State of the Blog (post #900)

The blog rattles along, last such milestone in the 3-digit posts. I hit a tough patch in the immediate post-Xmas lull; finding it hard to get things back up and running which may have been associated with finishing out a Rogue Trader (CRPG) run that ate sleep. I find myself now with a whole bunch of post drafts based on transcribed notes and a forward-log of two weeks so in a better place. Which is good because a new small householder is now causing new sleep disruption.

Between this and the last State of the Blog there has been quite a bit of recognition for the Shiny Weekly Links (including a Bloggie nomination) which is validating.

There has been quite a chunk of discussion on how blogging is not gaming which is also useful to put things in perspective; for me, I have found help for my games on other peoples blogs - an apt random table, a useful how-to, an inspirational site or monster or class - and this blog is my attempt to both log my own experiences to try and avoid forgetting the lessons I learn and to put my ideas and experiences out there like seed in a bird-feeder, hopefully that the games of others might benefit as mine have from theirs.

On traffic

The stats are bananas, I have no doubt these are utterly poisoned by bots, scrapers and AI training but I put them up to give a sense of what I am seeing. Lines goes up, but are any humans in there?

I have handed off stewardship of the r/OSR blogroll to stalwart comrade Leicester's Ramble and the stats for that look relatively healthy. They have significantly higher reddit karma than I, I hope this helps bring the blogroll to more eyes. With rumblings about Discord becoming non-viable and the general rolling background of social media enshittifying in various ways, maintaining more channels is a good idea, I feel.

To that end, I have joined the New Old Gaming blogring and rootr.ing for the same reasons - I see rootr.ing already seems to be leading to a bunch of folk stopping by which is neat.

On Comrades

Since last State of the Blog there has also been the magisterial Blog-o-sphere work by Elmcat which as allowed us to see quite a few things about the Blogosphere as a whole and I think provided a useful sense for people that it thrives despite chatter of the OSR being dead (again and persistently). I think it was particularly helpful in showing that the OSR contains multitudes and has been different things at different times. Various other luminaries of the scene have written this is wrong but as it has ever been, I know I have better odds to find something interesting on an OSR self-labelling blog than elsewhere.

As ever I wish to thank the folk who read this and decide it is worth putting on their own blogroll. My most sincere gratitude to the following comrade-bloggers whose sidebar blog-rolls let readers find their way here:
DIY & Dragons,
Nothics Eye,
Retired Adventurer,
Archons March On,
Shuttered Room,
Bruce Heard,
Lizardman Diaries,
Weaver.skepti.ch,
Chaudron Chromatique,
Ynas Midgard,
Uncaring Cosmos,
Kelvin Green,
Awesome Lies,
Spot Hidden,
Wierd Wonderful Worlds,
A Continent of Banalities,
All Wizards Are Bastards,
Advanced Mystery and Manners,
Prismatic Wasteland,
Beneath Foreign Planets,
Taskerland,
Tim S Brannan,
Spriggans Den, Sundered Shields and Silver Shillings,
Sable Mage,
Forrest for the Trees,
Bjork's blog,
Drama Dice,
Glass Candles,
Xenograg,
Archbrick and
Eldritch Fields
and the folks at Gaming Tavern.

I think honourable mention has to go to Elmcat - they get credit for rootr.ing and I think their blogosphere project drove awareness of the Shiny Weekly Links such that it got the bloggies nomination.

On Writing

The highlight of peer recognition I guess was the surprise nomination of the Shiny Weekly Links series for 'best series' for the Bloggies. Lost that one to the incredibly impressive Dungeon Design Course but nice to get the nomination. That is going in the header of the Shiny Links forevermore.

There have been a good few interesting jams and challenges of late also - GLÅUGUST finished out, the RPGBlogCarnival kept rolling, Onegeon jam and GLoGmass came to pass, I closed out the #hexcrawl25 challenge and started #city26. We had a couple of local gaming group jams - on Community for our two year anniversary and a review round-robin at years end. There were blogwagons on Appendicitis N (own personal influences), Childhood Inspirations and How I Run Games and Rule of Three (favourite games).

There are still humans out there and so we shall perservere. The blogrings are a nice backstop against the failure of reddit, bluesky, discord, and what have you. As shown with the conversations on those forums - blogposts of old get referenced, ancient reddit threads maybe but bluesky and discord chats are gone once the moment passes. Recognising that we as a hobby have the institutional memory of goldfish, we may as well give ourselves a fighting chance by saving out the best nuggest of wisdom to blogs.

On Goals

Continue the shiny weekly links - easy, since those are my own aide memoires I just upload.

More blogwagons - there are a fair few on the board thanks to Prismatic Wasteland - continue with the RPG Blog Carnival, do Glaugust/GLoGtober.

The backlog of half-done posts continues to grow, I have a months worth of posts to be had in finishing things lying around, even before I get into slush-pile posts.

Among that backlog are a bunch of review so hopefully I can get some of those out - Monster Overhaul, Kala Mandala Adventures, various other zines.

Immediate priority for the next while is keep writing in the presence of additional small householders.