Another year has come and gone. It was an eventful year at that.
How was 2023?
In one word, this year could be summed up as eventful. With 11.6K views of the blog, it surpassed the last year, but not 2021. I feel like that's partially because of the fact that I stopped making D&D homebrews 3 months in, for good. Part of the reason for that is the distance that grew between me and D&D since then (see my review of 2022), but another part of this is an elephant in the room. Starting in early January, Wizards of the Coast have seen controversy after controversy. OGL, Pinkertons, AI art, misprinted cards, and so much more. The two things they have succeeded at are the D&D movie, which was good, but came to the cinemas with bad timing, … and Baldur's Gate 3. At the same time, One D&D has been renamed to D&D 5e 2024, and it's... not looking all that much different from what's currently 5e.
All this in combination with my dislike of D&D in general is why my publishing has slowed down this year. On April 1st, I released Null, my only serious published full class for Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. This was also meant to be my final 5e homebrew, so I made sure it was an interesting one, breaking the conventions of the game to open up the readers' perspectives. I haven't stopped following D&D for some reason, though I did redirect my attention elsewhere.
Here's some good news, though! I managed to surpass my personal record of articles written in a year once again. My former record was in 2021 at 27 articles. When I found out that I was very close to this number in December, I figured I'd go just a bit further, pushing it up to 28. Maybe that's why there were more blog views than last year. The biggest contributing factor to this would have to be the fact that I gave myself a new monthly challenge of making a 200-word game every month. What I find funny, looking back at it, is the fact that my busiest months were April, October, and December. I can somewhat understand April - April Fools is something I always try to do, and the monthly 200-word game added another article there. October was around the time when I finished The Asterist, published a design article for another horror game of mine, and made a 200-word game, then I had some extra ideas. As for December, well... like I already said, I went a bit further than expected to break my personal record. I wonder if I will be active in these months next year too.
That being said, let's address my resolutions from the last year.
Resolutions from 2023
I find it funny that I said I wanted fewer technical successes, that's pretty much most of the stuff I accomplished this year.
- Runehack: The Asterist is finally released! While I can't say I'm 100% satisfied with it, at least it's out for people to see and play.
- As for more Runehack Cities, I wrote... one. It's not much, but hey at least it's a technical success, right?
- Streaming was hardly present during the year, I think the Twitch recap told me I've streamed five times? Well, that changed a bit in December when I started to stream Lethal Company more. I'm not sure if I should count that though. I also started a Youtube channel like I hoped I would! But... it also has just one video for now, and even that's just an introduction.
- Dungeon23 was a big failure, with most of the wind being taken out of my sails due to the OGL controversy. Over time, I didn't feel like returning to it because I realized... I don't enjoy dungeons. I don't enjoy combat as much as I used to. My tastes have changed. However, during January I felt like releasing a 200-word game, and I also made one in February. This made me reconsider this goal, and instead of making a daily room for a megadungeon I'd never use anyway, I made a 200-word game every single month, most of which I will probably never play.
Some of my successes were not resolutions for me last year (or at least they should have been mentioned in my last yearly review). I managed to republish the Slasher Oneshot System with a new name Final: Sole Survivor. I started gathering information regarding my worldbuilding and even personal notes into an Obsidian vault, which I find to be highly useful now. I also traveled ten thousand kilometers to meet Arell, which was a fantastic experience, even if it was rather scary since I had to do it on my own.
Hopes and Goals for 2024
I'll still keep it light because I don't know how much I can afford to aim for. I only have two resolutions this year, the first of which is finishing and publishing the Runehack RPG, with regular updates on this blog, YouTube, or Twitch (based on whatever I'll go with this year). It will be a mixture of many things I wish to get out of playing TTRPGs, including most of the design from Runehack: Fairy Heist and Runehack: The Asterist. Both of these projects served as testing grounds for the concepts that would go into the Runehack RPG, and I can make it work within the next year. My goal is to cover at least the hacking and freerunning pillars of experience along with the core rules. I already started writing the first blog post regarding the system, though I wonder if I should be more active on YouTube. Not many people read my blog, it might be more interesting as a video. Besides, you can listen to a video while you do other things, such as chores.
My other resolution was actually something I came up with after New Year's Eve. I consume a rather small amount of media. There are recommendations I received for good things, and I was never too concerned with not spoiling myself on them, so I already know a fair bit about them. As some dude once said, the secret to creativity is in well-hidden sources. It needs food for thought, so my idea is to play 12 good games this year. If they are video games, I need to play them until I believe I've finished them to a sufficient degree. If they are tabletop RPGs, I need to play just one session. Those of you who have read my previous New Year resolutions might be wondering why I worded it the way I did - why not make it another "once a month" deal? Why not play one good game every month? Well, to put it bluntly, Witcher 3 is the primary reason. This game supposedly has 100+ hours of playtime. If I were to play it every single day in a month, I'd need to play for over 3 hours daily. There's no way I could afford to do that. But at the same time... I want to finish it finally. I don't know if I'll ever have enough time to finish it otherwise.
I can't guarantee I'll keep making more 200-word games, seeing how each one is more of a proof of concept rather than an actual game, but I can't say I'll completely stop either. The rest of my goals are either too personal to list here, or something I can't 100% guarantee I can do. Game jams, NaNoWriMo, and other kinds of challenges might have to go to the side since I want to focus on Runehack and gaming a lot more.
Thank you for reading my blog. I would like to wish you a Happy New Year 2024. Have a great one, I'll see you soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment