State of the Blog (post #600)

I skipped out talking blog stats on the 5-year post, focused on meat-space so here we'll talk about how fares the online realm in a bit more detail.

On Traffic

Everything has gone weird - I assume scraping to feed AI models? The geographic origin of traffic here used to mirror where TTRPG-ers identified as their point of origin - 55% US, then 15% UK/Canada/Australia/Ireland, 10% EU, 20% rest - and over the past couple of months I've been getting *70%* of my traffic from the Pacific Rim - bouncing between Hong Kong and Singapore. That ain't real. Stripping off all that what I assume is bot-nonsense and traffic has been stable for 2024 so far at ~ 7800 hits a month.

Looking at this in the raw from blogger we can see the anomaly clearly - standard traffic is noisy, with occassional spikes with a quick drop of if I get featured somewhere. That big, sustained ramp-up since Feb 2024 is obviously nothing to do with me - either AI scrapers, backwash from other peoples cyberwars or whatever.

I am reassured some real folk do actually turn up because there are the comments and I see myself mentioned in random chatter now and then (shiny weekly links or the 1.2 million character sheets post). The r/OSR blogroll has been killed - the last one has just been left up and ... well throw your links in there to die I guess? I find the auto-feeds that folk set up on Mastodon are much more effective anyway so I am choosing not to fight this fight anymore. Farewell r/OSR blogroll, you served your purpose for a time. The two major replacements for getting the word out have been Sly Flourishes TTRPG Blogroll feed and the TTRPG network on Lemmy which is great because you can follow it on Mastodon and it just connects straight to your feed.

And again, I have to thank the following comrade-bloggers as those who bring readers here - both the long-standing 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, A Continent of Banalities, Archons March On, 3d6 Polar Bears and Advanced Mystery and Manners. I appreciate being on your blogrolls.

On content

Most popular posts of the past 6 months - assuming that all got equally affected by the bot-nonsense this is still some measure of what was popular.
Class/Race archetypes in 1.2 million D&DBeyond characters
Review: Reach of the Roach God
Review: Worlds Without Number
Campaign Spin-Up VIII - Fuzzier West March Sandboxes
Masquerade as social depth-crawl (RPG Blog Carnival)
Terrain, Terrain, Terrain
Landing the session ending for one-shots (RPG Blog Carnival)
Chekovs Hooks III: Loose Ends from Written Modules
Thoughts on a new "DMG of house rules"
Review: Beyond Corny Gron
Growing your game group (5yr Blog-iversary)

Of all of those, I am so glad I called out that I got all this data from Dice-scroller right at the top of the post about class/race archetypes post or this would be excruciating - I changed the colours to beef up the contrast and discussed the chart of all the data they pulled and somehow this post has become the 'go-to' post for discussing the dataset not their original post. Why, internet?

The review of Reach of the Roach God has shown legs which is nice but the Worlds Without Number one is really surprising - top 3 for Q1-2024 and it got published in Dec '21! Only other notable point is that the RPG Blog Carnival is providing good chewy topics to get the creative juices flowing on a consistent basis - join in if you don't already.

Another nice online moment was when Bruce Heard (of Princess Ark and Calidar) found the table-test I did of the flying ship combat system he published on his blog and reposted that Skyship Battle Playtest to his own blog. Praise from Caesar!

Additional online effort has gone into wrangling event notices on the RPGVienna forum and on the meetup - button mashing to get people to tables rolling dice.

On Goals

Since the last major check in I can cross off one major goal in that we brought the Spelljammer Light of Xaryxis campaign over the line - only my third campaign to hit their actual planned conclusion. Otherwise open night gaming continues, DM 101 session is at least scheduled and I am getting to play some Planescape as well as continuing Rime of the Frostmaiden.

I notice I have more fodder for 'actual play' and lessons learned posts, less time to do data posts - I guess that is a good sign of more actual gaming getting done.

Going to keep this thing running, it serves well as a place to document observations and lessons learned, flex creative muscles in the Blog Carnivals and so on.