2020: A Year in Review

Here’s a list of stuff I feel like is an achievement, given 2020 has basically been a write-off of a year!

I’ve upgraded to a .com URL.
It was a long time coming, and it took me the first six months of the year to make a decision and pull the trigger. I’m glad I did, I like the branding and it’s a lot easier to drop a link to a blog anywhere.

I’ve moved my site away from WordPress and then back a short while later.
I tried out Squarespace after years of adverts on blogs and podcasts. It was fine, but it didn’t cater well to my needs, and they removed sidebars as an option for sites at the end of 2019. I like sidebars.
There were also issues with having to write a blog three times due to the weird way it autosaves stuff and some kind of write-over bug that replaced new stuff with old stuff.
Anyway I shouldn;t have left.

I’ve built out several pages from the homepage.
I started to actually organise and categorise some of my posts. I don’t know if it’s helped people navigate the site, but it’s helped me organise my thoughts a bit better.

I’ve more than doubled my highest yearly site visits.
I feel like a lot of that was down to adding the .com for the website. There was an instant jump in traffic.
I’ve also tried to dive in to social media more and share around my blog to different places. It seems to have worked.

I’ve more than tripled my highest yearly page views.
I’m the most happy about this. OK, I got more people to the blog, but this shows I’ve managed to keep them around for a while too.

I’ve played around with different writing and publishing tools.
I’d had a bit of a play with GM Binder and Homebrewery a few years ago but I didn’t really do much with them. Now I’ve hit the Mardown tutorials and looked at what can be done by other people, and brewed something up worth sharing.

I’ve published an adventure on DMsGuild.
I can officially say I’m a DMsGuild creator and that people have even paid for my work. I’ve been hanging around DrivethruRPG and DMsGuild for years, but never felt confident enough to share stuff that’s in my head.
I’ve not gotten a huge number of sales, but it’s a start. I’m happy that anyone picked up something I wrote.

I got a 5-star review for my work.
It’s not much, but it’s something. And it’s sat there unchallenged for a while now, so I can brag about that too.

I’ve jumped back into Twitter and tried to pay it more attention this time.
I’ve managed to jump up my follower numbers pretty quickly, I’ve shared around my work, I’ve talked to other people in the community. It’s not just for dumping links to my blog anymore.
And given I’ve had a Twitter account for ten years, it’s very cool to see my followers go from the mid-200s up past 400 in a week.

I’ve jumped into Discord for Play-by-Post.
Specifically, a Planescape play-by-post. It’s been a lot of fun, and I got to play Loge again. This is a slightly different version, traveling around the Outlands.
He’s managed to get as far as Ysgard and meet his mother, accidentally join a sieging force attacking Excelsior, and take a boat cruise down the River Ma’at.

I’ve returned to Roll20 to play D&D.
I mean, needs must for 2020 and all that. But it’s been a lot of fun too.
I’ve been playing a ratfolk ranger/rogue in the Midgard setting from Kobold Press. I’ve always wanted to jump in to the setting, and it’s been a lot of fun.
When we finish up Tales from the Old Margreve, I’ll post a review of the adventures.

I’ve started to re-engage with other roleplaying rules systems.
Between thinking about old settings and posts, and re-engaging with stuff like Cortex (see this old post that’s definitely due a follow-up soon), I’ve been thinking about more than D&D for the first time in a long time.
It’s still the mainstay, since it’s still the game I play most of at the moment, but it’s nice to stretch out and see what else is going on.

I’ve joined in on month-log blogging challenges.
This one has been difficult to maintain at times, but I managed it. You can find those over on the RPGaDay prompts page, though I’ll be adding to them with some I’ve picked up other places that didn’t get done. December worldbuilding and Creatober look interesting.