On traffic
Comparing to October last year, the #201 post - monthly averages views are up from ~2900 to ~4200. There seems to be some splash from whatever cyber nonsense is going on around the war in Ukraine (until the war, I had ~40 views/month from Russia, since March that went up to low hundreds. I doubt I have a new diehard fanbase there.
- 878 russian (last 3 months)
- 130 3 months before that
So even scrubbing out what I presume is a cyberwar traffic uptick, numbers look good
Highlights - another mention in the Glatisant! - along with giant spike in views. This time the review of Worlds Without Number and the round up of hexes crawling resources were deemed worthy. I also got a nice mention on AideDD about the analysis of their stats which drove a bunch of connection. This was very interesting to see because it looks to me like an oblique mention on a 'general gamer' resource can be huge. That small slice of the torrent landed close to the weight of the Glatisant traffic, one of the kings of the jungle in curated, subscription news letters.
On other channels things have been a similar tale of slow and steady. I gained my 600th twitter follower - and promptly lost two and have since gained them back. Continue to plug the blogroll on r/osr; drives a fair few views. I am somewhat concerned with the whispers that repetitive tweets such as signal boosting that is going to get me crushed by the algorithm on twitter but we shall cross that bridge when we come to it.
Again, I want to thank the following other blog-compatriots as those who bring readers here - Lizardman Diaries, DIY & Dragons, Chaudron Chromatique, Weaver.skepti.ch, Nothics Eye, Ynas Midgard, Uncaring Cosmos, Retired Adventurer, Kelvin Green, Awesome Lies, Spot Hidden, Shuttered Room, Wierd Wonderful Worlds and A Continent of Banalities. I appreciate being on your blogrolls - your readers seem to like my stuff too.
On content
I stood still long enough the world came to me - Spelljammer released! This was interesting as the flying rules series saw an uptick in interest and most helpfully, it has been inspiring for me, seeding many posts as you may have noticed. I also got to pontificate about it on The Adventuring Party podcast which was generous of them. Prior to #SpelljammerConfirmed it was beginning to become a grind figuring out what to write about and my tank of readied posts had dwindled to none. Now we are back up to having a few weeks advance in the tank which is less stressful.
Also got some good ideas from playing a freeform forum game run by Lizardman Diaries - the Empyrean Dynasty. Lots of politicking, very reminiscent of The League from back in college but looks to be creschendo-ing toward an even more brutal crabs-in-a-bucket fight. Inspired this 'setting through propaganda posters' post.
Most popular posts from the past 6 months were:
1. Scale and Hexes, a round-up of posts - done to collect thoughts for my own home game getting scales right, it got tagged by the Glatisant.
2. Review: Worlds Without Number - another one that got tagged by Glatisant - I find the huge amount of generators that come with the game incredibly useful.
3. Actual Test: World, Climate and Globe Mapping Tools - passing on secret lore from that best of sources The Man In The Pub. Scribbled in biro on some torn off paper, transcribed here.
4. Shiny TTRPG links collection #30 for some inexplicable reason this particular one of the weekly links posts has been persistently popular. Why this one? Cannot figure it out.
5. Player Stats for AideDD Character Builder 2020-2021 - as mentioned, general gamers are legion. It was nice to get this small connection to the jdr community in France.
6. Review: For Gold & Glory - reviewing what is supposed to be the best cleaned up retroclone of AD&D 2e (my original system). In POD format it was a real flashback to my early days of gaming.
7. Geography as destiny - emergent world-building from maps - a complement to the test of World, Climate and Globe Mapping Tools above, and how to use them to find adventure potential in a world.
8. The Big Reveal is better than the Surprise Twist - expounding on a truth that I find self-evident - players have enough to juggle, don't foil their actions by giving them bad information - give them all the information and let them figure out what to do with it.
9. Review: A Practical Guide to Medieval Warfare: Exploring History through Wargaming - a great book I was tipped off to by weaver.skepti.ch with some fantastic insights on how melee fighting really plays out to enhance your game.
10. Smaller slices of a bigger pie - older D&D editions on Roll20 - crunching the numbers on Roll20 and seeing that the smaller shares of OSR games are actually still growing communities - because 5e is growing so much on top of them.
The first 5 are also part of the most popular of all time set along with these:
11. Hidden Depths table - (6d4, 4d6, 3d8, 2d12, d4+d20) - twiddling encounter tables to use different dice sets to unlock options
12. Still Here: Lizardfolk culture post - time, heat and natural mastery - the pillars that hold up the house of scales
13. Festivities as a social depth-crawl - thinking about social events as a depth-crawl, inspired by Cavegirl's Gardens of Ynn
14. On running large open table games - lessons learned written up in anger at nay-sayers saying it cannot be done. It can, with care and attention.
15. Attitudes of Lower Planar denizens - on differentiating the various hells, abysses and their neighbours.
On goals
So what objectives for this place for the next while?
1. Try to be more interactive - comment on the posts of others where I find things interesting or manage to bring their content to table
2. Take on some more blogging challenges as an exercise - I have a Gygax 75 set simmering away even though it is going to look like band-wagoning after the recent Questing Beast video.
3. Try to get more reviews out the door - a bunch of kickstarters landed, I recovered my hoard of Dragon magazines and there have been some print-on-demand sales. Plenty of fodder for review.
4. Get in some more data posts - starting with the Obsidian Portal data, then seeing what else crops up from there.
5. Write up more in-game stuff - there are a couple of milestones coming up in my home campaign and the Planescape one-shots which once the players do the stuff I can write it up.
Despite feeling a little like I have lost direction, looking down the list of plans, drafts and ideas there is plenty of content to see me through the summer. Just a question of applying fingers to keyboard. Where this has been challenging it is because of the smallest householder, though they are cheerfully thrashing about and watching me now so not wholly their fault. Other things that have sapped time have been getting in some more gaming, which is the best of reasons and not one I am going to stop just to carve our more time to write. Time at table is the greater goal.
I will finish this by hoping you have been enjoying what you have been reading, happy to take any requests or suggestions.
Thanks for the shout out! Glad I am getting you some traffic.
ReplyDeleteI too would like to be more interactive - I think I need to put together a smaller/more concentrated list of blogs to regularly read and remember to actually comment!
I think I just have to be disciplined about writing 'huh, that was good it made me think X' as it occurs to me. Work of seconds, I should just do it, no reason not to.
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