Wow! Nine years ago, July 18, 2009, I posted my first post on the blog. Internet outage prevented this article going out yesterday on the actual anniversary. A large truck drove by and broke the line for my DSL yesterday afternoon, and it didn’t get fixed until today. I hadn’t started an article yet, so there was nothing to schedule to auto-post. This post is number 703!

The Start

I started the blog to tell stories about back in the day and about my home AD&D campaign with my sons and their friends. Soon, I was blogging about all kinds of things. One year, I even had a post every day from January 1 through mid-September, when I just ran out of things to blog about.

As with any creative endeavor, the ease with which creativity flows varies daily from “No problem.” to “Impossible.” Most of that is an emotional connection to the “work” or “grind” of regular blogging. I find it is often hard to “be in the mood” to blog, but I have persisted.

Expansion

I consider myself an Old School blogger, and I have expanded to a YouTube channel, where I have found unexpected success in my series, Roll20 For The Absolute Beginner. There are more things to make Roll20 videos about, I’m just out of the habit of regular production. Over 180 subscribers on YouTube also amazes me.

For the last couple of years, I have been active with many discussions over on Twitter. My growth and success there has been beyond my expectations, running up to 560 followers. I have far more interaction there.

Most recently, I started a podcast on Anchor and have five episodes to date. I like the podcast format. No fiddling with the lighting or getting the short lined up correctly. Just record, edit a bit, and post it. I have had nearly 100 listens to all of the episodes combined, some episodes over 20 plays.

I have lots of ideas for blogging, videos, and podcast episodes, and will endeavor to continue sharing my ideas. Recently I have reviewed some of my posts and think I have enough ideas over the past nine years of blogging to put something together and share it on OBS (One Bookshelf), AKA DriveThruRPG/RPGNow.

I have a CafePress store to sell T-shirts, but the prices one has to charge there to make anything are prohibitive. I’ll be moving to a different store that doesn’t charge an arm and a leg.

What About The Card Game?

In the background I still fiddle a bit with my card game honing rules and waiting until the time is right to pull it all together and launch a Kickstarter. The waiting makes the excitement wane, so I’m not as pumped on a daily basis as I was at the start. But get me talking about it, and the excitement returns. I have more ideas for related card games and perhaps board games, so if I find success with the first, I could potentially make a new job of it.

Conventions

I continue to think about what games to run at cons, UCon in the fall and the new round of cons next year. I am working on a DCC funnel to run at UCon, and will be play testing it soonish. Part of me wants to just run games at cons, and not play. It’s not that I don’t like play, I think I need to be more limited in the games I play so I don’t overdo it. Similarly, I need to avoid running so many games I’m not interested in playing. I continue to work on that balance.

Support

I fund the site through affiliate links with DriveThruRPG and RPGNow, and GameScience dice. The amount I have brought in over the years has helped buy more things on those sites, but is far from paying for the costs of webhosting, domain names, software, and nowhere close to funding convention travel. I have considered a Patreon, which would require me to do something on a regular basis. If what I do interests you, and you would support me on Patreon, let me know. Specifically, what would you prefer I do more of? I’m thinking along the lines of at least one blog post a month, one YouTube video a month, and a regular schedule on the podcast. For the podcast, I’m thinking at least weekly, and up to two or three times a week.

I’ll continue to do what I do because I like it, but moving closer to break-even would be great! I’m single, so I have only my future self to answer to, and he’s not here.

Looking Ahead to Ten Years

I want to have more consistency in blog posts, videos, and podcasts. If my plans to share some of my material from over the years works out, there will be more of it. Sometime in the next year, I should be launching a Kickstarter for a card game.  In the next several weeks, we should wrap up the Wednesday night AD&D campaign on Roll20. I’d be surprised if we are still at it when the 5th year rolls around in March. I’m looking forward to running more online games. I need to start them instead of talking about doing it. The sky’s the limit, and I look forward to learn what the next year will bring!

Thanks to all the readers, commenters and other support you all have given me over the years. It is great to know I’m not alone in this hobby and that others are interested in my ideas.