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RPGs

2019 – Year In Review

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Since we’re about out of year, I decided to hurry up and put together my post for my year in review. I’ll be comparing to 2018, which you can see here.

You can listen here to my 2019 in Review and 2020 & Beyond Podcast. It’s got a slightly different focus than this post.

Conventions

I didn’t do as much playing or running RPGs or playing any games as I had hoped. While I did attend Gary Con, Marmalade Dog, Grand Con, and UCON, I had a larger challenge than normal getting in the mood to plan and run games. I did manage to submit games to run for the usual conventions I attend, Gary Con, Marmalade Dog, and UCon. As always, it went well and both I and the players had fun.

I also participated in Procrasticon I. A bunch of Anchor podcasters threw together an impromptu 24 hour online con. I signed up to run a game, but no one signed up. I played in a couple of games and had a blast. One is the Monday night game I play in now.

Barrowmaze using Delving Deeper was an online game I played several sessions. My first character, a fighter, died, carried off and eaten by ghouls. My current character is a 4th level cleric. We’re on hiatus til spring.

B/X in the Broken Lands with the Orcs of Thar Mystara supplements. I play a 4th level hobgoblin Monday nights.

Playing & Running RPGs

It wasn’t until the middle of September that I managed to get the bug to create a new campaign that I actually ran an online game. I settled on Delving Deeper, and created a campaign that I called Delvers’ Deep. The name Delvers’ Deep comes from the only thing I ever submitted to the One Page Dungeon Contest, The Dire Druids of Delvers’ Deep. I’ve run that at a few conventions. Only the name so far, exists in the campaign world. I ran it as a drop-in/drop-out game, sort of a modified West Marches. After 9 sessions players were unable to commit and then my work got busy.

Sadly, the amount of work for the day job has gone off the charts. I ended up cancelling games, and finally putting my campaign on hold until things return to “normal”. I’ve used up so much of my creativity that I also broke the pace of my regular podcast. I went from 3 episodes a week to none. I went over a month without a podcast until I had an episode on December 6th. This has also affected the frequency of blog posts and my drive to work on my monthly PDFs.

Card Game

I’ve had a hard time motivating myself to do some more hard work on the card game. Playtests have been very informative, but I haven’t done as many as I wanted. I have added some detailed notes for some additional rules based on feedback from the last few playtests. I need to build test deck 3. The amount of work that is is a mountain, that I have yet to climb. I can do it in a long day. I had hoped to have it in my hands by now. I really want it in time for Gary Con.

What about the Kickstarter? I’m really torn about this. I don’t have the new art as fast as I want. I’m also burnt out with Kickstarter, and get the impression many are. That is in addition to the way Kickstarter treats it’s workers. Also the Kickstarter user interface is very crude. I built a dummy campaign to figure out how to do what I want, and it is not easy. Part of me wants to just put the game out on Game Crafter, which is very easy. But I want to make it easily available worldwide. So I’m also considering DriveThru Cards. I need to order a deck from there to see what sort of quality it has.

Part of me just wants it done. I’m sure many other creatives hit that same wall. I just need to persevere and do the best job I can to make the rules and the cards work. I had an idea for a Halloween themed deck of cards about 6 weeks before Halloween. I’ll see about maybe doing it for 2020, if everything comes together for the game.

Publishing

This time last year, I had 5 PDFs on DriveThruRPG. Currently I have 17 since I have yet to complete the PDF for December. I will finish up my December PDF and publish it before the end of the year. This will give me my first calendar year of publishing and sales.

I now have 2 Copper Best Sellers and 2 Silver Best Sellers on DriveThru RPG. My first PDF, Locks, Vaults, and Hiding Places [Affilate Link] is only 19 paid sales away from Silver. My first Copper and then first Silver, Caravans & Trade [Affilate Link] , is 77 paid sales away from Electrum.

You can check out my full list of titles at my DriveThru RPG Publisher Page. [Affilate Link]

By The Numbers

Publishing:

  • All Time Grand Totals: 6389 total downloads for 678 paid sales $840.85 $588.60
  • 2019 Grand Totals: 5171 total downloads for 471 paid sales $585.77 $410.04 (All included in the numbers above.)
  • T-Shirts on TeeSpring – Still 0 sales beyond what I’ve bought for friends and family.

As a DriveThruRPG Affiliate, I’ve made $113.56, all but the last $25.00 spent on new purchases. Just waiting to spend it on another game or supplement.

On Patreon, I have 5 followers, up from 3 last year. I had 6 at one point, and would have 7 had 2 not had to drop off. $137.00 before fees. I’ve seen none of it since my personal and business accounts linked, it minimizes how much I pay each month for all the other Patreons I back. I really appreciate my patrons and their feedback and encouragement.

A few months ago, I decided to enable ads on my podcast. I have yet to go through the back catalog and insert a spot for ads. I’ve made a whopping $14.67.

Amazon Affiliate. I’m an Amazon Affiliate, but have yet to have anyone buy anything. They give you 180 days for a qualified purchase or they drop you. This is my second go around at this. I don’t expect to get rich, but would love for enough to negate my expenses for web space, domain name, art, etc. I’ve got 12 years give or take before I retire, and I need to achieve at least a net 0 expenses to maintain all the things I hope to be doing when I can give up my day job. Here’s a link to games. I’d greatly appreciate anyone using this link as it helps me out without any expense to you.

Here’s one for Dungeon Crawl Classics. [Affiliate Link]

[^ Affiliate Link ^]

So I’ve made $1,106.08 before fees, leaving $849.98. That does not cover the expenses it took to earn it and I waited to collect the publishing payout for 2018 until 2019 for tax purposes. It’s pennies per hour for all the effort and still less than the net of one regular paycheck. This should illustrate why it is so difficult to make money online, even just a little extra.

YouTube – 474 subscribers up 240 from last year, 71 videos up 7 from last year. With over 40,000 lifetime views. My series Roll20 For The Absolute Beginner is the most popular. I started a new series in 2019 – How To AD&D 1e. I plan to keep adding to each series. Over 425 subscribers to go until I can think about ads, since one of the criteria is a minimum 1,000 subscribers.

Twitter – 1092 followers up 372 from last year.

FB – 143 Likes up 79 from last year and 145 Followers up 80 from last year.

Reddit – Karma of 480 up 408 from last year.

Instagram – I started Instagram on June 26, 2018, but didn’t mention it in last year’s post. I ended 2018 with 67 followers and am up to 128 followers.

Blog posts 52 published posts, down 69 from last year, and 2 new drafts, down 4 from last year for a total of 25 drafts.

Total blog posts 797 counting this one you’re reading.

Podcasting

I have 11,886 total plays among my 170 episodes, for an average of 69.9 listeners per episode. 6 episodes are over 100 listeners. My first episode is at 150 listeners. I plan to do a year end podcast so the final 2019 numbers will change.

Last year’s hiatus due to work and family drama saw my podcast’s trend for growth smacked down. The proliferation of new RPG podcasters on Anchor has made it easier to get lost in the noise. No one has time to listen to all of them consistently.

I wonder how much longer I’ll maintain the effort.

Kickstarters I’ve Backed

I still backed way too many Kickstarters in 2019. 5 that should have delievered in 2018 arrived in 2019. Of 10 Kickstarters that should have delivered in 2019 that did deliver in 2019, 1 was early, 1 was on time, and 8 were late. This is the source of my disillusionment with Kickstarter. I want it when they say they’ll deliver, not months or years later. I go in for Kickstarters that I’ve never used or read the game. I know I’m not alone in this.

12 more Kickstarters are supposed to deliver in 2019, and only 2 of those appear on track to meet that goal or only be a couple weeks late.

I have 19 overdue Kickstarters. I hate to think how much money that is. I have not updated my page here on the blog where I track the Kickstarters I’ve backed. I want to help my friends with their projects, but when so many of them are late. Some do a great job of explaining things and are late for good reason, and do a great job of making sure things go at ASAP. Others do a terrible job of communicating and are late and when they do communicate, it is sometimes more frustrating than silence. I’ve learned which publishers/creators I’ve backed that I’ll never back again because of how late they were.

My Tips For Those Running Kickstarters:

I’ve backed 77 Kickstarters that funded, and only 3 that did not. So my track record of picking the ones that will fund is very good. As for picking those that deliver on time, not so much.

  • If you’re always 6 months late on delivery of a Kickstarter, add 6 months to the delivery date of future Kickstarters.
  • If you’re not good at communicating and keeping backers informed. Don’t launch a Kickstarter. If you do a Kickstarter anyway, suck it up and communicate.
  • Don’t wait to deliver bad news.
  • Do the work BEFORE you click Launch!
  • Pay the artists, layout and others as soon as you have agreed to/when the money arrives.
  • When the money arrives, pay all the bills/vendors to minimize the tax burden.
  • Get along with your team until delivery is complete. Don’t have interpersonal, legal, whatever nonsense. Get it done. Be Professional.
  • Minimize the points where things can go wrong.

Final Thoughts on 2019

I didn’t meet all my goals. That’s a realistic occurrence. However, I did well on the goals I met. I’m still here and I’m not quitting. The nature of my day job with it’s busiest time of year in December and more so in January forces me to pull back from spending time on my hobbies.

I’m also working on a review of the stats of the blog, such as the most popular topics in 2019. That will be another blog post that will take a bit to pull together.

One of the coolest RPG things I ever did was participating as a player and DM for the first ever livecast of a D&D game (5e) from Gary Gygax’s old house to benefit Extra Life. Having a video of all four games allows me to relive it a bit. Seeing how I run a game is also a helpful teaching tool to help me get better.

What’s Ahead in 2020

  • Release my card game whether through Kickstarter or directly via Game Crafter or DriveThruCards.
  • Continue one PDF a month for my Patreon that is also released on DriveThruRPG.
  • Evaluate my podcast and determine if it is worth my time to resume when work slows down.
  • Attend conventions and run and play games.
  • More regular blog posting.
    • I’d like to read more blogs like I indicated at last years round up post, but I didn’t do very well.
  • More videos on YouTube.
  • Run and play more games in person and/or online.
  • I’ve been invited back to the next round of live cast RPGs from Gary’s old house, so I’m letting ideas tumble in the back of my mind.

2019 was overall a great year. I let my thoughts and self-judgement get in the way of enjoying it as much as I should have. The older I get, the more I realize, no one else will ensure I have fun. It’s up to me.

For 2020 Gary Con, I’ll bring my card game for pick up games, and bring some stuff to run or play pick up games. I will focus on playing some wargames and a few other things. I don’t want to pack my schedule, as I want to enjoy things as much as I can with the con more crowded than prior years.

As with last year, I look forward to the changes and opportunities that lie ahead in 2020. I hope it is a great year of growth and opportunity fulfilled for all of you. May you play often, roll well, grow rich and powerful, and save or destroy the world as is your wont.

RPGs

Ten Years of RPG Blogging

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Today marks ten years since I posted the first article on my blog on July 18, 2009: Why Follow Me, And Die!

That was a terse few sentences that only gave the barest of details of the origins of Follow Me, And Die! {You can get the long version here.] It was followed by lots of posts with stories from back in the day and my own ideas about generating ideas and preparing to run games. I later touched on some of the sessions of play when I finally introduced my sons to AD&D.

Since that time I have interacted with a lot of other RPG bloggers and gamers online. Eventually, G+ became the main place to interact and the blog content went down. Occasionally, I would make a blog post out of a comment that was just too long. Many ideas for blog posts were generated from the fertile soil of G+.

G+ faded away with a bit of a return to blogs, and I’m blogging much more regularly, close to once a week.

In 2014, I think it was I posted every day until mid-September when I ran out of things to write about. Over the years I’ve had times I barely looked at the blog.

I started attending cons regularly and met other bloggers and gamers that I knew from online. I attended Gary Con 8 where I met Satine Phoenix, who created my current social media avatar which debuted January 19, 2017. Satine was kind enough to fix my blog header to look better with her art. I have an image on a black background and another on a white background that rotate. [You can get a black shirt with that image here.] A couple months later, I added another blog header in rotation by Del Teigeler. I also use that as the header for my Twitter account.

I started a YouTube channel and am not posting as frequently as I’d like, but I just reached 400 subscribers the other day.

Over on Twitter I passed 1,000 followers.

Last month I wrote this post about the first anniversary of my podcast.

Last August, I started publishing PDFs over on DriveThruRPG and in September I launched my Patreon. Before July is over, I will publish my 12th monthly PDF.

I also am working on a Kickstarter for a card game of all things. If you’d like to get an email when it launches, you can sign up here.

I’ve been gaming for 42 years and on August 24th I get to run a game and play in other games at Gary Gygax’s old house where D&D was written for an Extra Life fundraiser. It is hosted by John Gilbert, with Bill Allan, Fenway Jones, Jason O’Brien, Alex Gygax, Grant Ellis, GM Travis, and me. I am so excited for this opportunity for my first streaming game as player and GM! I hope that we raise a lot in addition to having a great time.

Ten years is a blink of an eye. I’ll be in my mid-fifties in a couple months, and ten years is nothing. I hope to keep playing for decades to come, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how the world and gaming changes as I watch my grandchildren grow.

I want to thank everyone who has been part of this wild ride and I look forward to more chats, conversations, and games.

You can listen to the companion podcast here.

RPGs

GitHub Project For G+ Links In Blogs

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Bloggers who use Blogger were given the biggest disappointment yesterday when all the G+ comments for all Blogger blogs were deleted by Google. I have a blogger account, but it is just a link to my blog and lists each post from this blog. I never used blogger for my RPG blogging.

Those of us who don’t use Blogger still have time to preserve our G+ comments.

Thankfully, I only had two comments from G+, both from the same person. I used the Internet Archive to make an archive of his G+ page. I then added a note at the end of the two articles involved:

[EDIT: Google is deleting all G+ comments to non-blogger blogs. Below is one of two G+ comments on my blog I want to save. 02/06/2019]

  • I then pasted in the comment,
  • The Date,
  • The Commenter’s name,
  • and the link to the G+ site.

I left the link text as the original G+ page, but I used the Internet Archive URL for the link. (See the Internet Archive page in this repository.)

G+ Links

All bloggers, including those using Blogger, still have time to handle those G+ links that still exist on their blog posts.

Internet Archive

The Internet Archive, AKA Wayback Machine, has a way to request that a public URL (link) be archived.

https://web.archive.org/save/

Where the above link is modified where the link to archive is used in place of <URL>

For example, the G+ page for Follow Me, and Die! would look like this:

REQUEST LINK: (The following should be one line.)

https://web.archive.org/

save/https://plus.google.com/+Followmeanddie

RESULTING LINK:(The following should be one line.)

https://web.archive.org/web/20190206103057/

https://plus.google.com/+Followmeanddie

Each time you use a request link, you get a new resulting link, that has the data and time as part of the URL. You do not need to generate a new request if the page has not changed since you last generated it.

GitHub Project

I am by no means a master coder, but I know SQL, and I know how I want to handle the issues with my blog. I like to help others, so I am sharing my process and inviting anyone who wants to participate to step up. Anyone who is a better and faster scripter than I is welcome to build a script to do this. NOTE: I am looking for cross-platform solutions, i.e. a single solution that will work on any Operating System (OS)

Here you can find my minimal, in-progress project that I started this morning before work.

RPGs

Good Luck If You Linked To Anything On G+

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I have a BA in history, which means I have training on how to do research and cite my sources.

Following along with my training, even RPG blogging, I link back to my sources online.

When writing about RPGs, especially “OSR” topics, I found a lot of great ideas, discussion, and all around inspiration on G+.

It occurred to me a couple of days ago that I should see how many things I linked to on G+ and try to copy those things and add the source to my blog posts, so the information is not lost to the mists of time.

I use an extension on my blog that lets me do a search and replace on things across my entire blog. It has an option to do a “dry run” and for the free version show how many instances of a given phrase it finds before it replaces it.

Great . . . .

I searched for the key part of the URL for G+: plus.google.com.

Here are my results for a few of the tables:

  • Comments – 2
  • Links: 4
  • Posts: 867!

Comments

The comments are from the same person and link back to his G+ page. I copied the long text in the about page and the graphic to a google doc. That was easy!

Links

The links are to the Follow Me, And Die! G+ page. OK, I can screenshot it or something and provide a nostalgia page or something.

The other three are to the Metamorphosis Alpha, the Swords & Wizardry, and Tenkar’s Landing G+ community pages. I can use G+ Exporter to grab those and post to a page or site for historical purposes, but that’s a whole other ball of wax.

Posts

The 867 posts are links in 157 actual posts. Counting this post, I now have 780 posts.

I can go into the database and search for the unique links and go from there.

I’ve got some ideas of how I can hack together a crude solution. I’m not the best script coder, but I plan to do my best to copy what’s on the other end of all these links. But first, just in case, I’m going to grab my favorite G+ discussions that stand out in my mind

Unfortunately, trying to preserve this background history of my RPG life during my time on G+ is going to sidetrack me from other things.

Conclusion

Unlike blogs and websites, there is no archive of all of G+. Google is just going to delete it. It would be really cool if Google and The Internet Archive could work out a deal.

If you have a favorite G+ discussion, get it now — if you can find it.

[UPDATE: I just found that if you use the Evernote web clipper and tell it to use the default option of Article, it will save the entire G+ thread. NOTE: It is literal about what is copied. Be sure to unhide all comments with the view x previous comments link, if any.]

RPGs

G+ Exporter mini-review

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I purchased the G+ Exporter license for $20 to get unlimited downloads on December 22, 2018. While Google has the feature
Google Takeout, it has issues and does not easily do what one wants. It has a default option of HTML, but the HTML is far from W3C compliant. JSON is the other option, but it not available for all data types, and some settings in Google Takeout give errors that are difficult to decipher. In some cases, there is data exported, but there is no easy way to determine what is missing.

I mentioned that I would be digging into G+ Exporter on G+ and sharing the results. I have had a few people ask me what I found, and here you go. This is not complete, but it what I managed to find out.

Disclaimer: I have done all of the WordPress testing today (December 30, 2018). It was rushed, as I don’t know how long until work slows down, as the next two weeks are the maximum workload of the year at work. It was also interrupted multiple times in both the testing and the writing of this post. I welcome comments from anyone who can shed light on the area where I don’t have a clear or good answer.

I liked the export feature. It lets you export to JSON, Blogger export format, and both the WordPress 4x and 5x export formats. The program is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

As Blogger is also owned by Google, and the idea is to avoid Google killing another product, I elected to export to the WordPress 5x format. I have used WordPress for my blog for years.

My plan was to install and run a local install or WordPress on my PC. I kept having issues getting it working. I don’t recall it being that difficult to get a local install working, but I haven’t done it in years.

I gave up on that as I kept being interrupted and losing my place in all the configuration files for the webserver, PHP, MySQL, and WordPress. At one time, I had a single package that combined all these pieces. I don’t recall the third party that put this together, or what they called it, or if it still exists. If you know, please leave a comment below.

Process

What I did was use the automatic WordPress functionality of my webhosting service to create a new WordPress installation with a new database. I then restored the backup file created by G+ Exporter for the G+ Community for the Wednesday night AD&D game from Roll20 that ran from March, 2014 to October, 2018 with 221 sessions.

G+ Exporter allows you to specify the size cutoff for how big a single file is. I believe the default for the full version is 5,000 posts. This file has 1280 posts. This file is about 8.6 MB.

I had to install the WordPress Importer plugin. It indicated that it has not been tested under the latest version of WordPress. Nevertheless, I was able to import the file. It appeared to hang a couple of times. I clicked the refresh button on the browser tab. After I clicked the second time, it showed me a page with all of the players and GM, AKA Community Members. It offered to import them all as Admin, if you didn’t want to import it under each member’s name. I had it import and keep each person’s name. It imported them as Subscribers with random passwords.

If you wanted to allow these users to edit posts or make new posts with those user names, you would have to deal with all the password re-sets. If you just want the data, you won’t need to worry about users editing their posts.

What I did not test was importing more than one G+ export file. There does not appear to be anything in the import file to allow distinguishing one file from another once it is imported.

This leads to the question of how to handle this. I see two options: first, use a multi site installation of WordPress with a separate database for each Community or G+ Exporter file. Second, restore a file, and use another method to export the data into a format less dependent on WordPress’s technical requirements.

If you want all of your G+ life preserved in one place, you can easily import all of it into one WordPress installation.

For the second option, one could use either wget or curl and download/copy the information to HTML files that are in a format that is easier to work with than the HTML files offered via Google Takeout. There are WordPress plugins that offer other options for exporting data, but I did not make time to research those options. I did notice that there is a JSON import plugin, so conceivably, one could use that to import the JSON format from either Google Takeout or G+ Exporter. (Yes, I know, there are those who don’t like the HTML option. It all depends on how tech savvy one is, and whether the format serves their needs.)

If you have a brand with a G+ Community, importing your G+ Export into a section of your WordPress site may have appeal.

Either researching a WordPress export plugin, or hiring a programmer to build a custom program to read your JSON or other backup file and present it in a usable way, may be an option.

Conclusion

If you were not a prolific poster on G+, or you are not worried about preserving your posts from G+, then you can save your $20. Infrequent posters to G+ may be served well by either Google Takeout or the free limited version of G+ Exporter. However, if you want a Community, G+ Exporter is the only clear way to get it, as Google has not made it clear one can download a Community via Google Takeout.

However, if you were a prolific poster, or an owner of one or more communities, and you want to maintain all that data generated over the years, this is for you. $20 is well worth it.

If you know how to get a WordPress site working on a self hosted location, or create a free WordPress site at WordPress.com, this method is relatively easy. Of course, you also have to ensure that you have backups in a safe location to avoid losing all the data once you have it. As WordPress is enhanced and has new versions, you will need to export again as a precaution, should you need to re-build your site.

The biggest challenge will be for those responsible for or wanting to download multiple Communities. As I have not attempted to import more than one into the same database, I can’t say if there is a way to distinguish each Community one imports. On the surface, it appears that this will necessitate multiple WordPress databases, which is best handled with the Multi-Site installation of WordPress. However, I have not installed Multi-Site myself to know all of its quirks.

If all you want is all your posts and don’t care to separate them all, you can just import everything.

It does group things by Category, so each subgroup (filter) of posts in a community becomes a Category in WordPress.

If you click on the author name, such as under the recent comments, it goes to the author’s G+ page.

If you click the author name on an article in WordPress, it takes you to all the articles (posts) by that person.

Google+ Exporter announced their latest features on a G+ post here.

It directs the user to the link to download/purchase here.

[UPDATE: January 4, 2019] I found that the WordPress import set categories, but it was not showing them correctly on the viewer side of things. I had to manually update the main category, which is the G+ Community Name. I was able to update 100 articles in a go using the bulk update functionality to set the category.

Subcategories for each G+Filter were on each post, but they didn’t show on the viewer side of things until I added the main category to them. This then updated the count for the parent category to the current number of posts I had added. It then also made all the subcategories show up on the blog side.

This must be some limitation of the importer. It is also not tested on the latest version of WP, so that may be the issue.

While doing this, I managed to lock up my database so I couldn’t finish the last few updates.

[UPDATE: January 5, 2019] Images will import into WordPress. A smaller import file seems to work better. I still had issues with it, but there are graphics in the WordPress database. My internet has issues, so it is a combination of that and perhaps the size of files imported across the net. If I could FTP the file to my web server and then import it, it would likely work better.

NOTE: WAMP or XAMPP are all in one packages for running WordPress locally on your PC for testing purposes. I’ll be configuring those for more testing once I have time.

[UPDATE: January 7, 2019] Google+ Exporter has an update that does a better job of downloading images. See this post for an explanation and other fixes mentioned.

RPGs

2018 – YEAR OF GAMING IN REVIEW

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2018 was an RPG filled year.

I attended several conventions through the year: Marmalade Dog, Gary Con, Origins, and UCon. I ran games at all but Origins. I plan to continue running games at every convention I attend. Gamehole Con was the same weekend as UCon. Since I go to Gary Con over Marmalade Dog, I decided to stick with a Michigan convention in the Fall. I didn’t attend Grand Con this year, as I attended my 35th high school reunion that weekend.

October saw the epic conclusion of 4.5 years of Wednesday night AD&D game on Roll 20. I managed to join every session.

It was replaced by SWN after a couple week break, and after a few weeks, life got chaotic and I had to cancel plans for 3 of the last 4 weeks. I decided to take a break from Wed. night and my podcast until work slows down in mid-January or after January.

I started a podcast on Anchor and am on all but one of the minor platforms they syndicate to. I have over 4,200 podcast total listens over 68 episodes nearing an average of 63 listens each.

I launched Follow Me, And Die! Entertainment LLC in preparation for the Kickstarter for the card game I keep talking about.

I became a publisher on OBS. Here’s my publisher page [Affiliate Link] . With OBS merging RPGNow into DriveThruRPG, I’m glad I’ve tended to focus on links to DriveThruRPG. RPGNow links will be re-directed to DriveThruRPG.

As of now, I have five PDFs available, released in the final days of each of the last five months of the year, approaching 1,200 total downloads.

I launched a Patreon. So far, with 3 steadfast patrons.

In October, Google announced it will shut down G+ in August, 2019. A few weeks ago, they moved up the date to April, 2019 and will start deprecating APIs in January.

Google takeout is rough. I jumped on the G+ Exporter as is does posts and communities. G+ Exporter can export into either JSON or WordPress backup format. I will post my thoughts on it once I have a chance to restore a backup. Time is running short, since G+ will have the plug pulled in April.

By the numbers

G+ passed 400 followers, and it dropped to the 398 after Google’s announcement of the G+ shut down. Until the shutdown announcement, I was on track to reach 500 by now….

YouTube – 234 subscribers, 64 videos.

Twitter – 720 followers

FB – 64 Likes and 65 Followers

Reddit – Karma of 72

Blog posts 121 published posts and 6 drafts.

Total blog posts 742 with this one.

Affiliate Sales OBS $42.54 All used to buy various books and PDFs, especially shipping for physical copies of Kickstarter rewards.

Total Sales of PDFs as a publisher $231.55, 70% of that comes to me.

I backed 20 Kickstarters in 2018, which is way too many. They all have cool things, but I don’t have time to get to all of them, let alone all the Kickstarters I backed before then.

Speaking of Kickstarter, my plan is for 2019 to be the launch of the Kickstarter for my card game. There are a few things still up in the air, so I can’t narrow it down more. My plan is to launch, fund, produce, and fulfill all within the same calendar year.

What’s Ahead in 2019?

There are many plans in place.

  • Launch a Kickstarter.
  • Continue Producing one PDF a month to my Patreon that is also released on DriveThruRPG.
    • If things come together, produce some larger PDFs. The timing of the Kickstarter will affect this.
  • Resume my podcast once work slows down, either in Mid-January or after January.
  • Attend conventions and run games.
  • More regular blog posting.
    • Also more reading of blogs, whether from my blogroll or via an RSS reader.
  • More videos on YouTube.
  • Bid G+ farewell in April when Google finally pulls the plug.
  • And most importantly of all run and play more games during the week.

I look forward to the changes and opportunities that lie ahead in 2019. I hope it is a great year of growth and opportunity fulfilled for all of you. May you play often, roll well, grow rich and powerful, and save or destroy the world as is your wont.

RPGs

9 Years of The Blog

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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.

RPGs

One Bookshelf Affiliate Sales Totals for 2017

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I decided to take a look and see what my annual sales through my OBS (DriveThruRPG, RPGNow, & DMsGuild) links generated.

In total, I earned $37.10 for 120 individual products. Six products had multiple sales. The big seller was five Hex Kit Volume 1: Fantasyland Tileset, [Affiliate Link] for use with Hex Kit [Affiliate Link]; and two sales each for the remaining 5 products. 114 products had a single sale.

Of the five products that had two sales, three are familiar: Dungeon Grappling [Affiliate Link], Players Handbook (1e) [Affiliate Link], and White Box Omnibus. [Affiliate Link] The other two, I have never heard of.  The Downtown Dataheist [Affiliate Link] and Cross-Class Subterfuge [Affiliate Link].  I don’t know those last two, so I can’t recommend them.

$37.10 isn’t bad. If I hadn’t spent most of it buying other products, I could use it for a few years of my domain name, or about a third of my annual web hosting fees.

I have no illusions of getting rich or quitting my day job, but it would be nice to beak even on my efforts at blogging my thoughts and reviews. If you like what I do, please consider buying your OBS gaming materials through my affiliate links.

I’m also a Game Science affiliate. Please consider your next dice purchase through my site.

The Amazon Affiliate program is tough to get a sale. I have links to things at Amazon, but not so much on my blog. I have added an Amazon Affiliate badge to the main page of my blog. I include links to the D&D 5e books, and the equipment I use for YouTube videos.

I’m debating starting a Patreon. I told myself that I wouldn’t even consider it until I reached 100 YouTube subscribers. That’s a milestone I reached in early January. Do you value my stuff enough to pay for it? I’ve been infrequent in posting lately, but with a Patreon, I would have at least one blog post a month, and one YouTube video a month. I would structure it for a flat monthly fee, if I did it.

I’m curious what you all think of that. My habit is to deny that I’m any good, and am not worth it. However, I don’t see the value of my efforts the way others might. If you think what I do via my blog or YouTube channel has enough to merit a Patreon, please tell me in the comments.

RPGs

2017 In Review

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2017 was quite the ride.

Internet/Social Media Stats

Only 73 blog posts for 2017. I have a total of 680 published blog posts. I have 26 posts in draft. Some just need to be deleted, and others I need to figure out what I was trying to say and finish the post. I’m not sure how many of them can be salvaged.

I started posting videos on YouTube and have 61 videos, and 97 subscribers. Most people are finding my channel via my series Roll20 For the Absolute Beginner. I finally got the right camera and editing software, when my computer died. That threw a wrench in the works that I haven’t gotten back into my stride. It took a lot of energy to get my new PC up and running, and I still have a lot I need to do.

I post on Twitter regularly, and am up to 388 followers.

I don’t post much on G+ if I’m not posting blog articles, but I’m up to 351 followers.

My Facebook page has 45 likes and 44 followers. I don’t promote Facebook as much as other media.

I have a Reddit account, but don’t post enough there to get a subreddit, I did switch to their new page, and posted there for a bit, but no traction there. I don’t care for how Reddit works. I understand it, but it’s so jumbled up and busy. I don’t like the interface.

Conventions

I went to Gary Con, Grand Con, Gamehole Con, and UCon. I ran games at Gamehole Con and UCon.

I backed a ton of Kickstarters, see my Outstanding Kickstarter Update for details.

In 2018, I will go to Gary Con 10, and will be running games. I will go to Marmalade Dog, since it isn’t the same weekend as Gary Con, and run games. I will also go to UCon and run games. I will probably go to Grand Con. Not sure if I will run games.

Playing

I am still playing in the AD&D Wednesday night game on Roll20. We just hit session 183, and I still haven’t missed a session.

I have played a several sessions in a game ran on weekends by another player in our Wednesday night game.

Another player in the Wednesday game also has ran a few sessions on the weekend that I played in.

Running

In addition to the games I have run at conventions, I started running a new area of my AD&D campaign world on Roll20 with some of the guys from Wednesday night. We got up to session 25 on December 10th. I had to take a break as this is my busy time of year at work and the non-stop all day long just fries my brain, and I just need a break. We’ll resume after January.

What’s to Come in 2018

I already started some of it. I am working to get a review published on the blog for every Kickstarter that has fulfilled. I did a bunch of easy ones for smaller products right at the end of December. So this backlog will be much smaller.

I will also do a review for every product I told people I would.

I would also like to post more often on other topics on the blog.

After my busy time of year is over, I will resume my Sunday afternoon AD&D game on Roll20. I might even open it up to a new player or two.

I resolved my transportation issue so I also plan to start running games at my FLGS Fanfare in Kalamazoo, after January. I’m not sure what day. I know it won’t be Wednesday or Sunday. I’m also not sure how many times a month. I’m considering dipping my toes into running 5e.

I will continue my efforts on YouTube. I have several more ideas for my Roll20 For The Absolute Beginner series. My list of other blog ideas will also keep me busy for a while. I hope to resume regular posting to YouTube in the new year.

I keep thinking that I’ll actually publish something on DriveThruRPG or other OBS site, or Lulu. I’ve got ideas, but nothing close to presentable so someone else can understand it. I won’t promise this anytime in 2018, and let it remain for some time in the future. Adding running a second game and doing the blog and YouTube is more than enough to keep me busy.

Life is good and I am happy and in a positive frame of mind, most of the time. I’ve had a lot of fun meeting people online, at cons, and seeing the joy and success of friends in the RPG world. This is a great time to be playing and talking about RPGs. I hope to continue the trend and have lots more fun and adventure!

[EDIT: I realized that I left out the times I was interviewed or featured by others. So here it now follows. I also added it to my Social page for ease of future reference.]

My presence on other blogs & channels.

I was interviewed on the Tell Me About Your Character podcast Season 3, Episode 1 April 24, 2017. [I interviewed Steve Keller on Multiverse here.]

Nerdarchy interviewed me for their Live Chat feature on July 12, 2017. See that episode here.

My blog was spotlighted by Jorphdan for the RPG Community Spotlight on October 2, 2017. See his video here. He really like my

My contribution for the Six of The Best series on Hero Press was published December 31, 2017. Read it here.