it eating up too much of my time, and having no time to actually make videos for it. I guess only time can tell.
I've considered and decided to try out the #Dungeon23 challenge. It's about creating a megadungeon, one room a day, over the course of the year 2023. I'm not sure if I'll publish the rooms monthly on the blog, or at the end of the year. I don't have plans as of yet to actually map the dungeon, just to make the rooms. Knowing myself, I'll stop caring about it sometime in February, but hey it's worth a try, I've never designed a megadungeon before.
There are also other projects I've got my mind on, most of them unnamed as of yet, or too vaguely defined. Honestly, this year is hard to predict already, and I don't feel like taking my chances with hard goals. I'll take it a little slower this year, and do things at whatever pace I'll feel like.
Anyway, I hope you'll have a wonderful year, and a nice day!
